Wednesday, 8 March 2023

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:25): (70) My question is for the Minister for Environment. In one of my first questions in this place back in 2019 I asked about the looming toxic waste crisis presented by decommissioned solar panels, particularly in the context of a ban on e-waste going to landfill. The government’s response to this crisis was to provide grants to establish over 130 new sheds to house this waste while solutions were found. In 2019 the minister noted that Sustainability Victoria was leading the development of a national stewardship scheme and making progress. It is unclear if they actually made much progress, as it seems the government belatedly acknowledged the role of private enterprise, announcing a $10 million solar waste challenge fund to invest in solutions late last year. My question for the minister is: have any businesses applied to participate in the solar waste challenge fund and what types of projects are actually happening?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister for Environment) (12:26): Thank you for the question, Mr Limbrick. It is an important one, and it goes to the ways in which Victoria can continue to take advantage of re-use and recycling to a much greater degree than we have previously, all of which is contained in our circular economy policies that the government launched last term. You would be aware that there are a range of different aspects to that policy, including of course introducing additional kerbside collection in Victoria so that we can separate out our recycled materials and also introducing a container deposit scheme this year. But of course that is just a small component of the recycling challenges that we have.

You are right, Minister D’Ambrosio did launch a $10 million program late last year, which was about trying to encourage businesses to look at ways that we can innovate and get the important resources out of spent solar panels. I am not in a position to answer the specific part of your question about the uptake of that fund, but I am very happy to take that aspect of your question on notice and see what information can be provided about what the level of uptake has been. This is an area of course with our Solar Homes program and with our very ambitious emission reduction targets in Victoria, as we decarbonise the energy market, where it is going to be very important that we find ways to make sure that we are not adding to our waste problem and that we are actually finding ways that we can extract important resources from those spent solar panels. I thank the member for his question.

 David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:28): I thank the minister for her answer. In response to another question on this issue later in 2019 the Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change stated that environment ministers were expected to endorse the implementation of a preferred stewardship approach before the end of 2020. Clearly that did not happen, which suggests either that Sustainability Victoria did not do that job or that it is actually a significant technical challenge, which is exactly the point I was making back in 2019. The minister at the time also stated that there was not evidence of stockpiles yet in e-waste collection sites. My question for the minister is: are we now seeing issues with stockpiling of solar e-waste?

 Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Early Childhood and Pre-Prep, Minister for Environment) (12:28): I thank Mr Limbrick for his supplementary question. There are ongoing conversations with the federal government and other jurisdictions about a whole range of products that are problematic in terms of waste, including e-waste, and also of course people will be familiar with the issues around soft plastics and a particular program that has gone somewhat pear-shaped in that the company responsible for that recycling program had been stockpiling significant amounts of soft plastic waste. Across all of our recycling areas of effort we need to do better, and e-waste is no exception to that. I do not believe that there is a significant problem with the amount of that waste, but as we continue to drive solar energy that will become something we need to focus heavily on.