Western Victoria Region
Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (13:03): (204) My question is for the Minister for Energy and Resources and concerns Viva’s announcement that their Geelong refinery will soon be able to recycle products including used cooking oil, animal fats and, most importantly, synthetic crude from waste plastics as feedstocks in their fuel production. With a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per year and processing due by next year, this is the first commercial use in Australia of recycled plastic from waste soft plastics, which contribute more than 2 million tonnes of landfill each year. This carbon and energy footprint reduction is possible thanks to technology in industry and would not exist were it not for the Geelong refinery itself, so will the minister join me in condemning activist environmentalists, often the Greens, whose blanket hatred for all industry makes environment-protecting technological development and investment much harder?