Product Lifecycle Responsibility Bill 2025

Today I speak strongly in favour and support of the Product Lifecycle Responsibility Bill 2025. It is not a secret that we have a waste problem in this State. We are producing too much waste and do not have enough places to put it. Greater Sydney's landfill space is running out, and New South Wales' recycling rate has plateaued. We are also seeing more problematic waste, particularly e-waste, put into household bins. This creates health and environmental risks and limits the recovery of valuable resources. I commend the Government and the Minister for introducing legislation to address this mounting waste crisis.

This is the second bill in as many months before this House which aims to move New South Wales towards a circular economy. The first of these bills was, of course, the Protection of the Environment Legislation Amendment (FOGO Recycling) Bill 2024. When I spoke in support of that bill, I highlighted that we have not only a waste problem but also a consumption problem. Many of us have too much, while others have too little, and we fail to consider the whole-of-life impacts of what we consume. The whole-of-life impacts are the concern of the second bill, before us today. This bill would create a mandatory product stewardship framework for regulated products. The Government has stated its intention to regulate batteries in the first instance, to address the growing number of battery fires.

The need for this bill brings into sharp focus our failure as a society to adequately consider the life cycle impacts of an increasingly common product. Batteries are in our laptops, phones and cordless tools. They are in electric toothbrushes, smartwatches and kids' toys. They are also in e-bikes and e-scooters, which are becoming more prevalent with the rise of e-micromobility. These batteries are everywhere and will become only more ubiquitous as we move towards decarbonisation.

There is an obvious education gap about safe handling, storage and disposal of batteries, and we are seeing an increasing number of battery fires in homes, rubbish trucks and waste facilities. In Lake Macquarie many people have become keenly aware of this risk, following what Fire and Rescue NSW believed to be the State's first recorded deaths related to a lithium ion battery fire, in February 2024. We need a comprehensive framework to manage these products, from their design and production to their use, reuse, collection, recycling, reprocessing and eventual end-of-life management. This framework must be mandatory, to ensure industry-wide take-up, compliance and resourcing of the scheme, including to fund public education about a scheme's operation and the risks linked to a regulated product. It must also be flexible enough to ensure that the framework can apply to various harmful products in our waste streams.

This bill does just that. It would create a product stewardship framework that sees suppliers fund collection points and education. This, in turn, gives consumers the know-how and reasonable ability to return the regulated products they consume so that the products can, hopefully, be reused, reprocessed, recycled or otherwise appropriately managed. It would give the Government a line of sight of the batteries brought into New South Wales, to help protect consumers' safety and feed into better standards at the Federal level. It would take demand off landfill, recover resources for reuse and decrease the use of virgin materials. There is also an opportunity to create jobs in circular economy industries and facilities, including in the Hunter region as identified in the New South Wales Government's Hunter Regional Plan 2041. These outcomes can only be a good thing. I therefore support the bill and its focus on batteries. Given the impact on human health, industry and the environment, it is an appropriate place to start. But product stewardship must not end there.

I urge the Government to extend mandatory product stewardship to other products not regulated at the Federal level at the appropriate time, and with assistance for the industry to ensure strong uptake and support. There is no good reason why New South Wales cannot, in time, have schemes applying to other products, such as e-waste, used oil and paint. In short, product stewardship just makes sense. It is one vital part of responsibly dealing with the results of our consumerism. This is essential not only for public health and the environment, but it is also the morally right thing to do for future generations. Product stewardship is not a difficult concept to understand. It is establishing the framework that is the difficult piece—and it is one that this bill, hopefully, achieves.