Soft plastics - council doesn't want to know

 

Breathtaking, obdurate ignorance and denial by Liberal councillors defeated a modest, sensible and very necessary and important motion at the Hills Shire Council meeting on March 26.

Acting on widespread community concern, Councillor Kasby (Greens) introduced a motion requesting that council staff be asked to prepare a report on:

“options available to Council to provide residents with a more regular and convenient soft plastic recycling service and the costings to do so”

After the collapse of the REDcycle program in late 2022, we consumers were left with few options to dispose of our soft plastics other than hoarding them or tossing them in our red bins.  But viable options have begun to emerge and other councils have acted to provide a service to their residents.

So it is eminently sensible, at little to no cost, that our council should seek a report to inform councillors on the options.

… no great impost, merely calling for a report …

As Councillor Kasby said In her introductory remarks: “all this motion asks for is information … if we don’t look, we won’t know.”

Councillor Hay (speaking in support of the motion) asked the Group Manager about the cost of preparing the requested reports.  The response was that it “...could be done without any great impost on council staff.”

Later in the debate Mayor Gangemi pressed the General Manager to acknowledge that the motion was unnecessary but Mr Edgar’s response was probably not to Gangemi’s liking.

“There’s always constant work going on around where could we divert, where could we make better use of those resources.  I think it’s just merely calling for a report about what options might there be,” Mr Edgar said.

… shredded carrots …

Councillor Blue, opposing the motion, declared himself not to be “one to go buying things wrapped in plastic for the sake of it”.

But he nobly made an exception - buying a new plastic-wrapped product as a prop to demonstrate that the soft plastics recycling issue was triggered by the collapse of REDcycle.  Well, who knew? Thank you Councillor (not-the-brightest-shade-of) Blue for your insights.  We hope you enjoyed your shredded carrots.

Councillor Blue was keen to speak about the responsibilities of others - producers, retail outlets, federal and state governments. And while he has a point to a degree, ultimately rubbish is one of the core responsibilities of local councils and no amount of Councillor Blue’s blather changes the fact that council, too, has a responsibility to identify and implement options for collection and appropriate disposal.

Councillor Blue very confidently declared “there isn’t a definite option out there [for soft plastics recycling] … if there was a market for this we wouldn’t be discussing it tonight”.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities.  Perhaps it explains Councillor Blue’s confidence in his incorrect assertions.  In any event Councillor Kasby’s later remarks showed his confidence to be misplaced.

Councillor Blue probably knows as much as he needs to about shredded carrots.  But it may behove him more to show a little humility and admit that soft plastics recycling is not an area of specialist expertise for him - there is no shame in that!.  The appropriate response might have been to acknowledge, yes, we could do with some expert guidance from council staff.

… “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” …

Everyone knows that you can conclusively win an argument about a 21st century plastics problem by reference to unrelated, millenia old and unattributable biblical teachings from the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis.

And so it is that Councillor Cox told the meeting “you’re dust and to dust you’ll return.”  So, should we consider Councillor Blue’s inanimate plastic bag to be a part of God’s creation, along with humans, animals and plants? Councillor Cox apparently thinks so as he went on to assert “these plastics are petrochemicals and to where petrol comes from they can return too.” 

Not quite fulfilling the circularity promise of dust-to-dust, Councillor Cox’s preferred solution is more landfill.  “We do have landfill and we can put it in the ground,” he said, wilfully oblivious to or ignorant of all the problems associated with the status quo.

Of course this is the preferred approach of big fossil gas and oil, for whom burgeoning production and consumption of plastic presents a lifeline in the face of growing antagonism towards their destructive products and production methods. So it is no surprise that Councillor Cox, firmly a big fossil man himself, should parrot this line.

Councillor Cox went on to admit that “we’re not sure…” about the various possibilities for soft plastics recycling.  “It’s ok to say right now we can’t [recycle soft plastics],” he went on.

And of course Councillor Cox will go on saying that for as long as he won’t look and doesn’t want to know. (Councillor Kasby later demolished Councillor Cox’s ignorant assertion.)

Councillor Cox concluded his remarks by claiming that preparing the requested report “will take a lot of staff effort and time,” conveniently forgetting the Group Manager’s advice just a few moments earlier that it “...could be done without any great impost on council staff.”

… best and brightest ?? …

Next to speak was a male person of Caucasian appearance, wanted for representing the electorate of Castle Hill - Councillor Mark Hodges MP.

In 121 seconds of astonishingly incoherent and irrelevant remarks, the honourable member used the word ‘strategy’ ten times with no apparent goal of his own and utterly failing to identify any cogent reason to justify opposing the motion.

Referring to two planning documents prepared by the NSW government in 2021 - more than a year before the REDcycle collapse - he declared confidently that the NSW DPIE “is doing stuff” and that “there are strategies in place”.

It’s always good to support a case with a concrete example, so with stumbling words and much shuffling of papers he conclusively cited that one of the 2021 planning documents:

“...refers to plastics being, ummm, taken away by a facility (I’m just trying to find the page) that was introduced, I think, at Albury by a company to take away plastics. Now - so there is in fact a strategy in place…”

[Verbatim quote!]

Well, that was two minutes that all those present can never have back - Councillor Hodges’ rambling, incoherent and pointless contribution failed to exhibit the ‘merit’ that led to his elevation to the NSW Parliament representing the electorate of Castle Hill.  Sadly one of Hills Shire Council’s best and brightest will be lost to council at the 2024 council elections.

… stinking, steaming pile of bovine excrement …

So the remarks by Blue, Cox and Hodges, opposing the motion, were almost entirely a  stinking, steaming pile of ignorant bovine excrement.

Of course those are our words - not Councillor Kasby’s - but, in justifying them, we can’t do much better than quote parts of Councillor Kasby remarks in response:

“... it’s not true that soft plastics aren’t being recycled, that’s a myth. There are plenty of councils that are recycling their soft plastics through services called Recycle Smart and Curby and their CRCs … it’s a little bit of a copout to say it’s not happening when it is … we all need to step up … roads, rates and rubbish - it’s part of our core business … we don’t need to complicate this motion, we don’t need to get to the nitty-gritty detail, it is just a report … let’s leave [the details] to our expert staff - I know we all trust them … they love resource recovery, they are passionate about it, let’s let them do what they are good at, on behalf of the people of our shire, and present us with some options on how we can get a win-win outcome … there are definitely viable options that councillors here obviously don’t know about …”

Council Kasby went on to list the following as examples of NSW councils that provide a  service to recycle their residents soft plastics:

• Blue Mountains

• Burwood

• Camden

• Campbelltown

• Ryde

• Hunters Hill

• Inner West

• Lane Cove

• Kuringai

• Maitland

• Mosman

• North Sydney

• Singleton

• Penrith

• Randwick

• Sutherland

• WIlloughby

• Wingecarribee

• Wagga Wagga

This was the outcome, but why?

Councillors Kasby (Greens), Hay and Burton (both Labor) voted for the motion.  Councillors Tracey (Labor) and Jethi (Liberal) were absent.

The Liberal councillors present voted as one to oppose and kill the motion.  They were: Gangemi, Blue, Cox, Hodges, de Masi, Ellis, Boneham, Brazier.

But why?  Why would they oppose this simple but very compelling motion?  Why would they oppose it when it very probably reflects the will of a majority of the residents and is in all the residents interests?

Council officers categorically stated that preparing the requested reports would involve minimal cost or staff time, so it cannot be a matter of cost!

Is it ignorance combined with misplaced confidence (the Dunning–Kruger effect)? Wilful and malign intent to back big fossil gas and oil over residents of the shire?  Mindless reactionary, vindictive and destructive knee-jerk opposition to anything put forward by Greens or Labor?  Perverse and twisted ‘ideological’ conviction?  Or posturing to hard-right elements of their own party to secure their 2024 preselection or further their political careers in other ways?

Answers on a postcard please (or in the Facebook comments) - the best entry will win a free ticket to attend the next three months of council meetings.  (Not really!  You don’t need a ticket.)

Footnote:

As a result of council’s adoption of a new Code of Meeting Practice in February, the conduct of Notices of Motion such as this have changed as follows:

• They are moved to the end of the meeting (to discourage public attendance);

• Community members are no longer permitted to address council in connection with the matter.

Council’s mission to exclude and silence the community and to hide their conduct from public view has passed another despicable milestone.

Below is shown the Liberal “plan” before the last election in 2021.  Although the plan contained only around 50 words in eight bullet points on the back of a postcard, it was, as far as we know, the most complete available Liberal policy statement for the Hills.  It said nothing about shutting out community input -  quite the reverse in fact!  Shame!