To mark Plastic Free July this year, I teamed up with my crossbench colleague Dr Sophie Scamps, Independent Member for Mackellar, to produce a policy paper outlining a national plan to tackle Australia’s plastic pollution crisis.

The Government could implement this reform this year, without additional legislation. Our proposal is simple: the polluter should pay.

We need a mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme (EPRS) that holds industry accountable for the full lifecycle of the packaging it puts on the market.

Independent analysis finds an EPRS would add just 0.1 per cent to product costs – around 25 cents a week per household.

In 2022, State and Federal Environment Ministers committed to strengthening packaging regulation. Four years later, the promised national legislation has not been delivered. In that time, Australia has failed to meet every voluntary national packaging target, and producers continue to avoid responsibility for the waste they create.

A voluntary approach has been tried for more than two decades, and it has comprehensively failed. Right now, there’s consensus – industry, environmental groups, health groups and many voices in our communities are all asking for the same thing – a national, mandatory EPRS. This alignment has taken years to build, so the Government must act now.

We propose urgent, practical, achievable reforms using existing parliamentary powers:

1. Establish a mandatory, nationally harmonised EPRS, with binding targets for waste reduction, reuse, recycling and recycled content, and a national, producer-funded soft plastics scheme designed from the end market backwards.

2. Phase out harmful industrial chemicals in plastics, through a national green/orange/red classification framework.

3. Invest in the research, innovation and education needed to make the whole system work.

The consequences of inaction are disastrous for our environment, climate and health. Every day we delay, more plastic goes to landfill, pollutes our oceans and waterways and breaks down into microplastics that are now found in our food, our water and our bodies.