Hi, BTN.
I'm Ashlee, and I'm on a mission to find out what's been going on
with the stuff we've been putting in here.
I guess you could say
I know quite a lot about rubbish already.
My school is big on not wasting waste.
We've even set a goal to get rid of all of our school bins
in the next five years.
But for now, we spend a lot of time
making sure every scrap goes where it should.
Does anyone have any straws?
Any paper? Oh, I found one.
Oh, here's one. Hey, that shouldn't be in there.
But lately I've been hearing
that Australia has a big recycling problem.
Lots of Aussies probably don't realise
that once it's picked up,
a lot of our recycling is shipped overseas
to be sorted and turned into something
that can be sold over there.
But recently some of the countries we've been selling our waste to
have said they don't want it anymore,
either because it's too dirty and gross
or because it's too expensive to sort out.
And apparently, heaps of our recycling
is now ending up in landfill.
It made me worried that we're doing all this work for nothing.
I needed answers,
and I decided to go right to the top.
Get me the Prime Minister...please.
Hi, Prime Minister. Hi, Ashlee.
It's great to be here with you. Thank you for coming to talk to me.
I've got a couple of questions about recycling in Australia.
Fire away.
We do a lot of recycling at school,
and now I'm learning that a lot of it goes to landfill.
Yeah. Are people wasting time recycling?
Well, I think that there's a bit of a promise being broken.
So, when you put that little plastic bottle
in the...in the bin, well, you think it's going to be recycled,
and just about 12% of all plastics
are recycled all around Australia in total, so that's not good enough.
We've got to fix that.
Mr Morrison explained that he'd recently had a big meeting
with state and territory government leaders,
and they'd agreed to eventually stop sending recycling overseas.
Instead, they'll work towards doing it all here.
There are already recycling businesses here in Australia
that turn rubbish into...not rubbish,
and the federal government says it'll put $20 million
towards getting more of those going.
Is $20 million enough to fix the problem?
No, it's not. We're going to have to...
We're already...
We're currently spending $167 million,
and we're going to have to spend a lot more than that.
And we will be doing that.
But it's not just what governments have to spend.
It's what companies are going to spend.
Could you do more to encourage big businesses
to create less waste in the first place?
Yes, and I think we can all do that.
And part of that is, you know,
what we expect when we go to the shops
and what we buy, and...and the things we use,
whether, you know, we use reusable cups
or all these sorts of things.
That's what, at the end of the day, changes what big business do -
what you decide to do.
I think kids can be optimistic that over your lifetime,
and even in a short period of time, you'll see a lot of things change,
and you'll....and you'll... you'll drive a lot of that change,
because people want to do it for you.
Prime Minister, thank you so much for coming to BTN.
I've gotten lots of answers.
Good on you. And it's been really interesting.
Thank you, Ashley. Thank you.
Well, there you have it.
It looks like Australia has still got a bit of work to do
to sort out our waste problem.
But in the meantime,
we're going to keep doing our bit for the environment.