Two Greens candidates have a plan to build a recycling facility and create new jobs in the Illawarra.
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Candidate for Whitlam Jamie Dixon and candidate for Cunningham Rowan Huxtable, if elected on May 18, would lobby the new government to build an Illawarra Materials Recycling Facility.
"There is a nationwide overabundance of currently unharnessed recyclable material, and a local unemployment issue," Mr Dixon said.
"All it takes is the Greens' dedication to ecological sustainability, our ability to introduce truly alternative policy in government, and a one-off funding injection to connect these dots.
"The Illawarra has the industrial lands available, good bulk handing facilities and knowledge, and close proximity to population centres that generate considerable amounts of waste and recycling.
"We are perfectly positioned to invest in advanced technology recycling with optical sorting to ensure that mixed recycling collected from the kerbside is saleable as high quality low-contamination paper, glass and plastics.
"The Greens would like to see the Illawarra become a leader in this type of innovative problem solving."
Mr Dixon said jobs would be created during construction of the facility, through the ongoing running of the facility and by boosting the local economy to make raw materials available to the existing manufacturing industry and to attract other industries to the region.
The Greens waste policy is to make an additional $500 million available to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for waste avoidance and resource recovery initiatives.
"There are already examples of Materials Recycling Facilities in the America which can sort up to 80 tonnes per hour, built at a cost of US$24million," Mr Dixon said.
"That is quite a significant investment but the more value adding we can do to the recycled product, the more we can recoup its own costs.
"A facility like this in the Illawarra, could process not only our own recyclables, but earn revenue by processing excess Sydney recyclables."
Mr Huxtable said it was necessary to give recyclable waste material a value because that provided an incentive for people to recycle and then people would receive money for a return.