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July 28, 2023 5 min read 1 Comment
War on Waste is back!
Yes, we are super excited as it is about to answer some big questions like...
How come we produce so much waste and recycle so little? Why are we wasting more food than ever before? Why are our fashion habits wasting so many valuable resources? With all the plastic we consume and throw away, how much is ending up inside us? What is the effect on animals and the environment? How can governments and businesses do more? And most important, how can we reduce our waste?
It has been six years since the last War on Waste episode, and Australia has taken some steps forward but also backwards. Let’s dive in!
First, the good news. We can do something about it! It is not about drastic changes, it is about saying no to plastic daily.
On average, an Australian throws out 100 kg of plastic waste annually, meaning, as a country, we dispose of a staggering 2.6 million tonnes of plastic waste each year (equivalent to the weight of 16,000 jumbo jets). This trend makes achieving the national plastic recycling target of 80% by 2030 challenging.
How can we reduce this? Let’s start at home...
For the past six years, we were all counting on the return scheme for soft plastics called REDcycle. Australians were dropping off over 5 million pieces of soft plastic a day. Up until June 2022, soft plastics truly got recycled.
You may have heard the news about a fire at its leading recycling partner (Close the Loop) in Victoria that brought the whole scheme down?
Right now, 12,000 tonnes of soft plastics collected through the major supermarkets are stockpiled around Australia. Four hundred tonnes will be sent to landfills because it is degraded so much, it is unsuitable for recycling. The hope is that the majority will still be recycled…
The EPA has ordered the major supermarkets to take responsibility for this waste. It will cost over $8 million to transport and dispose of (a significant fire safety concern), so the options are to take it/find processing facially or dump it into landfills. The collapse of RedCycle highlights the complexity of recycling in Australia.
Remember, scrunchable plastic (soft plastics) does not go in the recycle bin - if there are no local solutions available, it has to go in your landfill bin.
South Australia has built a $25 million facility to sort our household recycling that separates our recycling bin waste into 12 different groups: 3 types of paper and cardboard, five types of plastic, two types of metals, glass and then landfills.
Before the recycling is sorted, contaminants (like soft plastics, polystyrene, shredded paper, …) are taken out by hand.
Here are some tips to remember...
Some good news here! The ban on sending our Waste overseas has had a great effect because it pushed us to make better quality products & invest locally. It has forced positive action.
A lot of our waste and recycling problems start at the design phase.This is why we are different. While we have our recycling program for anyone to use, we give you a voucher to try out products that are designed without plastic waste.
Microplastics, invisible to the naked eye, pose severe threats to the environment and human health. These tiny particles originate from clothing, carpets, and more, leading to ingestion and infiltration into our bodies and ecosystems.
‘We covered the globe with microplastics now.’
Here's where things got even more interesting... Craig (the host of War on Waste) did a poo sample to see if he had microplastics and showed 30 fragments of microplastic. Research has found microplastics in the muscle tissue of sharks, assuming it is in our human muscle tissue too.
How toxic are microplastics? It can cause inflations of the lungs and affect bugs in our guts… these are subtle effects. We are still finding out what effect it has on our bodies. One of the primary sources of microplastics is clothing...
This leads us to Episode 2 Food Waste
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Liz Lysh
August 06, 2023
What would we do without Craig and his team? Why the government isn’t more involved I don’t know. Keep up the great work. I love your show, but what a shame we have to reminders like yours.
Best wishes from waste warrior Liz (68 now, I’ve been campaigning for years, and my kids are great with recycling etc…. So proud)