Remember the scene in Back To The Future where Doc Brown uses banana peels to fuel his time-travelling car? Well, the idea is not as far-fetched as you might think.
16th Jun, 2012
When someone says they are going to throw something away, where is 'away'? There is no magical place where our trash just vanishes. Instead, it ends up somewhere else in our environment, where toxins can leak into the water, soil and air. We can never fully escape the mess we create, which is why the five Rs - Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recycle - are so important.
Our growing population, economy and demand for resources has brought prosperity and wellbeing to many Australians. It has also resulted, however, in a lot of waste being created.
Sustainability Victoria has surveyed Victorian councils about their waste and recycling services since the year 2000. For the financial year 2013-14, the amount of garbage, recyclables and green organics collected by local government in Victoria was 2.1 million tonnes. That’s equivalent to 363kg per person.
That figure includes recycling and green organic waste diverted from landfill. But it still leaves 194kg per person of rubbish! And that’s three percent more than the previous financial year.
While rates of recycling and composting have increased over the decades, we still send too much waste to landfill. Read more about the problem, and what you can do to solve it, in the articles below.
Remember the scene in Back To The Future where Doc Brown uses banana peels to fuel his time-travelling car? Well, the idea is not as far-fetched as you might think.
Victorians are rabid recyclers. Twenty years ago, almost nothing was recycled. Now, we recycle 62 per cent of our solid waste. That’s a big change. Not only is this a big deal for our environment, recycling also creates six times as many jobs for Victorians than sending waste to landfill. So far, so good.
Victorians are actually pretty good recyclers. We recycle over 60 percent of our waste. But there’s lots of room for improvement - here's how to halve your rubbish.
Right now, all across Victoria, hundreds of thousands of computers are generating greenhouse gas. Including the one you’re reading this article on.
Organic waste, or green waste, is organic material such as food, garden and lawn clippings. It can also include animal and plant based material and degradable carbon such as paper, cardboard and timber.
Next time you visit your local supermarket, think about this – across the country, we use nearly 4 billion single-use plastic bags every year.
Victorians are pretty enthusiastic recyclers. Over the past 20 years, we’ve really started to get our act together. We now recycle a majority of our solid waste, but too much is still dumped into landfill.
Landfill sites are pretty ugly. And it’s not just the sight of increasing piles of waste that’s the problem. There are many negative issues associated with landfill.
At Environment Victoria, we believe in team work. That’s why we’ve joined a bunch of other environment groups to work together to make Australia a zero waste leader. We call ourselves the Boomerang Alliance.
Waste, or rubbish, is what people throw away when they feel they no longer have a need for it. Almost everything we do creates waste – at home, in the community, socially and at our places of work.