It’s not working – putting off the inevitable
Recycling plastic into other materials, only delays the fact that at some time in the future they will end up in landfills or oceans.
In: ‘We can no longer limp along’: Plans for plastic packaging shakeup, Bianca Hall and Caitlin Fitzsimmons, SMH, August 20, 2024 report that:
AUSTRALIA IS FALLING significantly behind national targets to reduce plastic waste, with 29 per cent of hard plastics that enter households ending up in the recycling bin, and just 20 per cent of plastic packaging recycled or composted.
The co-regulator charged with reducing Australia’s packaging problem, APCO, announced on Monday it would slug businesses hundreds of millions of dollars by 2027 to push businesses to reduce packaging.
Heidi Tait, the chief executive of Tangaroa Blue Foundation,
a charity dedicated to the removal and prevention of marine debris, argues that just because soft plastics can be transformed into materials like decking and bollards, doesn’t mean they should.
“Single use is single use,” she said. “Those products that are meant to be the solution to our soft plastics [problem] are just degrading into microplastics in the environment … we’re not actually diverting from landfill, we’re delaying landfill, and we’re giving these products opportunity to pollute again in the process, by extending their life.”
Brooke Donnelly, general manager of sustainability at Coles, said consumer concern about soft plastics remained high. “This is not a supermarket problem, this is an Australian problem,” Donnelly says.
“… material including postal satchels and plastic wrapping from furniture – you can imagine what it’s like when plastic from an entire sofa is pushed into the recycling box. The [suggestion] that supermarkets are the solution for soft plastics in this country is a fallacy, and all we’re doing is delaying the need to really nail into what the issue is here and resolve that.” Read the full story at the highlighted link above.
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The Melbourne women diverting tonnes of clothes from landfill
By Mark Santomartino, Nine News, August 11, 2024.
“We’re big on keeping textiles at their highest possible value. We don’t want to turn it into insulation, we want to recycle it into new yarn and that’s what we can-not do right now in Australia,” say Yesha Patel and Nehal Jain, from clothing recycler AFTER. Check it our here.
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Shift the focus towards working
and living in a circular economy in collaboration with local governments, retail and consumer industries and schools to help foster sustainable eco-conscious communities.
E-Thread is an Australian organisation that offers ecofriendly garment solutions to help tackle the implications of a wasteful clothing culture.
For more visit the website: E-Thread
…. From MMM Issue $46 Oct-Nov. 2024
