‘Waste isn’t Waste until it’s Wasted’.
That was the theme for National Recycling Week theme 3-12 November 2022.
For each new product that’s produced, valuable resources are extracted from our environment and energy is used to create and distribute them. So, rather than let products go to waste once they’ve served their purpose (for a plastic bag, this could be over in a 10-minute trip from the shops) keep them out of landfills or incinerators by recycling them into new materials.

Liberation and Re-Formation
WASTE is waiting to be liberated into new materials, says Professor Veena Sahajwalla. Our task is to look at waste and re-imagine it as raw materials for remanufacturing into new products such as green ceramic tiles.  (19 August, 2022)

Coffee capsule disrupter
IT’S not before time that an option has become available to ditch the coffee capsule / pod with all the built-in ‘waste’ material that makes them very hard to recycle, with a much more benign offering. 
It comes in the form of a coffee ball wrapped in a flavourless tissue thin skin made from seaweed. More at CoffeeB by Cafe Royal.

The fact of the matter is repair matters  
IN Why we really need to be able to fix our stuff, Professor Leanne Wiseman, raises important issues that go to the heart of us transitioning to a Circular Economy – the Right to Repair. This limited ability to conduct repairs or access repair information, has given rise to an international Right to Repair movement and correspondingly legislative initiatives, that began in the United States in 2012 and has spread more recently to the EU and Canada.

Put simply, the international Right to Repair movement has a two-pronged approach: empowering consumers with rights to repair their goods without going to an authorized agent or to choose to have their own third party repair their goods, AND, requiring manufacturers of smart goods, cars and equipment to make their diagnostic tools, manuals, and other repair-related resources available to any individual or business, not just their own dealerships and authorized agents. 

MMM … Issue 35, December 2022 – January 2023