PICTURE: The right to repair for a sustainable future? (ABC News: Rebecca Trigger)
ABC Radio Sydney | Nightlife with Phillip Clarke
The right to repair for a sustainable future?
Listen at ABC Radio Sydney, Tue 21 Nov 2023
When we purchase a new product and it is faulty, or wears out, do you feel you should be able to repair it in the first instance rather than replace it? Companies don’t bother with repair these days, they prefer to just replace anything under warranty. At the most extreme, manufacturers actively prevent us from repairing their products for fear of voiding warranties. The result is huge waste with millions of expensive products, from cars to phones and appliances ending up in landfill.
John Gertsakis is an Adjunct Professor with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology and is a Director at the Product Stewardship Centre for Excellence. He joined Philip Clark with a look at sustainability, the circular economy and the concept of ‘product stewardship’, how design, durability and repair-ability, and sustainable materials could change how much waste is generated. Broadcast 21 Nov 2023.
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Get a second serving of Jess Scully in this podcast
MUCH OF THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT THE ECONOMY and our environ-ment is based on a linear model – a system of extraction, consumption and waste. But advocates for a “circular economy” approach argue it’s time to start mimicking the cycles of nature that keep the planet healthy. It’s about seeing waste as a resource and thinking about the future impact of today’s decisions.
Recorded at the 2023 Byron Writers Festival
Guests
Jess Scully – Curator, author, and former Deputy Mayor of Sydney
Jeff Goodell – New York Times best-selling author
Ben Roche – Vice President (Engagement), Southern Cross University
Further information
Jess Scully — Glimpses of Utopia
Jeff Goodell — Heat: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Credits: Karin Zsivanovits, Producer, Antony Funnell, Presenter
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PICTURE: ‘We can do better than mulch’: an urban tree recovery initiative (Supplied: Revival)
‘We can do better than mulch’: an urban tree recovery initiative
A visit to Revival Projects where Director, Robbie Neville, has established Melbourne’s first inner-city timber mill and kiln.
The Urban Tree Recovery Initiative is designed to ensure felled trees are repurposed and operates according to a model of custodianship rather than consumption, which underpins a different approach to existing resources.
Broadcast Sat 9 Sep 2023. Listen to the program at this link … it’s inspiring!
Credits: Robbie Neville talks with Jonathan Green, Presenter
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Council links with app to empower residents to recycle and reduce waste
Sunshine Coast News, 28 November 2023
Noosa Council has partnered with a new web app, to make it easier for residents to recycle and reduce waste. It’s called ‘Recycling Chatbot’.
Locals can type what items they’d like to recycle or no longer need, to find a list of options to recycle or donate for repair and reuse, via the Noosa Sorting Guide.
Council linked with Recycle Mate, an initiative of the Australian Recycling Industry, in an Australian-first project to create the custom web-based program.
Waste education and sustainability officer Emma Menzies said it would make recycling easier.
“The tailor-made program will empower residents with essential tools and information to navigate local recycling and recovery opportunities,” she said.
“This innovative alliance supports council’s commitment to fostering sustainable waste management practices and leading the charge towards a circular economy, and 80 per cent diversion of waste from landfill.
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Repair and reuse movement booms as inflation bites
Tom McIlroy, Political correspondent (AFR, Oct 2, 2023)
AUSTRALIAN CONSUMERS fighting rising cost-of-living pain are increasingly looking to repair important products rather than replace them, saving money and stemming pressure on landfill.
A circular economy roadmap for plastics, tyres, glass and paper in Australia
CSIRO, January 2021
RECENT DECADES have seen a significant increase in the way we use materials, which is resulting in rapidly increasing waste and emissions, both in Australia and globally.
The capacity of the global ecosystem to absorb the growing amount of waste is limited, and the global market for exporting waste has tightened. In addition, the global climate change imperative necessitates a dramatic decrease in waste and emissions.
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Recycling plastic not enough, warns UN environment chief
by Amélie Bottollier-Depois, (PHYS.ORG, September 23, 2023)
Inger Andersen, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, says that with the production of plastic on the rise worldwide and creating ever more pollution, humanity cannot just recycle its way out of the mess. She called for a total rethink about the way we use plastics.
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All the ‘Single-Use’ Household Items You Should Be Re-Using
Jeff Somers, (Lifehacker Australia, September 29, 2023)
THERE ARE MANY things we tend to treat as “single-use” that can, in fact, be used more than once. Using stuff at least twice will reduce how much of it you use, so you’ll spend less on it (and spend less overall) and throw less of it into the trash. So if you’re throwing any of the items on this list into the garbage every time you use it, think twice.
Aluminum foil: Foil is incredibly useful, but too often we treat it as a disposable resource. But it’s metal, people. It’s pretty durable, and it is absolutely possible to clean a used sheet of aluminum foil and use it a second (or even third) time.
Parchment paper: Just like foil, there’s no reason you can’t use the same sheet of parchment paper in several baking adventures.
Dryer sheets
Plastic shower curtains
Soap: At first glance, soap would seem to be the ultimate “one-use” product, but if you’re using bar soaps in your daily routine, you end up with those tiny bits of soap at the end—the “slivers”—which you probably toss in the trash. But it’s not hard to hang onto them and then mash them together into a whole “new” bar of soap.
Grocery plastic bags: While a lot of grocery stores have eliminated the plastic bag for carting home your items, there’s might be one place you’re still getting “single-use” plastic bags: the produce aisle—but you can absolutely use those produce bags a second time. You can even wash them if you’re worried about contamination of some sort, and then feel good about not dumping a bunch of plastic into the landfill.
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Lego Is a Company Haunted by Its Own Plastic
Chris Baraniuk (WIRED, Sep 30, 2023)
WHILE THE TOY BRAND kills its plans for an oil-free plastic alternative, it’s still pumping out billions of non-biodegradable bricks a year. Can Lego ever be sustainable?
The fiddly little parts that the company churns out—many billions every year—are today mostly made from acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, or ABS. This material doesn’t biodegrade, nor is it easily recycled. If a smiling mini figure gets into the environment, it will likely very slowly break down into highly polluting microplastics.
This week, Lego revealed to the Financial Times that its much-hyped project to switch away from ABS and instead make toy bricks from recycled plastic bottles has ended in disappointment.
“In the future, they should not make these kinds of announcements until they actually do it,” says Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics. Global plastic production has been projected to double in the next 20 years, according to the World Economic Forum, and yet in the US, for example, advocates claim that the vast majority of plastic, 95 percent, is never recycled.
Awareness is growing of how plastic can persist in the natural environment. Long-forgotten toys made from plastic materials, including possible Lego pieces, have even turned up at a former nuclear missile base in Poland, where the families of Soviet officers once lived in secrecy.
And don’t forget all the Lego in the ocean. Every month or so, Tracey Williams, an author and founder of the Lego Lost at Sea project, catches up with local fishermen in Cornwall, England, who save bits of Lego that have got trapped in their nets. In 2020, she co-authored a study that suggested dinky little pieces of ABS Lego could remain in the sea, generating microplastic particles, for between 100 and 1,300 years. Some of the parts collected by Williams are as much as 50 years old.
Lego acquired BrickLink, an online marketplace for new and second-hand pieces, in 2019 and its Replay initiative, if it can be scaled, could vastly increase the circularity of these toys.
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What can old clothes be made into right now? Puzzles, pillows and plastic pellets
Lucianne Tonti (The Guardian, 3 Oct 2023)
COMMERCIAL CLOTHING RECYCLING is still in its infancy in Australia. Here the two major players explain what unwanted clothing can and cannot become
Since more than half the clothing in Australia is made from fossil fuel-based materials like polyester, the ABC’s War on Waste says we’re basically pouring 18,000 litres of oil into landfill every hour. Not to mention the glut of used and new clothes that have no value on the resale market, or to charity stores, that end up being dumped in other countries.
An Australian Fashion Council (AFC) report released in 2022 found only 7,000 tonnes of textiles are recycled in Australia every year, just 3% of what goes to landfill. But since most of this garment waste is being turned into rags, insulation or board, it’s more accurate to describe it as downcycling. Australia is not alone in this; globally textile-to-textile recycling is almost nonexistent. The first commercial scale fibre recyclers, Renewcell, opened a factory in Sweden just last year.
‘Planetary boundaries’ set the limits of economic freedom
By Ross Gittins, SMH
One of the most important developments in economics is something in which economists had no hand: the identification of the environmental limits which humans, busily producing and consuming, cross at their peril.
Earth has existed for about 4 billion years and humans have lived on Earth for about 200,000 years. For almost all of that time we were hunters and gatherers, but 10,000 to 12,000 years ago we settled down, to farm and create civilisation.
In its modern form, economics can be dated to 1776, when Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations. Beliefs about how the economy works were well-defined by the time Alfred Marshall published Principles of Economics in 1890.
The point is that all economic activity – all the efforts of humans to earn a living – both depends on the natural environment and adversely affects it. By 1900, there were only about 1.6 billion humans on the planet, not enough to do much damage.
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Singapore’s tech subscription service Circular wants to keep devices out of the landfill
Catherine Shu (TechCrunch, October 9, 2023)
Circular, backed by Y Combinator, is a service that offers consumers in Singapore and Australia subscriptions to high-end electronics, like iPhones, Samsung Galaxy, iPad Pros and MacBook Pros. Not only does it want help people get devices at lower prices, but also keep them in circulation for as long as possible and out of the landfill.
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Limits to Growth reports vindicated as Earth faces overshoot and collapse
Sadhbh O’Neill (Irish Times, Sep 28 2023)
The critical lesson of the Limits to Growth reports – that there is no such thing as infinite growth on a tiny, fragile, finite planet – has escaped our consciousness
We don’t need astronauts to tell us that there is no such thing as infinite growth on a (tiny, fragile) finite planet. But somehow the critical lessons offered by the Limits to Growth reports have escaped our consciousness and we march on, lemming-like, towards overshoot and collapse.
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We need economic growth to make us better off, right? Well, actually …
Ross Gittins, SMH, 4 Oct 2023
For all our lives, worthies – our politicians, business people and economists – have assured us we need economic growth to make us better off. Almost everything I write assumes this to be true. But is it?
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Bike trade-in and refurbishment program
Dan Alexander (road.cc Sep 07, 2023) reports that: Trek reveals plan to accept used bikes and sell second-hand as part of sustainability drive, even if it “means making and selling less”.
The initiative, in the “United States only, for now”, will allow customers to trade in their Trek bike in exchange for in-store credit, while the used bikes will be refurbished and then sold on the American brand’s website.
The vast majority of Trek’s environmental impact stems from the raw materials used to create products (called ‘Scope 3 emissions’) which account for more than 95 per cent of the brand’s total emissions. More at the highlighted link.
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Your pictures on the theme of ‘recycled’
BBC News, 3 September 2023 … View the pictures here.
We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “recycled”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.
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GUIDED TOUR | The new Fairphone 5 | Fairphone
YouTube look at how its made and what it does.
181,950 views Aug 30, 2023 #Fairphone #Sustainability #Modularphone
Designed and made fair. The Fairphone 5 embodies the company commitment to sustainability and innovation.
A long-lasting, quality design built for to last for years to come. We’ve taken our values and driven sustainable innovations further than any other brand, and the Fairphone 5 stands proudly at the top.
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‘Secondhand’ undies and a used MacBook: how I bought (almost) nothing new for 20 years
Say goodbye to instant gratification by changing your mindset, thinking ahead and enjoying the search.
Tamara DiMattina, (The Guardian, 14 Oct 2023) tells her story about buying good stuff that other people consider old hat or no longer worth keeping.
For more than 20 years now I have bought almost nothing new. Clothes, furniture, kitchenware, electrical goods – it’s all been sourced from the secondary market and, while that decision has been great for my bank balance, it’s also been a blessing for the planet.
If you eat at the best restaurants or stay at the most luxurious hotels, you’re still using cutlery or bedding used by strangers before you. So don’t be embarrassed; here’s what I’ve learned shopping secondhand.
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The zero-waste city: what Kiel in Germany can teach the world
Ajit Niranjan, (The Guardian, 19 Oct 2023)
When it comes to recycling, Kiel has pulled ahead of the crowd, with its ban on single-use items, plans for leftover meals and innovative ideas for discarded human hair.
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From trash to treasure: 14 innovative upcycling ideas for turning old clothes into stylish masterpieces
By Akanksha Agnihotri, (Hindustan Times News Oct 18, 2023)
From patchwork attire to trendy tote bags, discover the art of crafting a stylish and sustainable wardrobe through upcycling old clothes.
How To Repurpose Your Old Hose And Use It In Your Garden
by D.G. Sciortino. House Digest, Oct. 22, 2023
There are a few things you should know before buying a garden hose to ensure that it will fulfill all your needs and last for as long as you need it to. Having made a good choice in the beginning, what to do with an old hose at the end. Here are 12 creative ideas to keep an old hose out of landfill. Things like: Plant support, Tool cover, Plant trellis, Bucket handle, Garden edging and more.
ACT government’s circular economy strategy to focus on reducing Canberra’s food waste by turning it into usable products
by Charlotte Gore, ABC News, Wed 25 Oct 2023.
The new circular economy strategy will require businesses to develop food waste reduction plans and recycle; Capital Scraps Composting founder Brook Clinton says amazing things can be done with scraps when they are treated as resources.
Circular Economy
Gardening Australia, Fri 27 Oct 2023. Series 34 | Episode 31
Costa visits two friends who are trying to address the problem of food waste in the hospitality industry. Alice Star and Phil Garozzo have turned two acres into a productive growing space, covered with 86 beds each 20 metres long. Their patch sits on a bigger farm owned by Alice’s father.
The circular economy framework is consistent with minimalism
The Frugal Minimalist: 9 Tips To Saving Money by Living With Less, by Elizabeth Constantineau, (GO Banking Rates, AI Editor, November 8, 2023) sets out to make the case for minimalist ways of living.
Frugal Living vs Minimalism: What’s the Difference? While both frugal living and minimalism aim to simplify life and manage financial resources wisely, they differ in a few ways.
Frugal living focuses primarily on saving money and reducing expenses. It’s a budget-conscious lifestyle.
Minimalism is about reducing life to only the essentials. It’s a design principle that applies to lifestyle choices, favoring experiences and personal growth over the accumulation of things.
Robe (SA) business Transmutation works with Dulux to recycle powder coating waste
Eugene Boisvert and Becc Chave (ABC South East SA, Thu 9 Nov 2023)
Waste from powder coating production had been considered unrecyclable. That is until now. A small business from Robe is turning it into plastic used in construction. The product is bar chairs and the happen to be sturdier than those made from virgin plastic. Read the story at the above link.
The people living ‘circular’, low-waste lives
(BBC Earth, Sustainability, 11th November 2023)
A sustainable lifestyle is possible – but it’s a “trial and error” process. In this story, Tara Okeke talks to the people aiming to lead zero-waste lifestyles.
Practical Ways To Upcycle Old Towels
By Sarah Coggan (Home Digest, Nov. 7, 2023)
While you may be tempted to simply throw away your old towels, you could upcycle them into practical items instead. Even if they look like they’re on their last legs and perhaps have stains or holes, parts of the fabric could still be made into useful products that will benefit your home. There are a number of perks to reusing and redesigning older linens, including that it’s an eco-friendly alternative to tossing them out. Textile waste is a large problem for landfills, as those who live in the United States collectively throw out millions of tons of textiles annually. [Of course the same goes for Australian households.]
Here are the ideas, with YouTube video instructions for some of them …
.. Make reusable cleaning rags
.. Create drink coasters
.. Clean up with mop pads
.. Turn old towels into chic pillows
.. Get creative with a new rug
.. Get functional with a tote bag
.. Transform your tea towels into wall art
.. Put them together for a large beach blanket
.. Give your furry friend a spot to rest
Young people in China embrace ‘stooping’ culture of turning rubbish into treasure
By Jenny Cai (ABC News, Sun 29 Oct 2023)
Shanghai, Mikiko Chen who is a 27-year-old digital marketer is among the first adopters of “stooping” in China, a practice that refers to picking up discarded furniture and other goods on the streets for re-use.
She says the concept was inspired by New Yorkers who often leave unwanted things on the “stoops” — or doorsteps — leading up to the entrances of buildings.
“It’s wasteful to throw away something that’s still usable, it’s better to share it with others who need it,” Ms Chen says.
The first principle of a circular economy is: design out waste
Sustainable housing provides significantly improved environmental performance compared to (most) current housing achieving zero, or near zero, carbon outcomes. However, it is more than just improving energy and water performance.
In: How sustainable, liveable and resilient housing can help us adapt to a changing future, Andréanne Doyon, Assistant professor, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Canada and Trivess Moore, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University (THE CONVERSATION, October 26, 2023), explain how:
Sustainable housing considers impact across the whole of its design, construction, use and end-of-life phases. In doing so, it reduces material waste, operating costs, improved thermal comfort and occupant health and well-being, and it is climate resilient.
Improving Australian House Construction: The Case for Service Ducts
by Anthony Bennett, Solar Quotes, November 10, 2023.
Measured against circular economy principles, Australian housing leaves a lot to be desired. Just the fact that the ‘face’ brick is on the outside of a brick veneer house, means the mass required for heating and cooling is wasted. Thin gyprock walls are hardly going to measure up in terms of energy efficiency. No wonder some people refer to them as ‘glorified cardboard boxes’.
But this story is not about energy efficiency so much as general overall common sense right back at the design and construct stage of the build. Says Anthony Bennett:
This got me thinking: there’s a better way to build homes. It’s all about adding one simple thing—service ducts. They could make our homes easier to fix, cheaper to build, and ready for the future. Let’s dig into why this small change is a big deal. Get the details here.
Ways To Repurpose Hangers
by Desirée O, House Digest, Nov. 20, 2023
If you’ve recently downsized your wardrobe, then you might find yourself left with more hangers than you need. In that case, you can upcycle your hangers in a range of different ways. You simply need to know about and take advantage of various clothes hanger hacks that will turn these items into multi-purpose pieces.
High-rise timber tower will be a sustainable powerhouse
By Adam Williams, NEW ATLAS, November 22, 2023
Cutting-edge timber high-rise construction continues to move into the mainstream with projects like the Mjøstårnet and Ascent. MVRDV and Space Encounters now offer an example that’s more impressive than most with the Nachteiland project, which will combine sustainable building materials with enough solar panels to harvest more energy than it requires.
Nachteiland will be located in Amsterdam’s Sluisbuurt neighborhood, which is currently undergoing development. It will include a base building that will be made up of several blocks positioned side-by-side.
Biobased walls made from corn cobs are recyclable and biodegradable at their lifetime’s end
Cornwall, a series of carbon-neutral reusable walls
Matthew Burgos, designboom, 24 November 2023
A series of removable and reusable carbon-neutral walls named CornWall has come to town, made of discarded biobased materials that are bare corn cobs. Those who love nibbling onto the sweet corn chuck the core away, and it piles up in a factory like cigarette butts. Here is where materials company StoneCycling and consulting firm Circular Matters step in as they recycle and upcycle the organic biowaste into reusable interior walls and furniture cladding made of pulverized corn cobs.
CornWall rises from plant-based biomass, and its source is the central part of corn cobs, gathered mainly from Western European corn. The corn cobs, which are considered waste after harvesting, are a more green-conscious choice for StoneCycling and Circular Matters compared to ceramic walls or other less eco-friendly composite materials like HPL since CornWall absorbs carbon dioxide from the environment during the growth of the corn.
CornWall, a collaboration between Circular Matters and StoneCycling, is made in a sheltered workshop in Antwerp, Belgium. Circular Matters uses a pressing process to create reusable walls from discarded corn cobs. The production team heats the organic cores of corn cobs to around 150 degrees Celsius, which activates the polymers in the biomass, creating strong bonds.
What does a sustainable smartphone look like?
By Isabelle Gerretsen, BBC Earth, 27th November 2023
In a bid to reduce global electronic waste, Fairphone has created a smartphone that owners can repair themselves. What makes its technology so sustainable?
“This is my phone’s camera,” says Bas van Abel, holding a small, square component aloft. He has just removed it from his smartphone, using a tiny screwdriver.
“There’s eight components in total which can be removed and replaced,” he says, as he meticulously disassembles his entire smartphone, placing the camera alongside his phone battery, USB port, screen and loudspeaker.
Van Abel is the co-founder of the Dutch social enterprise Fairphone, which claims to have built “the world’s most sustainable smartphone”.
Here’s how a TV series inspired the KeepCup revolution: Craig Reucassel for breakfast on ABC Radio Sydney
By Danie Nilsson, CSIRO and Rachael Vorwerk, RMIT University, radioinfo, 29 November 2023 · News
With Craig Reucassel named as the new breakfast presenter for ABC Radio Sydney, we reprint this article from The Conversation, which looks at how easily communicated statistics and a relatable host can be a powerful combination in media.
From MMM Dec 23 – Jan 24
