Reduce waste, buy upcycled and reusable masks

We’re all for supporting each other, pandemic or no pandemic. When it comes to caring for mother earth our associates at Upcycle Newcastle, a project of Transition Newcastle, are exemplars of the highest order.

When it comes to getting the most out of used or unwanted fabric Cathy Stuart and the team are skilled upcyclers. 

If you need a mask, we recommend checking the range available.  Select from off the shelf and ready to wear, kits to assemble at home or patterns to make your own.  Choice is the order of the day. Buy local, buy upcycled, support community entrepreneurship, keep materials out of landfill, set an example for others to follow, spread the word. Keep yourself and the earth safe and well.

Visit the website for more, including a video tutorial  … or call in (check web for opening hours) Shed 7d, 50 Clyde Street, Hamilton North (next to OzHarvest)

Staying with the upcycling theme

Get a second use out of cardboard biscuit cartons or for that matter breakfast cereal or muesli bar packets by opening at the glued seam, laying flat and either carefully tearing along the creased edges or (using the creases as a guide) use a pair of scissors to create four pages for shopping lists or other to-do lists.  When used up shred and place in the compost bucket or recycle in the yellow recycling bin. Share upcycling ideas with family and friends.  Teach children to think about how they can care for the earth by applying the 7 R’s starting with Rethink: refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, re-gift, recover, recycle, 

Packaging is piling up and polluting the planet.

Gayle Sloan, Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR) CEO, said in a recent ABC TV 4 Corners program report on the plastics industry reiterates what the WMRR has been calling out for years – packaging design in Australia needs an urgent overhaul and producers must be held responsible for the products they make.

“We need to take this back to first principles, with legislated (not voluntary) design standards, and if a producer does not want to follow these, then they must have their own funded collections systems. The narrative put forward by the packaging industry has completely deflected from producer responsibility and meeting the true cost of collecting and recycling these materials.”