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Helpful Tips for Managing Household Waste

The following article was kindly written and contributed by Briana Jones. Waste management and waste reduction are pressing issues around the world. With the global population predicted to balloon to 9.7 billion by 2050, it’s imperative that we find ways to minimise waste and manage it properly. If we don’t, we’ll soon be living in a world with more waste than available resources. Thankfully, there are many ways that individuals and families can contribute to the worthwhile cause of managing and minimising waste. Here are some simple, helpful tips to help manage waste in your Australian home. Avoid Plastics Plastic …

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Why More People Should Care About Proper Waste Disposal

Most of us regard the topic of waste disposal as important but rather boring, and we often have an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude towards it. While we Australians are generally strict about sorting our rubbish compared to most countries, we now have a full-blown waste disposal crisis on our hands. The reasons for it are quite complex and real policy changes will have to be done to solve it. In the meantime, we can further reduce the impact of the crisis by being more dutiful in our rubbish segregation and collection. Here are just a few reasons to …

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Here’s What Happens to Our Plastic Recycling When it Goes Offshore

Last year many Australians were surprised to learn that around half of our plastic waste collected for recycling is exported, and up to 70% was going to China. So much of the world’s plastic was being sent to China that China imposed strict conditions on further imports. The decision sent ripples around the globe, leaving most advanced economies struggling to manage vast quantities of mixed plastics and mixed paper. By July 2018, which is when the most recent data was available, plastic waste exports from Australia to China and Hong Kong reduced by 90%. Since then Southeast Asia has become the new destination for Australia’s …

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Strawberry Grower’s Despair Over Mass Dumping of Fruit Amid Demand for Extra Large Sizes

A Queensland strawberry grower has posted an emotional video to social media, despairing about throwing away drum loads of edible fruit because they do not meet retailers’ demand for extra-large berries as the season reaches its peak. A spike in winter temperatures brought fields to peak production late last week. In response, Coles dropped prices to as low as $1.00 per 250-gram punnet in New South Wales over the weekend to help suppliers move tonnes of excess produce. The glut may be great news for strawberry lovers, but growers are counting the cost. On Friday, Wamuran grower Mandy Schultz received …

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Q&A With Project Seabin Co-Founder Pete Ceglinski

After seeing one too many pieces of plastic in the ocean, two avid surfers decided to do something about it, creating a “Seabin” that would collect trash, oil, fuel and detergents from the water. We had the opportunity to chat with co founder and CEO Pete Ceglinski about the Seabin Project and the ultimate goal of pollution free oceans for future generations. Q: How did the idea for Seabin Project come about? A: It came about from being sick of seeing floating debris in the water of marinas around the world. We needed a practical solution that was based upstream so we could catch …

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Yellow Fridges Are A Great Anti-Waste Solution!

The start-up collects any meals not served in company canteens and gives them away. A clever solution that helps tackle food waste. Canteens waste a lot of food. According to ADEME (the French agency for the environment and energy management), collective catering is responsible for wasting 540,000 tonnes of food every year in France – that’s more than 1 million meals lost! Recovering food waste To fight this particular source of food waste, the “yellow fridge” (lefrigojaune) start-up set up in 2016 by Laurence Kerjean, found a very clever solution. A yellow fridge for the meals not eaten at lunch, which employees can then …

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Medical Waste to Produce Durable, Sustainable Concrete

The thousands of tonnes of plastic waste created each year in Australia through dialysis treatment could breathe new life into the construction industry, according to researchers at Deakin University. A team at Deakin’s School of Engineering is behind the new project, which aims to transform the single-use plastic used in the dialysis project into long-lasting sustainable concrete that could perform better than standard concrete. The project is a collaboration between Dr Riyadh Al-Ameri, a senior lecturer in structural engineering, Katherine Barraclough from the Royal Melbourne Hospital and John Agar from Barwon Health’s University Hospital Geelong. It came about when Dr Barraclough and Professor John …

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We Have a Collective Responsibility to Halve Food Loss and Waste

Despite the central role food plays in all of our lives, we let a great deal of it go to waste. About one-third of all food produced in the world goes uneaten each year—a fact that harms our climate, costs the global economy billions of dollars and strains natural resources like water and land. Given the enormous impacts, it’s clear why the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals issued Target 12.3’s call to halve food waste and reduce food losses by 2030. But with 13 short years to go, is the world doing enough? According to a new report from Champions 12.3, the …

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Germ-Zapping Plant Tackles Antarctic Waste

The Australian Antarctic Division has unveiled a wastewater cleaning plant that will help lessen the environmental impact of remote researchers. A million dollar germ-zapping machine will purify the wastewater of Australian researchers in Antarctica. Built in two shipping containers, the technology was unveiled in Hobart on Tuesday following a two-year trial. It will set sail this summer on icebreaker Aurora Australis en route to Davis research station. “Once installed, this will be the best treatment system in Antarctica,” Australian Antarctic Division engineer Michael Packer said. The plant puts kitchen and human wastewater through a process of ozone and ultraviolet disinfection, …

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World’s urban waste mountain remains a growing problem

The amount of rubbish generated by city dwellers is set to rise steeply in the next two decades, with much of the increase coming in fast-growing cities in developing countries, according to a World Bank report published on Wednesday. The amount of municipal solid waste is growing fastest in China – which overtook the US as the world’s largest waste generator in 2004 – other parts of east Asia, and parts of eastern Europe and the Middle East, the report says. Growth rates for rubbish in these areas are similar to their rates for urbanisation and increases in GDP. The …

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