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Australia’S Recycling Is Good, Bad And Ugly

Over the past decade, Australia’s recycling performance has been a mixture of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’.

By Bass Coast Shire - 14th November 2005 - Back to News

That’s the conclusion of a new Planet Ark report compiled for the tenth anniversary of National Recycling Week (7-13 November).

The report analysed recycling statistics and municipal waste figures over the past ten years and found recycling rates overall are increasing, but too much material is still ending up in Australia’s landfills. In some areas our recycling results are shockingly poor.

"Over the past decade, there have been some very good results," says Planet Ark Founder Jon Dee. "Newspaper recycling has gone up from 52.7 percent in 1995 to 74.5 percent today and we’re now recycling almost 2 billion newspapers a year."

"We’re also recycling 600 million more aluminium cans today than we were ten years ago," says Dee. "2.3 billion aluminium cans are now being recycled every year and each can that gets recycled will save enough energy to power a TV set for 3 hours."

"Bass Coast Shire residents are also doing a good job as residents are now diverting 35 percent of their waste from landfill," says Council’s Waste Management Officer Peter Roberts.

"In the last year alone we have recycled 2,427 tonnes of material through Council’s kerb side collection."

New Roy Morgan research commissioned for the report shows that 42 percent of Australians now compost or use worm farms to recycle their food and green waste. This has been helped by national retailers like Bunnings, who promote these recycling practices in all their stores.

On the bad side, only 11 percent of Australia’s office paper is being recycled. Nearly 9 out of every ten sheets of office paper are being thrown away despite the fact that 68 percent of Australians told Roy Morgan they want to recycle more paper at the office.

Too few mobile phones are being recycled and 18 million printer cartridges are being thrown into landfill every year. This is a huge waste. However, 9,000 businesses and 2,000 retail outlets have recently recycled 1.5 million printer cartridges via ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark‘.

"48 percent of Australians told researchers they are confused about what can and can’t be recycled," said Mr Roberts. "As a result, broken drinking glasses and plastic bags are wrongly being put into recycling bins in the Bass Coast area."

The report also showed the ugly side of Australian society. Though we’re recycling more, each Australian is still responsible for generating 2.25kg of waste every day.

"We’ve come a long way with recycling and waste reduction in the past decade," says Jon Dee.

"Back in 1995, toilet tissue made from recycled paper was poor quality and didn’t work well. Today, 8,000 tonnes of office paper waste is turned into ‘SAFE’ toilet tissue every year and the softness and strength of recycled toilet tissue has improved considerably."

For localised recycling info in your area, go to www.recyclingnearyou.com.au or contact Council on (03) 5671 2211 or (03) 5951 3311.

Source: www.gippsland.com

Published by: news@gippsland.com