Recycling Good News and Recycling Bad News

Adjusting to life in regional Aussie towns without yellow-top kerb-side recycling

This article has a disturbing number of apparent contradictions. Perhaps the article is full of mis-quotes; perhaps Callum Darch really does have his head screwed on correctly and he has been mis-quoted. Perhaps not.

(1) Callum Darch's car boot is full when he heads off on the 420-kilometre trip … it's loaded up with recycling that he and his partner have stockpiled in the weeks and months prior.

It takes a certain type of nasal courage to set off on a 420-kilometre trips with stale garbage.

(2) The 25-year-old hangs onto his household rubbish because in the regional WA city of Geraldton where he lives, there's no kerbside recycling.

(3) And while he uses the recycling options that are available — community drop-off points and cash for cans — he reckons driving it all the way to Perth is actually easier.

I can’t see why a 420 Km trip driving a car loaded with, amongst other things, tin cans is in any way easier than dropping the cans off at a collection point “cash for cans”, and any other community drop-off facilities.

(4) "It's not a small, insignificant town, and they've got goals to be carbon neutral," Callum said, …

And I can’t see why driving tin cans 420 Km can be said to be carbon neutral, regardless of whether it is a private car or a city truck.

For that matter I don’t see how making use of canned food and drink can be considered carbon-neutral.

(5) "I felt quite uncomfortable, after my whole life of being taught to do something, just putting my recyclable stuff in with general waste."

Well, yes; so you should (feel uncomfortable) But why don’t you feel uncomfortable about HAVING so much waste in the first place? Reduce your dependence on packaging and you reduce your burden of feeling bad, right?

(6) Maz Hoelsher, 23, grew up near Albury-Wodonga, at the border of Victoria and New South Wales, and says she learned a consistent message about recycling and sustainability. … "I think 50 to 70 per cent [of what I throw away] could be recycled," Maz said.

My question is “Why are you throwing stuff away?”. Most of what I use is re-usable. Almost by definition, human-manufactured articles (jars made from glass or plastic, articles made from timber and so on) can be re-used or re-purposed or dis-assembled and their component parts re-assembled into useful objects.

I feel that this whole business of recycling has long been out of control. People are brain-washed into believing that re-cycling is the goal. It should not be. Reducing our use, our consumption should be the goal.

So it is that when people find a hurdle in “recycling”, they panic and are confused.

(7) "[Also], the cost to provide the recycling is offset by the market value of the product, which is currently very low for cardboard and plastics."

Another reason to travel upstream, to look at what you are trying to recycle and make a serious effort to eliminate that material from your consumption.

A simple example: You can by a single serve of popping corn in a handy kit that includes an aluminium skittle; then you need to recycle the aluminium skittle (with steel handle?) and the cardboard box in which it came. OR you can by a simple plastic pouch with enough kernels to last you twelve or more servings of popcorn. Pop the kernels in a saucepan and then wash the saucepan (or use it to boil oatmeal from a simple plastic pouch …

Cardboard, of course, can be laid down in a cubic-metre compost bin made from (yes!) re-used scrap timber. I can think of no reason for sending cardboard to the tip.

(8) "It's already a failed system, because if you've got a bottle that's created with two different types of plastic that's difficult or frustrating to recycle, who's going to do that?" Callum said. "Already that's a step where you've made it hard to recycle in the first place."

My message to Callum is “If a bottle is difficult to recycle or re-use, stop buying that product, and switch to a re-usable bottle”.

Search