James O'Loghlin

Hello and welcome, James O'Loghlin here. Well this month we're going to be talking about recycling. Well that's an issue not necessarily especially relevant to parents of kids at school - it's relevant to everyone. And to talk about it we're joined by Rebecca Gilling, who's a spokesperson for Planet Ark Environmental Foundation. G'day Rebecca, thanks for joining us.

Rebecca Gilling

Thank you for having me James.

James

Let's talk about something that everyone has - it's in every house, every school, in every building - power. What are ways in which we can use power in an environmentally friendly way?

Rebecca

Well, number one thing I think is where you get your power from. Between 90 and 95% of power that's used in Australian homes and Australian households and in fact Australian business is from coal burning, so it's called 'black power'. An alternative for householders is to switch to green power. And you can buy anything from 10% green power to 100% green power, and some retailers you can buy a 100% green power product for as little extra on your electricity bill as it would cost to buy a couple of cups of coffee every week.

So it's a way in which people can reduce their personal emissions and their household emissions in a very simple and not expensive way and it really is very effective. It's increasing the overall demand for renewable energy - and that can only be a good thing.

James

Yeah - I suppose in a very subtle way that puts pressure on the producers of renewable energy to produce more of it.

Rebecca

Yes indeed, and I think anyone who's thinking about environmental matters, and climate change in particular, knows that we need to vastly expand the renewable energy sector if we're to get anywhere near reducing our emissions to the degree that we need to - and a very simple way of encouraging that is for people to switch to green power. Because green power is a product which is regulated to require it produces new, renewable energy from anything after 1990.

James

Before we talk about recycling, let's talk about what to look for when you purchase goods - particularly electronic goods. If you're interested in reducing emissions and in saving the environment, what should you be looking out for when you're walking into shops?

Rebecca

Well, we talk about 'future-proofing' with technology, and I guess that means buying things that are suited to your present needs, and if possible, anticipating your future needs. So buying electronic equipment, computers, and mobile phones, etc. that are good quality. I think that there is so much cheap electronics around now that the temptation is to buy cheap and then turn it over when it breaks down after a couple of years. I think it's both a false economy in terms of pure economics but also certainly from an environmental perspective. It's better to buy better quality to start with and buy computers, for example, that can be enhanced over time - you may be able to increase the size of the hard drive, or add on bits of equipment as you need them. But certainly buy quality in the first place so it will last as long as possible.

James

And I guess the common-sense aspect of that is if you look at your environmental usage of resources over your lifetime, when you get to be 80 do you want think "Well I'm a person who has chucked eight computers into recycling", or only five computers? Fifteen mobile phones or only eight mobile phones? Four cars or only two cars? The longer you keep things, the less you have to recycle and the less you have to make.

Rebecca

You're absolutely right. We are regarded in Australia as 'early adopters' of new technology and that's all very exciting but unfortunately, ewaste, as it's called, electronic waste is a vast and growing problem in Australia and even though you talked about computer recycling, now there are small bits of recycling available around the place, but there is as yet no national scheme for computer recycling and electronic waste recycling. Planet Ark is certainly joining with a whole lot of other environment groups and indeed industry groups - the Australian Information Industry Association and the Television Manufacturers Association are both calling for the federal government to institute a national ewaste recycling scheme.

James

Right, now before we talk about the other end of the spectrum - of getting rid of stuff, recycling - just a quick word on usage. Between purchase and disposal - I guess a lot of it is common sense?

Rebecca

Well it is; I think people now are aware of the idea of 'standby power', that is, the little red light on your television or computer monitor or whatever it is, that just sits there chewing up power and serving no useful purpose. One obviously doesn't want to shut down one's computer every time one walks away from it, but at the end of the day, [it's about] not just shutting it down but switching it off at the wall. Particularly things like large screen televisions. It really makes sense to make sure you don't leave that little red light on, on your equipment because it can be consuming between 5-8% of your electricity.

James

Okay now what's the best way to get rid of my old mobile phone, TV or fridge?

Rebecca

Well, we do have some national ewaste recycling schemes. Planet Ark runs Cartridges 4 Planet Ark which recycles used printer cartridges. There is the Mobile Phone Muster which collects mobile phones and recycles them. As for computers and printers and other peripherals, there is no national scheme as I said, but there are places where you can take computers which are still in use and drop them off, free of charge. There are other places that will charge you something like a $50 fee for recycling. To find your nearest drop off location, Planet Ark has a wonderful resource, which is the Recycling Near You website, and we do that in conjunction with the federal government, and councils all around the country feed in their information about what recycling services they have on offer at curb side. But also we link up with all those orgs that offer computer recycling. That website is http://www.recyclingnearyou.com.au

And if people want to talk to a really helpful human being in our solar powered information centre at Planet Ark, they can call our National Recycling Hotline and that number is 1300 733 712.

James

An increasing number of workplaces now are offering drop-off points for recycling too, aren't they?

Rebecca

That's right, the Cartridges 4 Planet Ark program also involves business that are large enough to generate a certain number of used printer cartridges over a period, and they can actually get a box free of charge to put in their offices and people can drop their printer cartridges off there. Schools are also becoming drop-off points for printer cartridges, and that's a great way for people to get involved between home and schools. I mean we throw away around 18 million printer cartridges every year in this country - about 5,000 tonnes worth. And they contain both potentially hazardous materials as well as valuable materials - a range of metals and plastics. And along with our recycling partner Close the Loop in Melbourne, many of the large laser printer cartridges often go back to manufacturers in order to be refurbished or the parts replaced with others and reconditioned then resold, but the rest go through their 'green machine' as it's called, (an Australian invention), and they have a zero waste-to-landfill process for those printer cartridges and they produce something out the other end called eWood (and in fact, the New Inventors gave them an award a couple of years ago for that brilliant technology), so that gets turned into things like furniture, park benches, even replacing hardwood in mineshafts in mines. Brilliant technology.

James

Talking about work, we try to do our best at home - we've got little separate bins and then we've got the big bins out the front that it all goes in and it's all quite simple really. And then I go to work and I buy my lunch and I throw the wrappers all away in the same bin and when I'm actually at my workstation there's a recycling bin for old paper, but if I buy a can of drink or something, often it will all go in the same bin I suppose, just because the recycling bins aren't as visible or as convenient. Am I a bad person - do we need to make more of an effort at work?

Rebecca

Well we certainly do, and you're not alone. You'll have to decide if you're a bad person or not! We recycle about 2 billion aluminium cans every year but we're still throwing away about 900 million, which is a lot of cans. And each one of those cans recycled will save enough energy to run a CRT television - an old style television - for about three hours, so that's a significant amount of energy. We need to get up the recycling rates of a whole range of materials, aluminium cans not least among them. So if you can't find a dedicated recycling bin, we strongly encourage people to take them home and if you're in an office where you don't see recycling systems in place, talk to your management about getting them put in place.

James

Make a fuss!

Rebecca

Yes it's a good fuss to make.

James

Indeed, start making a pile in the middle of the boss's office until he or she does something about it.

A lot of people buy paper of course - should we get recycled paper - even toilet paper?

Rebecca

Most certainly. Buying recycled is what we call 'closing the loop', so you recycle in the first place and then buy recycled. Toilet paper is actually made from recycled office paper - now that's great but unfortunately a lot of those companies have to import recycled office paper to put into their system because we don't recycle enough in Australia. We only recycle about 9% - one sheet in every 11 sheets that we use actually gets recycled. So recycling paper is actually a very important part of good environmental practice at home and at work.

The other thing of course is if you've got a home printer or you're able to have some influence at work, is to make sure your printer is set to print on both sides of the paper. So you're reducing paper use upfront. Reduce, reuse, recycle is of course the useful hierarchy.

James

There are a lot of very practical suggestions that you've shared Rebecca, but perhaps the final word should be on motivating. One, why do you think it's important that everyone do as much of this as they possibly can?

Rebecca

Well I think people misunderstand, possibly, the effects of recycling. They think it's a good thing to do but they don't understand actually that it has an enormous impact on climate change. We do save vast amounts of energy and water by recycling, and recycling for many people is a way into a wider environmental consciousness and ethic - so along with energy saving in other ways (as we've talked about: buying green power, efficient use of technology) recycling can make a significant difference.

James

And how can you whinge about the politicians if you're not doing it yourself? Thank you very much. Rebecca Gilling is a spokesperson for Planet Ark Environmental Foundation - thanks very much Rebecca.