East Gippsland Shire residents can discover answers to those burning recycling questions during Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week (November 9 – 15).
A new report from Planet Ark, titled ‘All Sorted: Answering the Big Recycling Questions’ includes the top mistakes and main contaminants that confuse people. Planet Ark surveyed 115 councils across Australia and asked them what the three most common recycling mistakes made by their residents were. Nine out of ten councils said that plastic bags and soft plastics in the recycling bin is one of the most common mistakes made by their residents.
The Shire’s Manager Waste, Kartik Venkatraman said there is a persistent myth that items picked up for recycling end up in landfill. “But in reality, it’s not economical for the Shire or waste companies to send recycling to landfill due to the landfill levies. So we all play an important role as our recycling habits influencing the success of the whole recycling system,” Mr Venkatraman said.
Recycling reduces and can even eliminate the need to extract raw materials, saving limited natural resources. For example, 75% of all of the aluminium ever produced is still in use today because it can be recycled infinitely. It’s not just the planet that benefits from our efforts, as business and people profit too. The process of recycling and composting creates more jobs than incineration and landfill, with 9.2 jobs in recycling for every 2.8 jobs in landfill.
Visit www.recyclingweek.planetark.org for further information about any of Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week initiatives. National Recycling Week is kindly supported by Australian Packaging Covenant, Bingo Bins and ‘Cartridges 4 Planet Ark’.
