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Melbourne opens waste reduction grants

October 2, 2019 by Waste Management Review

The City of Melbourne is offering grants worth $100,000 to projects aimed at waste reduction and growth in recycling capacity.

According to Lord Mayor Sally Capp, the City of Melbourne has this week reached an agreement to resume the processing of household recycling.

“The short-term arrangement to process household recycling was reached while Kordamentha seeks to finalise the sale of SKM,” Ms Capp said.

“We urge the community to continue separating their waste and recycling. It’s vital that general waste not be mixed in with recycling to ensure recycling services are sustainable and viable.”

To aid the transition, grants are available to groups located in the City of Melbourne that help reuse, recycle and divert waste from landfill.

“We’re looking for projects that could help reduce food waste, prevent litter or deliver local solutions to household waste,” Ms Capp said.

Grants up to $5000 are available for community groups, schools and non-profit organisations, while social enterprise startups and university researchers can accesses grants up to $25,000.

City of Melbourne Environment portfolio Chair Cathy Oke said it was important for council to support residents and community groups that are trying to avoid waste.

“Residents and businesses are overwhelmingly telling us they want reduce their environmental impact, and we want to respond to their goodwill,” Ms Oke said.

“Whether it’s home composting and using worm farms to reduce organic waste, or coming up with a solution for glass recycling, we can all have an impact.”

Applications close 16 October 2019.

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ABC’s War on Waste sparks reduction initiatives

July 3, 2019July 3, 2019 by Waste Management Review

An ABC and University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures report has found the War on Waste inspired many waste reduction initiatives across public, private and community sectors.

The report identified 452 high-impact initiatives including Woolworths’ decision to remove plastic straws from stores in Australia and New Zealand, the Western Australian Government’s ban on single-use plastic bags and schools introducing commingled recycling and e-waste collections.

Other reported impacts include a rise in cafes offering discounts to customers with reusable cups, and hospitals replacing single-use polystyrene with reusable products.

According to a statement from the ABC, almost half the 280 organisations in the report reduced waste in their operations, services or products based on ideas from War on Waste.

Institute for Sustainable Futures Research Lead and report co-author Jenni Downes said widespread adoption of the ‘war on waste’ slogan demonstrated a new consciousness in communities and raised expectations.

ABC Impact Producer and report co-author Teri Calder said the program had provided foundations for policy change.

“The biggest impact of the program has been inspiring those with the power to make changes in businesses, governments, education institutions and community organisations,” Ms Calder said.

“The ABC is proud to have sparked a national conversation and inspired action to reduce our collective waste footprint.”

The report found that while many public education campaigns struggle to shift behaviours, viewers responded well to War on Waste’s ‘motivating’ format and ‘solutions-focused’ approach.

More than two-thirds of the 3.3 million viewers of the second series reported changes in waste behaviours, according to separate ABC audience data.

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Qantas Group to cut 75 per cent of waste to landfill by 2021

February 22, 2019February 22, 2019 by Waste Management Review

The Qantas Group has announced a plan to become the world’s first airline to reuse, recycle and compost at least three-quarters of its general waste by the end of 2021.

As part of this, more than 100 million single-use plastic items per annum will be removed from flights and lounges by the end of 2020.

Qantas and Jetstar generate more than 30,000 tonnes of waste annually. A new Frequent Flyer initiative has also been announced to increase voluntary carbon offsetting.

Announcing the plan as part of the national carrier’s half-year results, Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said that business had a responsibility to lead on environmental issues.

“It is quite literally a waste and we have a responsibility to our customers, shareholders and the community to reduce it,” he said.

“We’ve already removed plastic wrapping on our pyjamas and headsets, as well as plastic straws. Even plastic Frequent Flyer cards are going digital. It adds up to millions of items a year because of our scale and there’s a lot more we can do.”

Some examples of changes to be implemented across Qantas, QantasLink and Jetstar from later this year include:

Introducing coffee cups that can be recycled or composted.
Effectively eliminating single-use plastics by switching to alternative packaging.
Removing unnecessary paper, such as boarding passes and operational manuals, by going digital.
Increasing donation or composting of food.
Recycling of old uniforms.

In targeting the removal of 100 million single use plastic items per annum, the group will replace 45 million plastic cups, 30 million cutlery sets, 21 million coffee cups and four million headrest covers with sustainable alternatives by end-2020.

The group has an existing target to reduce waste to landfill by 30 per cent by 2020, which it’s on track to reach through recycling and other programs. The 75 per cent goal now takes its place. Separate targets exist for fuel, water and electricity consumption, and Qantas has the largest carbon offset scheme of any airline in the world.

Airlines are legally required to dispose of some materials permanently, such as quarantined food from international flights and hazardous materials. With support from industry and regulators, the group believes it can ultimately reduce the volume of this regulated waste as well.

Similarly, there are some single-use plastics used by airlines (such as wrapping for hygiene purposes and some heat resistant containers for meal preparation) that don’t currently have a practical alternative. Qantas and Jetstar are working with manufacturers and other airlines to innovate in this space to further reduce waste to landfill.

“Few industries can eradicate waste completely, but with this program we’re saying that avoidable waste should no longer be an acceptable by-product of how we do business,” Mr Joyce said.

“This isn’t just the right thing to do, it is good for business and will put us ahead of legislative requirements in the various countries we operate in, where there is an end-date on various single use plastics.”

The Environment Protection Authority has released 2018 South Australia’s State of the Environment Report, indicating in the report that the prospects of achieving the government’s waste generation reduction target seems unlikely.

The report shows South Australia’s Waste Strategy 2015-20 set a target to reduce waste generation per capita by more than five per cent by 2020 from the 2015 baseline, equating to a reduction of 400 kilograms per person from the volume generated in 2016-17 by 2020. It notes that given the current upward trend, this seems unlikely.

The report shows the average amount of waste generated in SA rose by just over 2000 kilograms per capita per year in 2003-4 to 3000 kilograms in 2016-17 – an increase of 42 per cent.

It highlights that current priority actions to meet the target are to promote green purchasing, waste avoidance, collaborative consumption and production, product refurbishment and behaviour change.

“Given strong competing influences on consumer behaviour in the form of marketing, fashion and social norms, a targeted program is needed to encourage production (for example, design, durability and packaging), marketing (for example, labelling) and consumption (for example, product selection) choices that reduce waste generation,” the report says.

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“There is also a major opportunity for government to take the lead in increasing the strength of a circular economy, including through green procurement.”

To tackle these issues, the report recommends coordinated national action to reduce waste, including through regulation of packaging, providing leadership in the strengthening of the local resource recovery industry through green procurement and strengthening education and behaviour change initiatives aimed at reducing waste.

“While we continue to get better at diverting most of this waste away from landfill to resource recovery, the most efficient solution remains that of avoiding generation of the waste in the first place,” the report says.

“However, it also remains imperative to keep getting better at reusing recovered resources locally to reduce the risk of reliance on other markets.”

The key recommendations of the report are to review the state’s climate change response to ensure that climate risks are adequately embedded into planning and investment by government agencies, review environmental reporting in the state, including trend and condition report cards, prioritise water management and onground land stewardship initiatives and a range of other areas.

Environment and Water Minister David Speirs said the state government was considering the EPA’s important report in detail.

“This report provides a wealth of information about the challenges facing our state, that can be used to help shape government policy and actions in the future,” Mr Speirs said.

Environment Protection Authority Board Presiding Member Catherine Cooper said that the report assesses the state and condition of SA’s major environmental resources and identifies significant trends in environmental quality, and shows that, while South Australia was doing reasonably well, in some areas there are serious challenges to be met.

To read the report in full, click here.

Solvup, Melbourne Health and Crown Melbourne were among the big winners at this year’s Victorian Premier’s Sustainability Awards.

The NSW Government has committed to invest $337 million from 2017 to 2021 in litter reduction and waste management projects across the state under the Waste Less, Recycle More program.

An Australia caravan manufacturer has boosted productivity while cutting waste by 20 per cent.