OXYGEN FILES: Would corporate Australia continue to function if climate change compromised coffee harvests to the point it became scarce and therefore unaffordable for most of us? It’s worth thinking…

Aside from the few tyres that are turned into park swings or are ground up for soccer ground surfaces, most tyres from Australian cars and trucks go to waste or are exported overseas to be turned into fuel.

NSW has a new crack team out to find and prosecute the worst criminals in the waste industry, some of whom are serial offenders. But no need to look complacent, apparently one in three of us has illegally dumped at some time.

Have you spied kids or older folk in NSW rifling through your yellow top bins and stealing away bottles and other containers so they cash them in at the container deposit depot?

Waste to energy plants have been greeted with great scepticism and knocked back in some areas, but what if they can produce “green cement” and what if the fumes can be drastically reduced?

New national waste targets, including the phasing out of “problematic and unnecessary” single-use plastic packaging sound right on cue with the current mood among voters and consumer. But key industry players and some state government leaders wondering who will foot the bill? 

Food packaging remains a sticking point for the circular economy. Plastic is so entrenched in the food production cycle that avoiding it when sourcing groceries and takeaway food is almost impossible.

Maybe it’s more a quiet revolution, rather than a war, moving through the industry as the property titans take up the issue of waste.

The debacle over the removal of single-use plastic bags from supermarkets has been analysed from a range of different perspectives

The move to rid cafes of plastics in takeaway coffee cups is gathering steam with innovative business jumping in with alternative solutions and competition between the major cities heating up. Landlords are taking note.

The Victorian government will use its own purchasing power to drive demand for recycled products as part of a $37 million package announced by energy, environment and climate change minister Lily D’Ambrosio on Tuesday.

With waste currently top of mind across the country, building owners GPT and Frasers have wasted no time securing a rating under the new NABERS Waste tool, launched last month.

A tax on “virgin” plastics, paper and metals has been proposed in the City of Melbourne’s Current Recycling Challenges discussion paper released today.

A senate report into Australia’s waste and recycling industry has recommended the country ban single-use plastics within five years, including not just bags but potentially plastic-lined coffee cups, containers, chip packets and microbeads.

The next big frontier in waste is reducing the production and consumption of rubbish in the first place, says Clean Up Australia chief executive Terrie-Ann Johnson.