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The built environment is where Australia is doing relatively well. While overall consumption continues to rise with population growth, energy and water efficiency have both increased in recent years while per capita car use in Australian cities is decreasing.
Australia is doing a fantastic job with renewables. But what we do with the solar panels and wind turbines at end of life leaves a lot to be desired. According to the experts around 100,000 tonnes of solar panels will be redundant by 2035.
How we construct and use buildings presents the biggest opportunity to close the enormous circularity gap in the global economy, according Planet Ark CEO Paul Klymenko, with Australian companies such as Bingo and AMP Capital at the forefront of this movement.
Environmental groups have raised concerns over national policy documents they claim protect plans to reprocess plastic waste for use as toxic fuel in Australia and overseas.
We are in increasing ecological debt. A circular economy might help stop the debt worsening but only a regenerative economy will repay that debt and return us to credit.
With the global pandemic and the digital age prompting many organisations to downsize or move offices, the Property Industry Foundation has set up a new program where surplus furniture is collected and sold, and proceeds donated to homeless youth. The Property Industry Foundation Furniture Fund aims to make furniture removal easy, sustainable and socially just, […]
In the inland Victorian city of Bendigo, the local landfill is almost full.
An office tower in the heart of Sydney’s CBD is saving $20,000 a year in waste costs with a new food dehydrator that will turn the building’s waste into fertiliser to grow food.
A citizen’s taskforce circular economy campaign and an “Australian Circular Business Register” will make it easier for people and businesses to take part in the coming transition to a circular economy.
The federal government budget announcement on waste looks good but according to experts, it’s a rehash of funding already announced. If the government really wanted to change up the agenda on waste it could do little better than put its money where its mouth is and mandate better practices in its own procurement policies. After […]
Coke and Lion trashed Queensland container deposit scheme and now they want Victoria’s
Jay Gualtieri of Ausnviro says of all the NABERS ratings that can be done, waste is beyond doubt the hardest.
171 Collins Street, Melbourne, shows how to do waste, two years in a row.
A background with MobileMuster and mentoring by Clean Up Australia co-founder Ian Kiernan are just part of the varied background that helped Rose Read of National Waste and Recycling Industry Council win an industry award recently. According to Rose Read, chief executive officer of the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council (NWRIC) who recently won […]
Australian Council of Recycling has placed the blame for excess packaging on consumers and says plastic pollution in the ocean is “a myth with no scientific basis” and that the “proportion of plastics in the environment is less than one per cent of all the plastic that is generated and used by us as humans on an annual basis”. But this is not what the science says, nor the analysis.
Investigations into Queensland’s Container Recycling Scheme have revealed “serious inadequacies” and a lack of transparency at the hands of the beverage industry. Last week, Total Environment Centre released a report with information from its own investigations, public data and the Queensland Productivity Commission highlighting two main issues, and calling for greater transparency and reporting, an […]
Recycling solar panels is expected to become cheaper and more accessible with Australia’s leading recycler expanding its model to include drop-off points in all states.
Around 85 per cent of mercury-containing fluorescent tubes and lamps still go to landfill –poisoning our land and water tables – even though it’s illegal and Australia has signed an international convention. Simple changes to the National Construction Code (NCC) are part of the solution.
It’s time for wide-open creativity as we work our way of the pandemic crisis. What about more local manufacturing and production – and a big eye on circular economy as we go? New research that just received grant funding might help lead the way.
Earlier this year, some Beijing residents found that in order to throw away their rubbish they would have to have their faces scanned by the rubbish bin. Big Brother in a bin? Even George Orwell wouldn’t have thought of that one.
A coalition of NSW local councils have voluntarily set a target to recycle 45 million glass bottles into useful products each year in an effort to stimulate investment in the region’s recycling industry.
Michael Mobbs is taking his own climate emergency action and will stop paying council garbage rates. It’s the least his local council can do if it’s serious about its climate emergency declaration, he says.
If the corporate world wants to play a meaningful role in solving our plastic pollution crisis it should stop blaming consumers and start accepting responsibility for its packaging.
It might sound like an adult version of Hansel and Gretel, but houses made out of coffee grinds could become a reality in the future.
Every day, Coles’ Wentworth Point supermarket in western Sydney sends about six and a half shopping trolleys’ worth of rubbish to landfill but the store plans to cut that dramatically under an initiative by the grocery giant to find new ways to reduce waste in stores.
Nine South Australian councils have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to prioritise the use of recycled materials in their procurement processes.
The Victorian government’s circular economy discussion paper rings alarm bells that a major opportunity to redesign our economy will be missed.
In Sweden you get a tax deduction for fixing the TV instead of throwing it out and Victoria now has 25 repair cafes and there are more springing up around the country. Beware this subversive movement is sweeping Australia too, fighting waste, excess consumerism and built-in obsolescence.
The staggering amounts of waste generated by food courts and other shopping centres tenants is no longer going unnoticed. One shopping centre operator in Sydney thinks it’s now got the answer. How about a machine that weighs your waste?
The University of Technology Sydney’s newest food court has opened for business without a single piece of plastic on the menu.
