I love this quote below by James Clear that’s aligned with my five year rule.
“Most big, deeply satisfying accomplishments in life take at least five years to achieve. Five years is a long time. It is much slower than most of us would like. If you accept the reality of slow progress, you have every reason to take action today. If you resist the reality of slow progress, five years from now you’ll simply be five years older and still looking for a shortcut.”
Five years has always felt like an eternity for me. I’ve never stayed in a job that long. For a while, I moved to different cities (and often countries) every 2-3 years. And, I haven’t had a business make it to Year 4 (yet!). However, something is changing for me as I get older and wiser.
When I look back at those things that mattered the most, it truly did take years to achieve anything. Most of my closest friendships are at least a decade long. I built my career on top of 6 years of business school education. And I’ve had opportunities to paddle around the world because of many years of training.
At the time, I took those time investments for granted. However, today it’s become clear to me that if you want to start anything new and actually become good at it, you shouldn’t begin unless you’re willing to commit five years. It’s a rule I’ve started incorporated into my life because I know how easily I get distracted by shiny new ideas and opportunities.
With this in mind, I started learning Spanish again, and four years later I’m not yet fluent but getting closer. I started playing guitar during our last Covid lock-down and then realised it would take years to gain the dexterity in my fingers to hit the cords. I didn’t want to commit that time, so I donated my guitar to a charity.
This new rule also relates to my career and business. A few years ago, I would have dropped what I was doing for the next best job opportunity or business idea that came along. Now, I’m very committed to seeing my current consulting practice grow.
And to be clear, quitting something early is not breaking the rule when you know that it’s the right thing to do. The five year rule is more about the decision to start new things. So, if you’re someone like me that’s easily distracted with the next shiny opportunity, consider incorporating this rule into your life and see real achievements emerge.
Lately, I’ve set up a number of automations to help me schedule meetings since I no longer use an EA in my current work. There’s nothing worse than going back and forth with a client or a podcast guest when one email with a calendar link can do the job. But now that they can see my availability, I’m conscious that at times my calendar appears empty.
Though, it’s not actually empty. It’s just NOT full of meetings. And in this world where people still think that a schedule full of back to back meetings translates to “important,” this might give them the wrong impression as to my real value.
Yes, I know that I could hide the “emptiness” by reserving work blocks instead. And sometimes I do when I really need uninterrupted work time. In reality though, I really don’t care what others think about my use of time as I know the deep work speaks for itself.
When I was in executive roles, it was not uncommon for my entire calendar to be dictated by other people. And that was usually okay because I could delegate the resulting actions of these meetings to others who had more time.
Today I spend a lot more time actually “doing,” rather than just meeting. It’s wonderful! At least for me because I find the work interesting, and I have more time to think and solve problems.
Still, not everyone is built like me. In fact, I spoke to a friend today, a former CEO as well. She missed the ability to delegate and felt like she was doing a lot of things she didn’t enjoy doing now in her entrepreneurial work.
Yet, despite all this, I bet that even she appreciates that her calendar appears empty, or at least emptier too!
It’s already the middle of January, and I just realised that I haven’t documented my 2020 Lessons Learned. In this crazy year, I’ve definitely had just as many personal learnings as professional ones. So, here they are:
Good friends are very, very important! This is especially true for someone like me who doesn’t have any family in Australia.
If you keep trying, it will always work out – just not the way you had planned. A year ago, I only had a faint idea that I would be starting a hair and bodycare brand to try to reduce plastic amenities in hotels. Covid got in the way, but we’re getting closer. In the meantime, Harvestcare was born for consumers.
I never again want to work by directly trading my hours for money. Even when I do consulting work, it will forever be by the fixed price in the future.
Products-based businesses are a bit boring at the beginning (at least for me) with the repeated make-sell-make-sell model. I can’t wait until my business has scaled enough to make it more interesting.
If you’re willing to build a business slower, it may not be necessary to bring on investors. The benefit is the ability to maintain full control over the brand – something that I think many entrepreneurs undervalue.
Start-ups can be expensive! In 19/20 I invested over $50k of my savings into the business. While I’ve made progress, the company is still a long way off from paying me a salary.
Energy is the fuel for achieving everything – not time or money. Managing my energy needs must be a priority if I want to reach my big goals.
Creating a podcast is a great way to learn quickly and meet important people, but they’re a lot of work. It’s also tough to grow niche topics especially when channels draw geographic boundaries that make it harder for new listeners in other countries to find you.
I’m still not great with my hands i.e. making recycled plastic products for example. Yet, it’s amazing what I have been able to achieve despite this.
The marketplace will always decide if your product is a winner or loser. No amount of effort or even lack of effort will change this. If the customer wants it, they’ll tell you.
It’s better to be moving in some direction than not at all.
“What would a guy do?” This is a question I learned to ask myself whenever I’m feeling self-doubt about a decision. This is definitely something that more women should ask.
I actually like doing IT strategy work. When I left the industry years ago, I never thought I would go back. Yet doing consulting work, especially for not for profits, feels meaningful and is mentally stimulating. Plus it’s giving me a nice little niche to help pay the bills while building the business.
My sanity is dependent on the ability to exercise outdoors. The 2020 bushfires taught me this more than the lockdown.
It takes about 2 years of consistent effort to change a personal brand. Don’t kid yourself into thinking it will happen any faster if you already had a known brand.
I’m sure there’s a few more to add to this list, but certainly this was a pivotal year for me. My 2020 Lessons Learned were the result of my personal journey as an entrepreneur, but also the environmental impacts of the bushfires, hailstorm and pandemic.
I’m not sure that many others can say this, but I actually think overall I am personally better off because of what has happened in 2020. And I feel so grateful!
It occurred to me the other day that I had not gone more than 30 minutes outside my home city of Canberra, Australia since I went to New Zealand last Christmas in 2019. As someone who usually travels overseas 2-3 times a year minimum with countless domestic trips, this is truly been a weird year. But now as we get to the end of 2020, I realise I need to learn the Art of Rest.
Why Art and not the Science of Rest? Because it were just science, it would be easier. I would get my 7-8 hours of sleep each night. I would work less than 45 hours a week. I would get in 30 minutes of exercise every day. If I left it up to science, my life should be somewhat predictable. However, as an entrepreneur, it just doesn’t work that way.
Rest as an Entrepreneur?
Instead, I have to work when the opportunity presents itself. I don’t know if or when it will land. I don’t know if I’ll have two consulting projects accepted at the same time when I get a large order for Harvestcare. I don’t know if my hotel client will give us a contract that starts a chain of massive operational activities.
Over the weekend, I reviewed more than 700 pages of enterprise architecture standards and supplemental information so that I could submit two IT consulting gig proposals on Monday. Was it the way I wanted to spend the weekend? Of course not! Who would? Still, I know that effort would put me in a better position to hit the ground running if they accept my proposals (and of course a lot of much needed cash).
Some of the hundreds of pages of enterprise frameworks and standards I reviewed over the weekend.
Of course, this hasn’t been my only working weekend this year. I’d say 80% have been. I also did three all-nighters this year to meet schedule deadlines – something I haven’t done since my old consulting days, but predicable since I’m once again doing consulting work as a side hustle.
Art of Rest
Since I turned in those proposals two days ago, I realise now that I probably won’t have anymore consulting work until the new year. And it feels…strange. Suddenly, my days are not filled with back to back to-dos and meetings. Instead, I can actually work on the business full-time at my own pace.
With this influx of free time, I’m finding that I’m actually less productive in all areas of my work and life. Instead of working on important business tasks, I’m wasting time sleeping and browsing the internet. It makes me feel incredibly guilty. But then, I had a thought…
Maybe, I need to give myself a break. Maybe I actually need all this sleep and mindless activities to recharge for the next surge of work. Just maybe, I need to learn the Art of Rest.
This week, the Federal Government announced a major investment into recycling and waste management infrastructure – a promise that was made in the 2019 election campaign. It’s great to see this finally come to light, and yet I think it still ignores the coming recycling bottleneck.
There certainly are some gaps in the infrastructure in Australia – primarily in our ability to process separated materials into an useful form again. This has been done mostly overseas up to this point.
However, with the 2021 Waste Export Ban quickly approaching, many of us can still see the recycling bottleneck getting bigger, and it will NOT be fixed by investments into infrastructure.
The Recycling Process
Let’s think about the recycling process for a moment. For the average consumer, it may appear to end when they put something into their yellow bin. However, that’s only the start of the entire process.
Australia already has sorting facilities in most parts of the country. This is where the various materials are separated by machine (and often times people) into piles that can be bundled and resold to buyers – usually overseas.
The most valuable plastics are clean, single-types of polymers that come from the container deposit schemes and manufacturer off-cuts. The value of the rest of it to buyers depends on how well it can be sorted into individual plastic types and the amount of contamination in it from things like food, debris and even nappy poo.
At this stage, the material buyer needs to clean and then process the material. This means melting it down and then reforming it into flakes, pellets or something like this to become the base material for manufacturing again.
Current Capabilities in Australia
As mentioned, we do have plenty of sorting facilities in Australia – although some struggle to sort plastics efficiently into the different types. We also have plenty of plastic manufacturers in this country with additional capacity – especially after the auto manufacturing industries closed here. We do lack processing plants though, especially for food-grade plastics, and I can see the government investment being useful here.
Nevertheless, some of the current manufacturers are also able to process the plastic. Great companies in Australia like Replas, Closed the Loop and Plastic Forests can take highly contaminated plastics and make it into something useful. These are the companies that are using the plastic from Redcycle bins that you see in Coles and Woolworths, and they too have capacity to grow.
Processed mixed plastic waste
So, if these types of manufacturers already exist, why are we still sending so much of these materials overseas, and how will this government investment make a real difference?
The Recycling Bottleneck
The real bottleneck of the entire recycling process is the lack of demand of recycled plastic products.
Consumers can put their plastics into yellow and Redcycle bins. Council service providers can sort it into various types. Existing manufactures can process and make many products from this waste. But at the end of the day, someone has to buy it. Otherwise, it will just pile up on a warehouse rather than in landfill.
Essentially, there are not enough buyers of these products!
Where Government investment can make a real difference
It’s been an ongoing narrative at the Council, State/Territory and Federal level that they need to change their own procurement policies to help this recycling bottleneck problem.
After all, governments are some of the largest buyers of products like bollards, outdoor furniture and playground equipment, decking and fencing – all common products already on the market made from mixed recycled plastic. And yet, it has been in the “too hard” bucket up to this point.
There are precedents for how this can work in many other places. One that I am most familiar with is with US Government procurement requirement to purchase recycled office paper in all of the agencies. I was a procurement officer for the US Air Force at the beginning of my career, and this requirement showed me how the government could influence an entire marketplace to become more sustainable.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued the first guidelines to agencies in 1990 after they and others were successful in creating internal recycling campaigns for office paper. They quickly realised that they needed to help close the loop by buying the very products that they were collecting.
And because the US Government essentially bought 2.5% of all the office paper in the country, they instantly created a more sustainable, competitive marketplace for recycled office paper overnight – just with this one decision.
Did it cost more for recycled paper than virgin? Initially, yes. However, that quickly changed as the demand went up and more competitors started offering recycled options. That’s the power of government spending. It can literally change markets overnight if used in this way.
Recommendations for Government
Rather than using this modernisation fund completely on capital improvement projects, the government should also consider the downstream impacts that they are creating with the export ban and infrastructure that already has more capacity than demand.
Instead, wouldn’t it make sense to spend a little bit more on a longer-life, recycled plastic bollard now rather than wood? This investment will still create more jobs, but at least we won’t see stockpiles of processed material with no place to go in a year’s time.
After all, a more efficient waste management and recycling system will only create a bigger bottleneck until this material has some place to go.
As I continue to put more energy into our Harvestcare aluminium packaging line, my podcast interviews are continuing to confirm how uncertain times are for recycled plastic.
Yesterday, I had a teleconference with one of the government agencies I have to go through to get our annual Clean-up Lake Burley Griffin Day approved. I explained how that event was needed more than ever as more people are congregating outside and yet less likely to pick up rubbish because of the Covid-19 crisis.
In the grocery stores and cafes, reuse is being restricted to mitigate the risk of this virus spreading. But sometimes this doesn’t necessarily make any sense. For example, some places are banning reusable shopping bags when it’s much more controllable to wash your bag than to assume that single use bags sitting at the check-out all day are safer.
At the same time, there are some micro forces that can also impact the industry. This includes the price of oil falling into negative territory. As plastic is a derivative of oil, virgin plastic will become considerably cheaper than recycled plastic. This will make it even harder to find uses for recycled plastic when most businesses are just trying to survive right now.
It’s unfortunate that in a few short months, so much work and momentum to reduce plastic waste is suddenly being reversed by market pressures. At the same time, nothing has changed about the fundamental problems with plastic. It will still take centuries to degrade, and now there’s even more out there as personal protection equipment is being found in bulk in waterways in some countries.
As an entrepreneur in this industry, I can only try to adapt the best that I can to these uncertain times while maintaining the mission. Quite frankly, that’s all anyone can do.
I reckon that recycled plastic is one of the few inputs where businesses say, “What can I make with this resource?” Everyone else says, “I want to make this product. Now how should I do it?” To better tackle the plastic waste issues, I think there needs to be something in between the supply and demand dilemma – that is…making with purpose.
As I walk around my house and neighborhood, I often think about things that could be made from recycled plastic – an endless resource at the moment instead of what is currently used and often limited i.e. wood, virgin plastic, steel etc.
On my office desk right now, I see my wooden desk, and a plastic calculator, stapler and tape holder. There are pens and markers also made of virgin plastic. I have metal souvenir license plates decorating a file cabinet. Any of these things could have been made from recycled plastic if the maker only designed it that way.
Virgin plastic and steel are extracted from natural resources that are limited. And the process to do so also releases carbon emissions.
And yet, we have plastic spilling out of landfills and polluting the waterways. Wouldn’t it make more sense to be making with purpose – to purposely use resources that are readily available?
Dear makers, include this thought into your next design phase.
As bushfires continue in Australia, consumers can make a difference for the future.
As much of the east coast of Australia continues to put out bushfires, my hometown of Canberra has been suffering with the worst air quality in the world.
Bushfire smoke in Canberra, Australia
Since September when the first bushfires began for the season, the country has suffered. And since November, I’ve begun each morning by first checking the air quality and then the Fires Near Me app.
So far, we have been the lucky ones in Canberra to only have to deal with smoke. Others have lost much more than clean air. Eventually, when these bushfire threats have passed, we’ll think more about the future including what we can do to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Yet, it’s hard to think about prevention solutions without considering the impacts of climate change. While we may feel powerless as individuals until the next election, as consumers we actually have a lot more power collectively than we realise to create change.
Over the last few months, I have been interviewing entrepreneurs on my podcast, Plastics Revolution. These change makers are using business solutions to tackle the plastic waste issue both by providing options to reduce plastic consumption, as well as to recycle it into products afterwards. Time after time, they’ve reminded me about the power of the consumer dollar in creating change.
While much has been said recently about the environmental impacts of plastic waste, there’s actually a lot of information out there about the carbon footprint of creating it in the first place too. And here lies both an opportunity and a responsibility for those that want to avoid future weather disasters such as the one we are experiencing in Australia right now.
Let’s have a refresher about climate change before I explain this consumer power further.
Climate Change 101
While climate change may be a controversial topic for some, most will agree that “normal” weather is changing.
NASA has well-documented the facts and evidence of climate change here. The most simple explanation regarding these changing weather patterns is that carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere trap heat which increases the earth’s average temperature. Amongst other methods, this increase has been documented from ice core extractions in Antarctica, Greenland and various glaciers.
In an article written by Robert Walker, he warned that Australia could be the canary in the climate change coal mine. Multiple years of drought has made Australia even more susceptible to bushfires during this record-breaking summer heat which is expected for future years to come.
Here and in other countries like the US, it’s tough both politically and economically when your country’s greatest natural assets are also the biggest contributors to creating CO2 – namely the burning of hydrocarbon fuels like coal, natural gas and oil.
Every economy’s vitality is based on growth i.e. the increased selling of its goods and services. Unfortunately, that measurement is traditionally done only with dollars by both businesses and governments alike. This model simply fails to look at the whole of life costs including the impacts to the environment after a purchase is made.
In fact, there can be false measurements of an economy’s strength after a natural disaster. Government relief will often stimulate a location as people rebuild their homes and businesses thereby creating new jobs. On paper, it can actually make an economy look stronger than before the disaster. And yet, a chat with locals will showcase the flaws in the numbers.
Furthermore, measuring prosperity this way does little to incentivise emissions-causing businesses to change their traditional processes when it could hurt their bottom line. That’s where the consumer has the potential to play a much larger part.
So how does this relate to the use of plastic?
Plastics are made of petrochemicals i.e. oil or natural gas, and the process to extract it from the ground, transport it, and turn it into its common resin form takes a lot of energy by burning more petrochemicals.
Traditional Manufacturing Process for Plastic
Looking at this traditional process objectively, the only reason why a business would go to so much trouble is if there are profits to be gained.
A recent study by The Center for International Environmental Law analysed planned expansions of oil and gas infrastructure around the world. It predicts “from 2020 to 2024, oil and gas companies are set to invest a further US$1.4 trillion in new oil and gas extraction projects.” However, even without these expansions, they don’t believe that current operations will enable the Paris Agreement goal to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Once again from a business perspective, these investments would not be made if it were not for the potential for profit that’s driven largely from forecasted consumer demand.
While most people think of mining, electricity plants and transportation as the emitters of C02, one article concludes that the full cycle plastics industry creates “almost double the emissions of the aviation sector.” And this only includes plastic products made from extruded pellets, not textiles that are also made from plastics which I’ll discuss later.
How is this possible? The chart below shows the primary uses for plastic. In most of these categories, they are directly link to the average consumer’s buying habits.
Uses of Plastic – Note the arrows where Consumers can influence demand
How much energy does it take to make a plastic water bottle?
If we break down these categories to something more tangible, it shows the kind of difference that an individual could make with small decisions. For example, in the creation of packaging specifically, an study about the making of single-use, PET water bottles found that:
“Producing bottled water requires between 5.6 and 10.2 million joules of energy per litre, depending on transportation factors. That’s up to 2,000 times the energy required to produce tap water.”
Gleick, P.H. and Cooley, H.S. “Energy implications of bottled water.” Environmental Research Letters 4 (2009) 014009 (6pp).
If enough consumers moved away from bottled water, this would have a measurable impact to the emissions generated in creating the plastic in the first place.
What about our clothes buying habits?
It’s not just with food packaging where consumers can make a massive difference though. It’s also in the clothes that we wear too.
“The fashion industry produces 10 per cent of global carbon emissions.“
Given that any man-made materials such as polyester are also derived from petrochemicals, it easy to see why this statistic is so high. This is especially true with the fast fashion trend that’s created the equivalent of “single-use clothing.”
5 Ways consumers can help climate change by changing their plastic habits.
With the evidence mounting about climate change, as well as the known issue with plastic waste, it’s time for consumers to really put their buying power to use. Here are some ways that you help climate change by changing your plastic habits:
1) Buy more products made from recycled plastics
The traditional method for extracting petrochemicals and turning it into products may seem onerous based on my diagram earlier, but the process is actually easier than manufacturing with recycled plastics. This is because there are so many types of plastics produced, and they often are contaminated with food and other things when disposed. This is why recycled plastic products may be more expensive than those made from virgin products (particularly those made in lower wage countries).
Nevertheless, some of the bigger recycled plastic manufacturers in Australia have figured out ways to create products with this material. Below is the general process that Replas and Plastic Forests use as discussed in previous podcast interviews with their owners.
One type of recycled plastics manufacturing process
Notice how their process eliminates the energy required for petrochemical extraction and can reduce overall transportation emissions in comparison to the traditional process. They create the plastic pellets by shredding and melting the plastic which also requires less energy than making it from scratch. Some of these companies also reduce their transportation footprints further when they bypass the wholesaler and go direct to the consumer or retailer.
So, how much cleaner is the recycled plastics manufacturing process than the traditional one?
If looking at the full cycle (cradle to grave – where my diagrams only show cradle to consumer), one study found that “recycled PET bottles offer both GHG emissions and fossil fuel consumption reductions ranging 13% to 56%, compared to fossil fuel-derived PET bottles assuming PET bottles are landfilled.”
Another study by the Nordic Council of Ministers reviewed other publications from around the world and concluded that there was a 37% reduction in emissions generated from the production of recycled plastics (all types) compared to their virgin counterparts. It also showed that there was a 55% reduction in emissions when recycling versus incinerating plastics.
Today, there are increasingly more and more products made from recycled plastics. When given the choice, even if they are bit more expensive, you should buy the recycled option. You’ll help the environment by both reducing the amount of waste that would otherwise go to landfill, as well as reducing the carbon emissions footprint of making the product.
2) Borrow or buy used
Other than potential transportation costs, there really aren’t any carbon emissions generated by an used or borrow item. The cost was already bore upfront in making it and getting it to the consumer the first time. There will, however, be emissions generated if the item is disposed of instead. So, giving something new life is always a better option for the environment than buying new or throwing it away.
Today, there are more and more options for previously owned products even if you if you’re not keen on thrift stores. In Australia, you can rent your wardrobe from GlamCorner, your kids’ toys at Tiny Tots to Hire, and your power tools from Bunnings. If you’re in the US, you’ll have even more options.
Or if you prefer purchasing the product, you can buy second hand even at mainstream retailers like Ikea and The North Face.
The reality is that for many purchases these days, you should always consider a borrowing or second-hand option first if you want to do your part for climate change.
3) Use your non-perishable products longer
Whether it’s clothes, toys or your car, the majority of emissions for any petroleum-based product is generated from the extraction phase to getting it to the consumer. Therefore, when it comes to concerns for climate change and buying something new, you are much better off buying quality products that will last and stay in style longer.
Furthermore, when it comes to quality, pay attention to the materials it made of as well. For clothing in particular, purchasing natural materials such as cotton and wool will help enormously with reducing demand for petroleum products. And if you must buy something with synthetic fabrics, see if you can find it in recycled materials like polyester made from recycled PET bottles or ocean waste. There are plenty of great brands doing this now including Adidas and Filippa K.
While this goes against the low-cost/short-lasting mentality that many consumers have, just remember once again that you are voting with your dollars. Businesses will respond accordingly – whether it be the large petrochemical companies, the product manufacturers or the retailers because it’s in their financial interest.
4) Reduce your plastic consumption
We hear about this frequently as governments around the world are instilling bans on single-use plastic. While the reduction of waste is obvious when you use a reusable coffee cup, bottle, bags, etc – the lifestyle changes also make a difference to C02 emissions as discussed earlier with the water bottle study.
Businesses will only make what consumers are willing to buy, and the flood of reusable containers to the market right now shows that this is catching on by many.
5) Buy Local
Finally, one of the best decisions that consumers can make is to buy locally manufactured products. This may be Australian-made or American-made as an example rather than a cheaper version from overseas.
Transportation can make up a huge percentage of the total carbon emissions generated for plastic products depending on where it is made. So, deciding to buy local is not only good for domestic businesses, it’s also a decision to reduce carbon emissions generated in producing a similar product overseas.
Final words
As long as consumers use their dollars to maintain the status quo, carbon emissions will continue to rise as industry responds to our demand. Yet, our environment can’t handle the increasing changes to temperatures. Without significant changes soon, we’ll continue to see more weather-related disasters like we are experiencing in Australia now.
While businesses and industries (and the governments they support) may not respond to public calls for climate change, it’s been shown time and time again that they will change with consumer demand. Isn’t it time to collectively vote with our dollars to do something about this before we are impacted even further?
Dear consumer, the power is in your hands!
Tammy Ven Dange is host of the Plastics Revolution podcast and the CEO of The Refoundry Australia, a social-enterprise dedicated to helping Mother Nature by making great products from recycled plastics. You can find her on social media or on her blog at @tvendange.
There’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of nature. So, over the holidays I decided to take a little walk in nature in New Zealand – one of the most beautiful places in the world. Still, I wondered before I got there if it would have the same issues with plastic waste as other places I have been recently.
This trip sent me to Wellington and then Picton where a boat took us to the start of the Queen Charlotte Track in the famous Marlborough wine region. For five glorious days, we hiked the sometimes difficult pathway to see breathtaking views of the area.
Views from the Queen Charlotte Track
I even had a chance to go out for a paddle where we saw Eagle rays and a seal sunning himself on the back of a small yacht.
Wildlife sightings
What I didn’t see was a lot of rubbish which was really surprising, especially in the harbours. Instead, I saw just two pieces: a floating plastic bag that we couldn’t reach and a famous bottle where a tree decided to grow around it.
Rubbish sightings on the Queen Charlotte Track
This was incredible given the number of backpackers and boat traffic we saw there. It could only mean that everyone was doing their part to keep the environment clean.
And it was likely the little things that made a difference. All of our packed lunches were in paper bags (and so were offered shopping bags). I was given a recyclable container for my salad which was of a much stronger material than what you normally see in Australia. Bamboo utensils and paper straws were the norm everywhere. We were encouraged to refill our drink bottles from the taps.
I especially liked the reusable coffee cup the tour operator gave us for our daily morning teas. No council in New Zealand recycles coffee cups. So this was a really nice and practical souvenir.
While I haven’t had a chance to research their recycling situation in New Zealand, overall I have to say that I was really impressed by how clean this part of the country was during my walk in nature. And they seem to have done this by focussing more on the reduction of plastic waste – a lesson all communities can easily adopt.
With this being National Recycling Week in Australia, the common question that is being asked right now is, “Should we still recycle?”
After all the negative media lately on what some shady recyclers have done (i.e. sending contaminated rubbish overseas and/or putting recyclables into landfill as the War on Waste program revealed), it’s not surprising if the general public think it’s a waste of time.
Personally, between my podcast and business, I’ve had the privilege of speaking with quite a few experts in this space and to see recyclers in action. And I can tell you that there are plenty of great companies out there that are doing the right thing. Furthermore, they are making great products from these materials too.
In fact, when interviewing Mark Yates of Replas, I saw the mounds and mounds of rubbish that they were turning into outdoor furniture and industrial products even with high levels of contamination in them at times.
But Australia has Plenty of Land
One common argument to the recycling campaign is that Australia has plenty of land to bury our rubbish. While it may be true that we have plenty of land, how practical and costly would it be to transport thousands of tonnes of waste to such locations every day from metro areas? And think about the additional carbon emissions that would add.
Let’s Burn it Instead
Some say that we should just burn these recyclables instead, but to many in this industry, it’s just like burning money. There were a lot of resources expended to make plastic, and it is still has usable purposes beyond its one-time use.
Furthermore, it practically encourages people to continue to waste these non-renewable resources to keep the incinerators sustainable. Remember, plastic is made from petroleum and cannot be replenished.
But is Burning it for Energy a Better Option?
There are better technologies coming out in this space all the time. However, at the moment, most experts agree that burning rubbish is not a cost efficient source of energy yet. Furthermore, there are still carbon emissions, health concerns and a huge requirement for water with most of these options.
Is there even enough demand for these recyclable materials?
Large recycler, SKM collapsed earlier this year and others are apparently struggling in various parts of the country as the demand for recyclables has fallen. This can mostly be attributed to exports being limited by other countries, but the self imposed export ban by Australia will also add further pressure if that ever gets implemented.
So, should we still recycle?
Absolutely! As long as we continue to make and use plastic, recycling is the most environmentally sustainable and economical way to generate value from this resource.
But it’s important for consumers to know that recycling doesn’t end when you put something into the yellow bin. It’s only recycled when it’s turned into something else, and companies can’t do that unless more people are actively buying Australian made, recycled material products.
