The City of Sydney has been struggling with some worrying numbers collected from various agencies like Clean Up Australia, recycling campaign group, Boomerang Alliance and Envirobank.
• 15,000 bottles and cans are littered or landfilled in Australia every minute.
• Beverage containers now outstrip cigarette butts as the most littered item (from the National Top 10 rubbish items collected on Clean Up Australia Day).
• 35% of the waste stream is made up of recyclables and almost all of it ends up in landfill due to contamination.
• Approximately 88% of the energy taken to produce plastic is saved by using recycled plastic materials instead of using oil & gas.
• Every aluminium can recycled saves enough electricity to light a 100 watt bulb for 3.5 hours.
So, it is trialling two Envirobank recycling vending machines in Sydney in high traffic areas, Circular Quay and Haymarket.
To promote its recycling message, a giant ten cent piece sculpture, made from about 3000 recyclable bottles, has been installed outside Customs House. Each Envirobank can hold 3000 bottles before it needs to be emptied.
The vending machines offer Sydneysiders their choice of a small reward in return for depositing empty plastic bottles or cans. The machines accept empty drink cans and plastic bottles. Glass and containers full of liquid cannot go in.
The Envirobank machines overcome problems with The City of Sydney’s previous recycling bins. High levels of contamination made it impossible to recycle the materials collected. The new machines accept only items that can be recycled and reject anything else.
The initiative is part of a call for the introduction of a national container deposit scheme as a long-term, sustainable solution to plastic pollution.
The City of Sydney is convinced that a ‘cash for container’ scheme, with a ten cent refund on containers will reduce litter and increase recycling rates to 80 – 95%. South Australia’s rate of recycling is double that of the rest of the country.
The Boomerang Alliance is proposing what it believes is a convenient container deposit system where drink containers can be returned to reverse vending machines much like the ones being trialled, at local shopping centres.
