Rubrica

We can hide it, pretend it will go away, throw a tablecloth over it and pretend it’s not an elephant, but we can’t escape the fact that our technology habit is trashing the planet. That gaming system that was so hot last year but is now just so last year? The mobile phone now superseded by a brand new smart phone? The 3-year old flat screen TV that had to go to make way for the new plasma HD? Computers, monitors, MP3s, PDAs, netbooks, notebooks, digital cameras, printers, copiers, digital photo frames – all consumer electronics, in fact, up to and including large household appliances. E-waste is the most pressing waste management challenge we face. E-waste is classified as hazardous waste. It contains numerous heavy metals and toxic materials including lead, mercury, cadmium, cobalt, arsenic, lithium, chromium VI, chlorofluorocarbons, nickel and asbestos. It also contains valuable and recoverable metals such as gold, silver and copper, as well as a lot of plastics. It will never b...

Every culture has them: people who exist on other people’s garbage. From Steptoe & Son to Manila’s Smokey Mountain, there is always a group, or class, of largely unseen people who make a living or eke out an existence by picking up what others have discarded. Zabbaline boys on the outskirts of Cairo In Cairo the zabbaline (roughly translated as ‘people of the rubbish’) are a specific social class belonging to a religious minority (Coptic Christians) and who acted as the city’s unofficial garbage collectors for most of the 20 th Century. Recyclable materials such as metals, plastics and glass are saleable on the open market and other salvaged items sold in the marketplace. In 2003 the Cairo city council decided to formalise waste management by outsourcing it to multinational companies. The result was a collapse in the sustainability of the zabbaleen community, which was subsequently locked out of the market and denied access to their main economic resource. The fate of the z...

Some time ago I wrote an article for The Conversation , an online journal, about the ACT government’s ban on plastic shopping bags which is due to take effect on 1 November. In the article I suggested that this policy move was little more than a high profile litter campaign and will achieve virtually nothing in waste minimisation. I also commented that the ACT had slipped from national leader in waste policy to laggard. A few days after the article was published a representative of the government’s Department of Territory and Municipal Services phoned me to complain about the article, told me that I obviously hadn’t read their waste management strategy (in fact I was, and am, very familiar with it) and that they were still national leaders in waste. Unfortunately, the only area in which the ACT still leads Australia in waste is in its production, judging from an article* in yesterday’s CanberraTimes . Such sensitivity to criticism of policy is uncommon in governments – hides like rh...

 Very little of what arrives on site at Kimbriki in cars, utes, trailers and trucks is actually garbage. Most of it – around 70% of it, in fact – is diverted before it reaches the landfill. Garden waste is dumped at the vegetation area and is composted or mulched with the products then sold on-site. Recyclable material is dumped in the designated areas for cardboard and paper, glass and plastic, motor and cooking oil. Wood waste is either salvaged or is chipped and then sold for landscaping. Concrete, tile and brick are crushed for gravel and sand and sold on site. Metal, e-waste and tyres are collected separately and sent off-site for recycling. The tip even occasionally collects whole cars which are used by the emergency services as training for cutting open vehicles in emergency situations. The landfill is the last line of disposal, but even then, the Buy Back Centre can recycle an incredible amount of waste retrieved from the tip. The interesting thing is that even though some...