Here’s a bin outside the MCG on grand final day. Whenever I see a bin look like this it always makes me think the same way, and that is…
The vast majority of people try to place their waste in bins.I honestly believe that. The problem is, that the bins are never big enough. But who want’s big bins? Bins are ugly, right?

recycle bin out on street for collection Melb Sep 2009

Some people don’t really care what type  of bin it is. As long as it’s a bin, that’s good enough! Bins are for putting ‘stuff’ in and watching it (the stuff) all disappear – aren’t they?

Will the council collect and empty this bin? Should they? What do you think?

In my letterbox the other day I found two letters from a real estate agency printed on virgin crisp white paper, both encased in envelopes of equal quality (we could also talk about the inks involved in printing the text if we wanted to).

After opening and reading the mail, I was not overly surprised to discover that the entire intended message written across both letters could have been relayed in a two minute telephone conversation.

I wonder what the reaction would be if I were to raise this issue with the real estate company in question? After all, the stationery they are using would not be cheap.

If you’re wondering what to do with old fluorescent tubes, don’t do what somebody above did.

There is a lot of things that can be done, and there are companies that will take them away for recycling.

Start with these two places (links below) and hopefully they can help.

http://www.chemsal.com.au/lamp-recycling.html

http://insidewaste.com.au/storyview.asp?storyid=1003703&sectionsource=s2634

(only about 3-4% of the 50 million fluorescent tubes disposed in Australia annually are currently recycled)

over&over
wasteman

I know I pick on batteries a lot but…
If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s the fact that batteries are sold in packets of two and four while so many electronic devices require THREE batteries! Surely I’m not the only lone ranger who finds this phenomenon absolutely irritating?? How many single wasted batteries are there lying aimlessly around the bottom of kitchen draws wondering why they had to be the one that missed out. I might have to send energizer an email with a ‘please explain’  - stay tuned.

…and while we’re on the topic of batteries, have a look at the toy isle in Target…say no more!

I’ve known what a Tetra Pak is for quite some time. You see them littering the footpaths with their little insidious bendable straw hanging out the top.The vanilla custard that somehow ended up in our shopping bag the other day arrived in a package I’d actually never seen before (I should get out more!). It’s called a ‘TETRA TOP’ and is a sort of mixture of the old Tetra Pak and a plastic bottle.

Anyway these sorts of packaging solutions always get me thinking : Surely a product that is constructed from two very different materials must make the recycling of the product more complicated. I’ll get back to you on that one, but for the mean time, ponder this…

In 2008 (one year) the number of Tetra Pak packages sold worlwide was 141 379 000 000.

The  volume of litres of liquid in these packages was 70 538 000 000.

Now, if 1 billion = 1000 million, then the number of Tetra Pak’s floating  around the planet in 2008 was around 141 billion, and the volume of liquid was 70.5 billion litres.

I sure hope they are easily recyclable !!!

And just for the record, does anyone happen to know the volume of the Pacific Ocean?

over&over
wm