Recycling, or rather lack of it, is in the news at the moment.
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There are TV ads about recycling education urging us all to be good citizens and use the bins appropriately.
This is good but it appears that it is nothing more than a hoax.
All that is happening is that recyclables are being sorted then baled and trucked away to become someone else's problem.
Until recently, unbeknownst to most of us, it was being shipped overseas to various countries to the north of us.
They have now had enough of being our dumping ground and this option is being closed off.
Other solutions involve just transferring sorted recyclables straight to landfill, because no one is prepared to process it.
Another solution which has happened on several occasions in Melbourne has involved just burning thousands of tons of plastic waste and sending a pall of toxic smoke over the surrounding suburbs.
In India, plastic waste is being successfully incorporated into road tar.
In Kenya they are building fishing boats out of recycled plastic.
In the Philippines, an enterprising scientist is turning plastic waste into fuel.
Why are we, the so called smart country, doing nothing?
Recycling should be a municipal responsibility, a job creator and a long overdue direction towards sustainability.
We deal with our human waste quite effectively, it's about time we dealt similarly with our non-human waste.
Ed Coleman
Port Macquarie