The Flex and Rooms Daily.
Podcast, brought to you by Cana. Welcome back to the Flex and Froom Show. I am through me and I have a very special guest here on the show. If you follow me on Instagram, which many thanks, you'll see that I've recently become a recycling hero. I decided that I want to actually take recycling seriously. Might have been the cop twenty six or twenty seven twenty seven summit lit a fire on my ass and lit the planet on fire. So now I'm going to do my little bit.
But I thought I need to get a bit of an education on recycling if I'm going to do it properly. So I have brought in a very special guest. Her name is Lottie. She has just won the twenty twenty three Young Australian of the Year for New Southwales for New South Wales Award and she's in the studio and she's a recycling queen.
Welcome, Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Yay, and so tell us what you do. So I'm a sustainability expert generally speaking, so kind of everything from composting to worm farms to reducing your waste in general, but a lot of that comes down to teaching people how to recycle properly. So I run Banish, which is an education platform but also an e commerce shop that kind of teaches people how to do the right thing when it comes to sustainability.
How did you get into this?
I actually said, a news resolution that actually worked. I never heard of right. No one ever gets in yet news resolution that actually does something. But I did set about ten other ones, like running a marathon and learning Spanish and all of these things that you'd never really pulled off. But one of them was to do better for the planet. And when I started doing this, this was four and a half years ago, it was so difficult,
it was so confusing, it was overwhelming. I kept on getting like mixed messages that somebody'd be like do this, somebody else would be like this, and I just went, well, if we want living sustainably to be easy, it needs to be so easy that there's no reason not for people to actually like recycle right or compost or do whatever. I love that.
It's going to be so easy that it's hard to not do it.
Exactly, Like you literally look at the bin and you're like, oh, of course, I just have to do this because right now we look at our recycling bins and you kind of go, oh, my gosh, there's so many different materials, there's so many different colored bins, Like where do I put everything? And it's just kind of scares people or they get kind of tripped up by greenwashing and then they kind of go, well, what's the point of even trying if I'm just gonna get it wrong anyway?
Fully? Fully, So I put this on my Instagram. I said, everyone, I'm trying to recycle. I want to speak to an expert. Can you please put someone in my direction? And overwhelmingly everybody suggested you, and I thought, I've got to give back to the community. So I put a question box out there and I asked everyone to ask me questions that they want me to ask you great access, so I'm going to bring out some of the best ones. How Come you sometimes see both bins being accepted by the same.
Truck, So this is if your yellow bin or your recycling bin is too contaminated, that's when you'll see them both going into the same place. So this means that that whole recycling bin, even if there was some things that were right in there. The garbage guys have looked at it and they've gone overwhelmingly, there's too much contamination in this bin. So that's why they've popped it into the land philbin. Because it's kind of like if you
get a bad apple. If your recycling bin on the street is the bad apple and then you add it into your recycling bin with everybody else's right recycling, then it's going to like contaminate the rest of that garbage truck. So that's why they've kind of identified and go, Okay, we're going to pop this into our land fillbin.
Wow, okay cool. What happens to our recycling once collected from our home bins?
It really depends on what the material is, whereabouts you're located, everything like that. There is a waste export ban that has come into place in Australia which means that we cannot send a waste overseas, so it has to be processed on shore in Australia, which is really really exciting when it comes to the kind of the different materials.
We're seeing a lot of kind of glass being remade into roads is probably the most common thing that's happening at the moment with your plastics, it really depends on the different types of plastics. So you've got your kind of plastic water bottles, which is a PET or a number one that is generally something that can be readily available and made into more plastic water bottles and more
other materials like that. But it really depends on the different stream waste stream and where that's going to go. Because the hardest thing for me as an educator is that every single council in Australia has a different system. So whatever I say, if I say rooms you need to put this in your recycling bit at home, you could be at work and it could actually need to go into a different bin. You could go to your friend's place have to go into a different bin. So
it's really really confusing. So we all need to individually look to our councils first to what can be recycled in each area.
Why are they doing it all the same because.
They have waste contracts with different businesses, So it's kind of like some people will have a contract with Busy or CLI in a way or Bingo, So it really depends which contractor your counsel has said yes to or your office place has said yes to, because then that recycler has its own set of rules on what it can and can't accept, and how do.
They make those rules? Is it what's the most cost effective?
Like is there Well, recycling's a business at the end of the day, and they want to be able to get the best quality material that they can actually turn into something. So that's what it comes down to. Is economics amazing?
Okay? Is recycling in general just a waste of time to make us feel better? Is it actually helping?
So I think that there's a couple of things to unpack with this question. I think if you are recycling for the feeling of like, oh I did the right thing. I'm buying this piece of plastic because I know that I can recycle it over buying something that's not packaged at all, then I would say that that's the completely wrong way to go about it, because recycling isn't the answer to our prayers. It's not going to save the world. Reduction is actually going to do it. So it's using
less PLASII is actually the way to go forward. So I think that's probably what I would say, is that we're so obsessed with recycling in Australia because it gives you those happiness hormones. You put something in the recycling bin and you feel like you're saving the planet, where an actual fact not consuming anything is what's going to make the real difference. So I would say that that is one thing to definitely think about. But I would definitely say that recycling is worth it because we can
actually recycle a lot of different materials in Australia. We're getting better and we're definitely not perfect, but aluminium is one that as Australians, we're great at recycling aluminium. The same with paper as well. Australia has one of the highest rates of recycling for paper in the world. So there's all of these really great stories that are coming out of it. But you go down, if you live in an apartment building, you go down to those bins.
I do it myself, and I pretty much just want to cry because everybody's getting it wrong, and there's just so many simple little things that I'm like, why did you put all of your recycling that you sorted upstairs into a plastic bag and then put it into your recycling bin. I heard you guys talking about it the other day and I was like, it happens all the time.
It's like all of that hard work for nothing. And I think if you're somebody who recycles, right, you look at these bins and you kind of go, well, why did I go to all of this effort? Yeah, exactly, So for me, I would definitely say it is worth it. It is worth separating it because if your bin is not one of the ones that's got that, you're too contaminated. If it does go into a recycling garbage truck to then go to a facility to be recycled, we need
to reduce those contamination rates. So even if there is a bit of contamination from your neighbors, but you've done most of the things right, it does help in the scheme of things. And it doesn't mean that that whole bin is going to go to landfill, right.
We want to keep the percentage up. It's like passing a test. Yes, what do people I ever say is do with recycling? Like I think in Japan they have a really interesting system.
Japan has a great system. Sweden like they literally have to buy waste because they don't have enough of their own waste. It's ridiculus because they use kind of waste to energy a lot of the time, so then they don't actually have enough waste for them to turn into energy, so then they need to buy it from other countries.
It's just ridiculous. Whereas Australia we're the fifth largest country in terms of waste that we create, but where the fifty fifth largest country in terms of population growth, So we create so much more waste than pretty much every single other country in the world. We just consume, consume, consume, consume, and we lean on things like our recycling systems to fix all of our problems rather than just kind of using what we've got at home or using less in general.
God damn, we need to get more keep cups. I know.
Please do not throw your coffee cups into the recycling bit.
Oh my god, that's my biggest one. Every bloody time I see it so bad. What do the numbers on the triangle recycle symbol on stuff mean?
So this is actually not a recycling triangle, it's a big myth. So what it actually is it's a plastic resist an identification code. So if you see on the bottom of a plastic bottle, it'll have a little triangle and then it'll have a number from one through seven to it, and it doesn't actually tell us whether something can be recycled or not. It just tells us what type of material that is. So back in the day we used to kind of see a lot of councils say kind of like one, two and four can go
in your recycling bin. But they're actually moving away from this now because it's all about the different sizes and what council area you're in and all of these different things. So it's quite dated now to look for those resin codes. Also, those resin codes were never actually mandatory. There was something that was optional for people and for manufacturers, and often they do it just to kind of say, like we process this, that's why we put a number two on this.
So now what we're encouraging people to do is look for the Australasian Recycling Label or the ARL and you'll see this one on the back of quite a few
different products in your supermarket shelves. And what they do is it can be one of three different symbols and it'll be either like a little rubbish bin, it'll be a bl black recycling triangle or it'll be a recycling triangle that's white, The recycling triangle that's black means curbside, the little bin means landfill, and then the white Actually, the white triangle actually means kind of you need to do something extra in order for this to be recycled.
So this could be like scrunch this aluminium foil into a ball, or that could be kind of I don't know, you need to take this to an ewaste recycler, or you need to do something like that. This is where we used to see the return to store for soft plastics, which is not available anymore, so that one we now need to see. If you see return to store, you just need to put it into your landfill bin. What
happened with that? So pretty much coming back to recycling being all about a business and all about like economics, we during COVID and the pandemic, we all started using so much more soft plastics than ever before, so the demand for this service went up by three hundred and fifty percent, so we were seeing so for example, a Cosmal West store used to have kind of one red cycle bit at the front of the store that would you be empty today it went up to fifteen bins
a day, so that's how much it kind of increased the demand for this program. But then at the other hand, the way that recycling works, like the true recycler is actually the person that buys something made from recycling materials, and for soft plastics in Australia, we don't have enough companies who are actually buying that waste to turn it into something. Soft plastics they're not a very high quality product. They've often got a lot of labels on them and
things like that's their costly to process. They get made into pretty low quality items like rappers and cling films and things like that. So there were all of these people recycling, and then there was no one actually buying
that waste to actually turn it into something else. So this company started stockpiling it going hopefully somebody will come along and buy this to then turn it into something and it just kept on piling up and piling up, and the increase, and everyone else was kind of going soft plastic recycling, recycling, recycling, and nobody was actually buying
that waste. And then that big article came out last week exposing them and they pretty much had to say, yes, we need to pause this whilst we get on top of it, whilst we find somebody else to actually purchase this material to then turn it into something else.
Oh, dear god, it's just a shish morphin exactly.
And it was so sad because so many people have been trusting in the system. People were like peking their soft plastics on the clothesline to let it dry so then take it into their store. And it was so disappointing and so heartbreaking, and everybody was kind of trusting the system, and I completely get why everybody was so pissed off and devastated. And then it now shines this terrible light on the rest of the recycling system and everyone's going, well, does it actually get recycled? Why are
we doing this? What's going on? And it just happened to coincide with National Recycling We.
Oh, did it really?
Yeah, that's an inside job. It was awful.
So I like the thing that I've got that is positive out of this conversation is that we should look to buy products that are made out of recycling materials and where we can, don't buy more plastic.
Yesatistic, yeah you get one hundred percent, Thank you, queen.
I use a toothbrush made out of recycled stuff. I got it from Woolwords. I think great And anyway, I won't tell you all the other ways that I'm amazing. Instead, I want to play a game with you, which is that I brought in a whole bunch of waste from my house and I want you to tell me what is recyclable great and what is not?
I love this. I play this every week on Instagram on Wednesdays. Yet it's called bingo which bin does each item go in? So we're just doing like a radio version of that.
Oh my gos, I didn't even know that amazing. You'll see here I have a yellow bag from Fluff. This is a cosmetic company that do like sustainable vegan products. I'm pretty sure they gave me this bag. Okay, first item, polystyrene?
Hell no, why not? Do not get that anywhere near your recycling bin. It is so difficult to recycle in Australia's actually being banned completely because it is so problematic because if you think about it, like think about a beanbag, if you put that into your recycling bin, it kind of breaks down and it crumbles and it creates this snow that then goes all throughout the recycling trucks and then it's just virtually impossible for us to actually then
retrieve it and then recycle it. Also, if you think about a recycling conveyor belt that's so lightweight, it's gonna fly off and ping off somewhere and hit somebody in the head and then won't hurt them, but it won't be recycled at all. There are a couple of councils in Sydney that do actually accept these that they're hard to recycle days. But you'll need to look them up again. Feel local councils to see what they do. But generally speaking, get it right away.
This package that I got from Australia Post, it's a cardboard box but it's got the label from O's Post on it.
Yes, So with this one, what I would do is I would separate them and I would put the box into your recycling bin and then that little label into your landfillm Can.
The box have any plastic on it whatsoever?
You can have a little bit like wrapping paper for example, can have a little bit if you have an envelope that has a little plastic window that can go into your recycling bin as is, that's fine, but you don't want to like coat it in sticky tape and then pop that into your recycling.
I always wanted like side trying and separate the envelope, like cut the plastic out.
No need, you're trying too hard on it.
This it is a plastic container that I got, like a tray that you get meat.
Can meat tray. I would say recycle that one.
Even though like what percentage of little plastic bit, Like.
That's small enough that it would be fine, but if it's still got the flappy piece of plastic on it, you need to separate that. Like the film. You need to separate the film from the tray itself.
This purple wrapping paper stuffing kind of stuff that they got in a pr.
Boxsue tissue, paint tissue paper recycling. Also, if you've got compost bins, you can pop that in compost bins as well. Sick.
Okay, I need to get one of those, but I live in an apartment and I don't want worms in my apartment.
Everyone loves word. But you could download the share waste app, and that is an app that connects you with your neighbors who have got a compost bin and want your compost it's amazing. So for example, I've got a compost bin and a worm farm, and then I have all of these random people that pop over and drop off their food waste and food scraps to my house. And what's good about compost it is about forty percent of your actual household bin is made up of things that
could go into your compost bin. So it's kind of one of the simplest ways to completely remove forty percent of your waist from your household. But also when things like banana peels and stuff like that go to landfill, they cook and they create this methane gas, which is a greenhouse gas. Horrible bananas, anything any kind of organic matter kind of sits next to your plastics and everything else like that, and it just creates all of these greenhouse gas emissions.
Oh my god. And where can I put my compost bin just outside? I can't have one in my house. I don't know.
You could have like a small little kitchen one for example, that sits a new bench, and that kind of takes about three or four keyl waste, i'd say, and then you need to pop it. Then you need to pop it into a big compost bin. Or we're starting to see a lot of councils roll out Fogo, which is food and organics recycling, where in your green bin you pop in all of your food scraps.
And what do you do with the compost wants the bin's full outside.
Outside, So then it creates this amazing organic, natural fertilizer which you could use on your indoor plants. Literally, people line up at Bunnings to pay bucket loads of money for fertilizer where you can be creating your own at home, and it regenerates the soil in much better way than any other storeboard compost. Huge I'm going to go buy a little bin this recycling, even with the plastic film on it, even with the plastic film on it, even
with the lid on. So what I would recommend is, this is a milk bottle, And what I would do is I would squish it down and then screw it on because otherwise it's just taking up more space in rubbish truck bins.
This is a bottle of milk ready, Yeah you know it stinks like rancid or milk.
A receipt, No receipts aren't actually paper. They're made from a thermal plastic. So if you kind of get the back of your nail and you scrape along the back, you'll see that it makes like a bit of an indent from the from the pressure, and that means that it's made from plastic. So you cannot actually go into your recycling bin.
Oh my god, David Jones, this blueberry punnet recycling. So pretty much, if you squish something and it pops out back into the shape that it originally was, it's generally speaking, could go into your curb side recycling bin. Oh my god, This Latin lacan if it's empty, aerosols can go into your recycling bin. This makeup packaging container no paper in.
It, So this is too small to go into your curb side recycling bin. I would say, generally speaking, we need items to be over one hundred mills to go into your recycling bin, or they need to be bigger than the size of a credit card. That one's kind of like on the cusp, I would say, of being able to go into your curb side recycling bin or not. But if it's smaller than that, like a little travel shampoo or something like that, then it can't go into your curb side recycling bin.
I can't put this into the recycling but I can put like a hand pump soap that's completely So.
You can't put the pump, but you could put the base. Because if you think about a pump, if you were like to be a scientist and take everything apart, there is a wire spring and then you've got a couple of different types of plastic. So the way that recycling works is when it goes to the actual recycling facilities, they split everything into the different types of plastic. So that's when they use those plastic resin codes and they
go ones, here's two's here, everything like that. But when it comes to all of these e code called comingled materials, so there's multiple different things in them, like a blush palette for example, you're gonna have a mirror, you're gonna have plastic. All of these things too hard for your curb side recycling.
So you can bring it back to the supply usually Mecca Sephora exactly.
And then we actually Banish actually runs a hard to recycle recycling program called BRAD which is all about diverting all of this so you can post it in so for people in rural areas who don't have access to a mecca, they can just post it back to us and we'll recycle it. This laptop cover, is that made from like a near prene or something like that. I would say that's going to be landfill.
Okay, sorry? This is tomato paste in a little tube, in an aluminium tube, I believe.
So yeah, I would say that you could curbside recycle that.
Though. Why it says metal recycles forever? Who aluminium?
Ah? This coat hanger?
No?
Why because look at the shape of that, Like, if that's going to go through some kind of machine, it's just going to get caught up. It's just going to get all messed up through that. So metal coat hangers, plastic coat hangers, cutlery, no, just too weird and wacky for the machines to actually process.
This scrunch shop ball of aluminium.
That's a very nice ball of aluminium. So that is a yes, anything bigger then probably a golf ball. I'd probably go for a tennis ball if I were you, because they're bigger the better.
This bottle with a little hard cap on it.
Is it glass? This is glass? Yes? So that can go in your curb side recycling makeup wipe No, and do not flush those down the toilet as well. They just clog up everything. So landfill Q.
Tip with my ear wax on it.
No, pop that into your nobody wants that. I'll put it back in the bag. And finally blister packs. Blister packs so this is again something that we actually recycle with Brad the hard to recycle program. But this is way too lightweight for your actual curb side recycling bin, so it needs to go to a specialty program.
And finally tissues, no need to.
Go into landfill. Like, nobody wants your snotty tissues. They're not going to turn that into anything. They can't make a new material from snot.
Pizza boxes with grease on them.
Some councils will say yes to curbside recycling, others will say pop them into your organics recycling.
Cool. Okay, well I think we're done.
Great, Thank you, Waddie, no worries. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to the Flex and Frooms Daily podcast.
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