The volunteering tradition

We have a long history of volunteering in Australia. It began with the First Fleet, where I imagine there was not much of a spirit of volunteering among the convicts, and probably even less among the military as they landed on our shores, but from resentment and hardship grew action. From action grew independence and a sense of shared responsibility. From shared responsibility grew volunteering. From volunteering grew community, and the tradition continued.

Those brave young men who answered the call to become our first ANZACs were volunteers; our surf lifesavers are volunteers; our rural fire fighters are volunteers.

And the three quarters of a million people who annually take to their streets, parks, waterways, beaches and bushland on Clean Up Australia Day are volunteers – and they’ll be out in force again on Sunday 7 March.

Each year on this iconic day, volunteers remove thousands of tonnes of rubbish from our environment. Just imagine if those hundreds of thousands of people that get involved on Clean Up Australia Day decided to just sit at home instead of getting out and lending a hand. Those thousands of tonnes of rubbish they remove would just sit there, year after year, polluting our environment, damaging our health and eroding our communities.

Every day volunteers make a valuable contribution to society in both economic and social terms. Without them, we’d be lost, and vital events like Clean Up Australia Day just wouldn’t exist.

The latest ABS statistics reflect this fact. Approximately 35 per cent of the Australian population aged 18 years and over volunteer at least once a fortnight.

Without volunteers, who would take care of the injured wildlife? Who would spend that hour brightening up the day of an elderly person in a nursing home? Who would be there to teach our children how to kick a goal? Who would be there to hand out a blanket to someone in need?

Volunteers are the backbone of our society, they’re what makes our country the great place it is. On Sunday 7 March we’ll see about a million people get out and lend a hand on what will be the 20th anniversary of Clean Up Australia Day. Make sure you’re one of them.

Not everyone is able to dedicate a day a week or a fortnight to volunteering, but a couple of hours on one day of the year to help out our environment is a terrific way to be part of your community.

On this the 20th Anniversary of Clean Up Australia Day, do you have a clean up story that will inspire others?

Ian Kiernan AO

Clean Up Australia Chairman

What a waste

It’s amazing how quickly we upgrade our gadgets these days. It wasn’t so long ago that no one had even heard of an iPhone – now every man and his dog seems to have one in his back pocket.

So what’s happening to everyone’s old phones? And where do our microwaves and other electronic appliances go when we’ve decided they’ve done their dash?

Chances are you threw the old phone, electronic toothbrush, curling wand and countless other electronic goods in the bin. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week suggest that nearly a quarter of electronic equipment and more than half of household appliances thrown out in the 12 months prior to March ended up in our general rubbish bins.

The problem is, while we are fascinated by the latest model of everything, our landfills are clogging up with electronic waste and even worse, much of it also gets illegally dumped in our environment.

On average, we upgrade our computer every 2-5 years, our microwave every 5-8 years, our mobile phone as soon as our plan runs out. We go through countless batteries to keep all our household appliances running – an estimated 8,000 tonnes of alkaline batteries go to the tip every year.

It’s no wonder then that electronic waste, or e-waste, is our fastest growing rubbish type. In fact, it’s being sent to the tip at three times the rate of general waste.

The environmental effects of e-waste are also potentially much more frightening than those of general waste because of what it contains – toxins. Lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, cobalt – your innocent looking household appliances are full of these toxins, and when they’re dumped in landfill or in the environment, those toxins can seep into our groundwater, contaminate the soil and potentially even enter the food chain.

We recently had a breakthrough on e-waste in Australia, with the Federal Government announcing a new recycling scheme for TVs and computers as part of a National Waste Policy. See the details here.

This scheme was developed at the urging of manufacturers – so it’s great to finally see industry and our political leaders working together to come up with a solution for e-waste. But that’s by no means the end of the problem – we all still need to take action at work and at home to help curb our growing e-waste.

What you can do:

AVOID: Buy products that will last and are repairable. You might even consider leasing?

REDUCE: Repair your old appliances and gadgets wherever possible instead of buying new ones.

REUSE: Check if local schools or charities can use your old appliances, and always buy rechargeable batteries and refillable ink cartridges.

RECYCLE: Take your old appliances to be recycled – most councils provide e-waste recycling services.  You can even donate your old mobile phone. Clean Up offers a free service – simply go to our website www.cleanup.org.au for a satchel.

We can’t help the fact that electronic items will go out of date and we’ll need to replace them, but we can try to minimise the impact our e-waste has on the environment.

Does anyone have any e-waste tips?

Ian Kiernan AO

Clean Up Australia Chairman

Bring back the refunds!

I, like many Australians, fondly remember the days when a soft drink can or bottle could be returned for a bit of pocket money. A bottle found on the ground wasn’t simply kicked around, it was picked up, removed from the environment and recycled, and the lucky finder was rewarded for their efforts.

It’s about time we brought back those beverage container refunds.

With our addiction to bottled water continuing to grow, it has never been more important that the scheme be reintroduced. On Clean Up Australia Day each year, volunteers find themselves removing tonnes of beverage containers – beverage containers that could, and should, be recycled.  About 40 per cent of all rubbish collected during this year’s Clean Up Australia Day was beverage related.

Australians are pretty good at recycling at home, but where we fall down is when we’re out and about. It’s when we head to the beach, the park, or our beautiful bush – away from our household recycling bins. What we need to encourage is an incentive to recycle wherever we are, and while protecting our environment for our future generations should be incentive enough, it’s clear we need more.

South Australia has taken the lead and increased its refund from 5 to 10 cents, with great success.  SA enjoys a recycling rate of cans and bottles of between 75-85 per cent while the rate in other states is less than half this. The benefits are there for all to see – waste becoming a resource, reducing the use of virgin materials, lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduced water usage, less contamination in recyclables, the creation of jobs; the list of indisputable benefits goes on. Combine that with the fact that a poll commissioned by Clean Up Australia found that 87 per cent of Australians want a national container refund scheme and it defies belief that our leaders aren’t jumping at the opportunity to take a CD scheme national.

The issue has been on the agenda of the Environmental Protection and Heritage Council – a council made up of State and Federal Environment Ministers – numerous times, and it was there again at their meeting in Perth on 5 November.

But the process stalled  …… again.

Why are we overcomplicating this issue?
Why is the beverage industry so threatened by the introduction of a solution like container refunds?
Why are our political leaders ignoring the communities they’ve been elected to represent?
Why do we continue to accept the waste of finite resources?

At Clean Up, we’re doing our best to force the wheels of change. Why? Because I know there are direct environmental benefits from a refund scheme on containers; because I also know that such a scheme provides income for those who are prepared to make the effort to collect and return their containers; and because I know our kids will also have another source of pocket money.

How do I know this? Because with the money I raised from bottle refunds when I was a kid I bought my very first boat.

Does anyone else out there remember how good those refunds were?

Ian Kiernan AO

Clean Up Australia Chairman