The TRC Jindabyne team doing our part to clean up as part of the Lakeside Scavenge community event. The team spent their lunch break picking up litter in the areas surrounding the Office Hub, with over 100 cigarette butts and 4 bags of rubbish collected!  It is a confronting reminder on the important role we all need to play in saving the environment! 

Amongst the bags of rubbish were a lot of used coffee cups, ABC’s War on Waste published some interesting statistics stating:

  • 1 billion coffee cups are used in Australia every year – these are not recycled
  • This is enough to circumnavigate the world two and a half-times
  • Most people don’t realise that coffee cups can’t be recycled
  • 50,000 cups are used every half hour.

It is great to see some coffee shops offering discounts for bringing a reusable cup, a fantastic initiative!

Some other alarming statistics from ABC’s War on Waste:

  • Australia is one of the most wasteful countries in the developed world
  • Every year the waste we generate is growing at twice the rate of our population
  • Australia uses over 10 million plastic bags a day – plastic bags are causing huge problems in our oceans
  • 85% of soft plastics from bags and packaging ends up in landfill
  • Australia pioneered recycling programs in the 60s starting initiatives such as Clean Up Australia Day
  • The average Australian family throws out over $3.5k worth of food every year – that’s about a tonne!
  • Approximately 1/5th of bought food is thrown away – one in every five shopping bags!
  • Australian supermarkets and other retailers send approximately 170k tonnes of food to landfill each year
  • If global food waste was a country, it would be the third largest green house gas emitter behind China and the US
  • 6,000 KG of clothes are thrown out every 10 minutes in Australia — goes straight to landfill
  • 36,000KG of clothes are thrown out every hour
  • 2700 litres of water to produce one item of clothing – enough drinking water for 3 years
  • 15 thousand bottles and cans are thrown away every single minute
  • Only 20% of Australian household plastic waste is recycled.
  • Plastic is designed to last forever. However, we’re often using single-use plastic items for only a couple of minutes.
  • The very first plastic straw you ever used is still somewhere on Earth.

Helping to clean up our community honours our commitment to the environment which is a part of TRC’s Sustainability Policy.

It’s time to take action!