It’s a satisfying feeling to take out just one bag of rubbish a week. When you remove food scraps and soft plastics from your general waste bin there’s usually not much left.
Here’s how you can reduce your weekly waste to a bag a week:
Recycle your food scraps
Up to 50% of household general waste is food that can be turned into nutrient-rich compost for soil. Food rotting in landfill produces methane, a greenhouse gas with 25 times more global warming potential than carbon dioxide.
Many local councils offer organics recycling bins for food scraps they collect from residents and turn into compost. Ask your local council if they offer this service and find out what can and can’t go into your organics bin.
Using a BioBag with a kitchen caddy diverts more food scraps from landfill to compost. Certified compostable is the only type of bag that can go into an organics recycling bin. Never put bags labelled ‘degradable’ or ‘biodegradable’ into an organics or compost bin because they contain plastic.
Recycle your soft plastics
The other half of your household bin is probably soft plastic. All scrunchable plastic including food packaging, cling wrap and even the plastic mesh bags for fruits and vegetables can be put into a plastic bag and taken to a REDcycle bin at participating Coles and Woolworths stores. Always remember your reusable shopping bags and use ‘crate to bench’ for online delivery to avoid using unnecessary plastic bags.
Recycle the usual recyclables
Be sure to recycle whatever can go into your commingled recycling bin including cardboard, plastic bottles, glass jars, aluminium and steel cans. Check what your local council accepts using the RecycleSmart app because regions can vary and do your research to avoid contamination.
Reduce plastic pollution
If you want to reduce your carbon footprint even more, use a compostable bin liner instead of a plastic bag that takes hundreds of years to break down and creates toxic residues.
Completely reducing plastic is the sole aim of BioBags made from compostable polymers that break down into organic matter with no toxic residues or microplastics left behind, says BioBag World Australia Director Scott Morton.
“Only 9 percent of plastic waste is being recycled and the vast majority — 79 percent — is accumulating in landfills or in the natural environment as litter.
“Diverting plastic from landfill and the marine environment is BioBag’s number one goal. No plastic should be disposed of to landfill because it’s a waste of a valuable resource. Most of us are aware that plastic bags, including degradable and some biodegradable bags, leave micro-plastic pollution behind. Every piece of plastic ever created is still somewhere, unless it’s been burnt.”
“A BioBag doesn’t need to be heated to high temperatures to break down. If it doesn’t make it into a compost or organics bin, a BioBag will still break down anywhere there’s oxygen and micro-organisms, whereas plastic will live on and enter the eco-system for hundreds of years,” Scott said.
The 30L BioBag bin liner fits most household bins: https://biobagworld.com.au/product/biobag-30l-banded-retail-roll-of-bags/
