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REDcycle your plastic

By Joy Grinham

Recently the Border Mail reported on the collection of REDcycle plastics, naming a Lavington supermarket as having the lowest collection rate of recyclable plastics in the state.

Three Wodonga supermarkets were in the top third, and the Albury store recycled 693kg of soft plastics. Shoppers were commended for being part of reducing the amount of waste going into landfill. Victorian stores topped with 266,690kg recycled.

I like to think of the weekly cycle of rubbish collection as a game. It is a game that when I think I have won, I learn something new, and plan to get it 100 per cent right – next week. Last week, it was the red bin. This week it is the yellow bin.  Will I get all 100 per cent recyclable rubbish right this week?  What do I do with those soft plastic bags now?

Soft plastics, such as bags, wrappings, frozen food packets, soft shopping bags are not acceptable in the yellow bin but should all be put together for dropping off into the REDcycle bins outside the Coles and Woolies store.

There are drop-off bins near the checkouts in Albury and Wodonga.

REDcycle is a recycling program that diverts flexible plastics – the ones you can’t put in your kerbside recycling bin – from landfill and turns them into a material that can be used to manufacture new products. If you can scrunch it in your hand, it can be REDcycled.

When shopping refuse to take any plastic bags, and reuse the soft bags made for fruit/vegetables and those Boomerang Bags that you have remembered to bring in with you from the car. I have a reminder on dashboard about the ‘green bag’ before going shopping.

Alternatively, you can reload into the bags at the car, before returning the trolley.

REDcycle provides manufacturers with prepared materials that would otherwise have gone into landfill.

Roads are using RECONOPHALT; every kilometre of two-lane road contains the equivalent of 530,000 plastic bags, 168,000 glass bottles and 12,500 toner cartridges.

Manufacturers of garden furniture are  also using REDcycle plastic. You would be surprised where a plastic bag ends up….

Learn about more items that can be added to the REDcycle at www.redcycle.net.au

Image: REDcycle ready reckoner

 

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