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For 12 months from April 2017, Elli Webb’s house contained everything you would expect for an old Queenslander — except a bin.
Elli Webb’s top recycling tips:
- Reduce and reuse. Instead of buying a single tub of yoghurt, buy a large one and then you can reuse that large tub for storage for something in your house.
- Lunch box reinvention. It doesn’t have to be an expensive container, you can reuse margarine of butter container and kids can decorate it and make it unique and their own.
- Bring your own storage. A lot of butchers and delis will now let you take your own containers in.
- Use a different wrap. Instead of using Glad Wrap, use an eco-wrap. A bee’s wax wrap that’s just like Glad Wrap — you can rinse and reuse it.
- Clean differently. Instead of using paper towels, use cloth. Wash and reuse them, they just go in the washing machine — easy.
- Anything that has a zip lock bag, what you can do is rinse that out and take something to school or store something rather than empty it out and throw away.
Instead, Ms Webb crammed her entire household waste into a jar.
Now, she continues to live out the lessons learned during her environmental mission as well as teach others about sustainability.
The year-long mission saw Ms Webb’s home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast produce less than 1 per cent of the average Australian household waste output.
Her jar ended up weighing just 152 grams, with 51 kilograms of recycling produced through the year.
According to Blue Environment’s 2018 National Waste Report, Australia produced 67 million tonnes of waste in 2016-17.
Household waste represented 9.7 million tonnes, with 5.4 million tonnes of that going to landfill.
Local council waste collection generated an average 269 kilogram of waste per person.
While it took Ms Webb a while for her to make her new lifestyle a habit, she said she quickly discovered ways to be inventive with her waste.
“Everything had to change … it took about a month to change the habits and then it just became the norm,” Ms Webb said.
“In the first week I actually dropped a plate and broke it and in the past all I would do is wrap it in newspaper [and] put it in the bin, but that’s landfill waste.
“I left it on the bench for a week or so and realised ‘oh, I could smash it up and use it in the bottom of a pot for drainage in a pot plant’, so it’s rethinking before you throw it away.”
To achieve the incredible environmental feat, everything from Ms Webb’s personal care to her diet demanded compromise.
“I cut my finger once and didn’t want to use a band-aid because that’s rubbish, so I went outside and found cobwebs and wrapped that around my finger — the cob web actually makes the blood clot,” she said.
“You can’t get people to do that … but it works.”
For sanitary needs, Ms Webb said there was “a diva cup — a cup that that you can use instead of a tampon so there was no pattern of rubbish.
“I made everything from scratch — I went to the green grocer [and] I actually found I didn’t go to the supermarket — rarely, maybe once a month,” Ms Webb said.
Reuse better than recycling
Ms Webb said clean environmental living began with people’s approach to waste disposal itself.
“We’re so quick at just emptying something and throwing it directly in the bin — reuse is actually better than recycling,” she said.
“When you put something in your trolley, you take it home, you consume what’s inside that package [then] you’re left with something to throw away.”
It was essential health products for herself and her dog that eventually made it through Ms Webb’s strict waste disposal filters.
“Panadol packets — actually, fair few of those. Flea and tick — like little ampoules for my animals … a bag of peanuts … someone came and brought instant coffee tubes, so I have that as waste but that’s pretty much it,” Ms Webb said.
According to Blue Environment’s 2018 National Waste Report, Australians created 67 million tonnes of waste between 2016-17, up from 66 tonnes from 2014-15, with each person generating 2.7 tonnes of waste in 2016-17.
Australian environmentalist, author and science journalist Tanya Ha said each Australian family produced enough rubbish to fill a three-bedroom house, creating about 2.25 kilograms of waste each per day.
Despite her rubbish-filled jar standing as a testament to her amazing efforts, Ms Webb said some things never changed.
“I thought after the first year when it ended I would go back, but I haven’t,” she said.
“I’ve actually continued and in the last year — I have put my bin out twice since I finished — just remember you buy your rubbish.”
Topics:
recycling-and-waste-management,
qld,
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