Opinion - Take care of your own garbage!
(warning - this article contains a personal rant!)
As part of their obligation to meet waste reduction targets set by the State Government (reduce waste to 66% by 2014) the new three bin strategy implemented by Penrith council has caused an uproar among it's residents.
We were amazed at the amount of garbage produced by each household and even ashamed when we remember the amount of garbage we produced as a household when we were children.
We had a family of five and only had one garbage bin (the old round variety, not the big wheelie bins of today). We had no garbage bags and wet food scraps were composted or wrapped in newspaper. Meat came wrapped in butchers paper - not in a plastic tray covered with film. Vegetables came in a box or paper bag, not in a plastic tray. Nappies were not disposable, they were cleaned and reused. No packaging, no waste. Meals like casseroles were prepared from scratch using fresh ingredients, not ready made sauces in bottles and packets. As kids we would take a lemonade bottle back to the corner store for a small refund (which we inevitably spent on lollies!) Nuts and bolts were sold individually, and so many other things didn't seem to require the mountain of packaging we have today. I even remember groceries coming home in paper sacks.
Perhaps the answer is that we all start taking responsibility for our waste instead of bagging the efforts of our local councils.
Manufacturing and packaging simply has to change, as consumers we have the ultimate power over these things. Our demand for convenience goods is what fuels production of these items. One report on the news stated that each household wastes over $600 worth of food each year. We've made our lives so 'busy' we have eliminated one critical element - time. Time to prepare food from scratch, time to clean things naturally, time to spend with our children, time to garden - time to be a sustainable part of the environment.
We were appalled to think that some residents might be more concerned with their own convenience and costs than having enough vision to understand that we cannot keep creating landfills, we cannot keep blaming politicians and councils for our problems. The buck stops here - with us. We just have to take responsibility at some level before things will change.
We'd interested in ideas and innovations to help us manage and reduce our waste. If you've been working on reducing your waste, we'd like to hear about it. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
