Australian waste Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Australian waste - Essay ExampleThe most polluted sites in Australia include transport sites, roadsides, park/waterfront aras, rivers and creeks, school grounds, coastal/beach areas, as intumesce as shops and mall(a)s. A recent trend exists that seeks to move away from burying and burning of waste in Australia towards its reuse and recycling. This electric switch towards sustainable development and conservation ideals with regards to waste disposal, as well as policies aimed at recycling, reusing, reduction of generation, and extraction of energy from the waste have caught on in Australia. Since the 1990s, household waste recycling has become more popular. Reasons for this trend can be explained by the presence of kerbside recycling raising commodity prices, as well as increased levies for land fill services to prohibitive levels. However, mobile phones have introduced a new dilemma since they contain harmful products. This has necessitated novel slipway of disposal. AUSTRALIAN W ASTE Australia generates approximately one tonne of waste every year that is sent into a landfill. After the United States and Israel, Australia ranks as the third largest producers of landfill among unquestionable countries. Significantly, most of this waste is resultant from goods that Australians do not even use with waste of over $10.5 billion per year occurring. This habit has begun developing in the archaean 20th century as ideas of convenience and hygiene gave rise to disposable products, which was justified because the consumer was assured of un-contaminated products. Buying into disposability is easy because new products are cheaper than fixing a broken one. However, this kind of disposability is a fantasy that exists because Australians do not have to see, smell, or handle their waste. This is unlike natural systems where waste is critical in the caution of life and, thitherfore, is not removed, but used as a resource for another system. While organic material in nature can go and be used to create something new, this is not possible for industrial objects. It, therefore, becomes important to recognize the regenerative power that waste can have. Australias recycling habits, however, have been improving, although there is room for improvement. The most important waste management principle, including recycling, repair, reuse, and reduce, is refuse. Australians are encouraged not to buy a lot of products to begin with since the realization of a sustainable environment also needs a reduction in consumption (OConnor, 2007). For fourteen years, plastics make up the majority of waste collected in Australia with 31.75 of all collected waste being plastics. Miscellaneous items like cigarette butts made up 17.7% of all crank. Metal, especially aluminium ranked third at 14.6%, followed by glass at 13.1%, and finally paper at fifth accounting for 12.6% of all collected rubbish (Australia Bureau of Stastistics, 2007). Other material included polystyrene and rubber. These are the major sources of rubbish in Australia. When it comes to rubbish items, cigarette butts rank first accounting for 29.6% of items surveyed. Alcoholic beverage containers made of glass were second with 5.4%. The other rubbish items in order of prevalence include confectionary and plastic chip bags, plastic bottle caps, pieces of glass, PET drink containers, metal items, especially aluminium, and paper. The most polluted sites in Australia include transport sites,