Australian Paper, the country’s largest paper mill, has thrown its support behind Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week that begins on Monday, 9 November.
Australian Paper, the country’s largest paper mill, has thrown its support behind Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week that begins on Monday, 9 November.
The producer of Reflex recycled paper is sponsoring the Friday File Fling event and has offered a free carton of Reflex White 100% recycled paper to the first 500 workplaces that register for a Fling.
Australian Paper is launching one of its biggest integrated campaigns on recycled papers during National Recycling Week in support of its Make it Australian Recycled partnership with Planet Ark. The partnership aims to increase recycling of office paper, reduce Australian waste paper going to landfill and increase the use of locally made, high-recycled content paper by business, households and government.
The Make it Australian Recycled event will be held in Bourke St Mall, Melbourne on Friday, 13 November. Large bales of shredded waste paper will be on display along with the landfill calculator to allow consumers to calculate for themselves how much landfill can be diverted by buying recycled paper.
National Recycling Week, which runs from 9th to 15th November, will highlight the environmental benefits of re-use and recycling programs in a range of community events held across the country.
“Understanding which items can be recycled at the kerbside is the first step in establishing successful recycling habits,” said Brad Gray, Planet Ark’s head of campaigns. “Research suggests that contamination in recycling bins is not always due to a lack of care or concern, but rather due to genuine misunderstandings about what can be recycled."
A new report from Planet Ark titled The Seven Secrets of Successful Recyclers found that 50% of people surveyed got at least one item wrong when asked if it is recyclable. For example, only 34% of Australians know that empty aerosols cans are recyclable in their kerbside bins.
“It’s surprising that more than half of Australians wrongly believe that aerosol cans can’t be recycled,” said Gray. “In fact, they are made from recyclable steel or aluminium. Even though many people use aerosols everyday for products like deodorants they still hold on to old ideas. The research shows people report having been told to keep aerosol cans out of the recycling which is a hangover from the past. Once they are empty it is perfectly safe to put them in the recycling.”
The survey also shows that 26% of people sometimes or always put their recycling in a plastic bag, then into the bin. However, items contained within the plastic bags end up being sent to landfill as the systems in the sorting facility can’t separate the various materials and the bags clog the machines. Recycling must be loose in the recycling bin to be sorted effectively.
Local council recycling options can be found on Planet Ark’s RecyclingNearYou.com.au website – a service which provides reuse, recycling and safe disposal information for a wide range of different materials.
National Recycling Week 2015 is made possible thanks to associate sponsors Australian Packaging Covenant, Bingo Bins and 'Cartridges 4 Planet Ark', and supporting sponsors Australian Paper, Blackmores, Flooring Xtra & Dunlop Flooring, MobileMuster, and Officeworks.
Throughout the year, Planet Ark provides information through the Recycling Near You website and hotline (1300 733 712) for recycling at home, and the Business Recycling website and hotline (1300 763 768) for recycling at work.
* Australian Paper last month warned that its $90 million recycling plant at Maryvale in the Latrobe Valley was operating at less than one third of capacity. “Unless we can more than triple our usage of recycled fibre, the social and economic benefits of the plant, including 250 flow-on jobs in the local wastepaper value chain, and emissions savings from 80,000 tonnes of wastepaper annually diverted from landfill, will not be realised,” said Craig Dunn, senior marketing manager sustainability, Australian Paper.