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Cr Schuster Launches Nappy Campaign

On the 22nd of November, SMRC Chairman Cameron Schuster kicked off a campaign to help educate the public about the correct disposable of nappies through the Bounty Bag program at the Regional Resource Recovery Centre in Canning Vale.

Photo (clockwise):
Anne Pettit, Cr Cameron Schuster, Emma Baker, Patrick Hay, Sarah Dimmock, Geoff Atkinson, Bronwyn Lee and Libby Eustance

The campaign will target 21,000 new parents in the Perth metropolitan area over the next year and is aiming to help reduce the number of disposable nappies ending up in recycling bins and in the litter stream. Funding for the campaign has been made possible thanks to a $10,000 Community Litter Grant from Keep Australia Beautiful, as well as contributions from the other regional councils around Perth.

The event was attended by representatives from Keep Australia Beautiful, WALGA, WMRC, EMRC, MRC, SMRC and launched, what is hoped to be, an effective campaign.

There’s no better time of the year to catch up with friends and family and share gifts than at Christmas. Amidst the celebration, many households often generate more waste than normal. Much of the waste generated around Christmas is food waste and packaging. It’s better to try and avoid the waste in the first place, so here are a few important tips:

Consider giving gifts which create minimal or no waste at all, or gifts that have been repurposed or recycled.
Support your local community by buying locally made gifts or even consider giving an experience such as a massage, rock climbing or a game of golf.
Nobody likes to wash up a sink full of dirty dishes, but you can ditch the disposables! Set up a wash up station and ask people to wash as they go. Many hands make light work.
Plan your Christmas meals and be realistic about portion sizes to help minimise food waste.
This boxing day is National Leftovers Day, so learn to love your leftovers! Parties are often over catered, but rather than throwing food away, send guests home with some food and make the most of what’s left. You can also find many tasty leftover recipes on the Recycle Right app.
Provide multiple labelled bins. Make it easy for your guests to put the right thing in the right bin, so that our resource recovery efforts aren’t wasted.

If you do have to dispose of something, make sure you put it in the right bin so it can be recovered and recycled correctly. If you’re not sure of which bin to put your waste in, download the Recycle Right app from the App Store or Google Play, or simply visit the desktop version at m.recycleright.wa.gov.au/

Jacaranda Festival - Applecross

On Saturday the 26th of November, the Recycle Right team attended the 2016 Applecross Rotary Jacaranda Festival, with many people braving the heat to explore the more than 130 stalls.

In partnership with the City of Melville, the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council provided public place recycling to the festival for the 6th year in a row.

The day was a great success and the Recycle Right stall saw lots of visitors pass through the area participating in upcycling children’s activities, as well as people of all ages taking the time to learn more about waste and recycling.

Problem Waste

Christmas Lights & Tinsel

Whilst many of the items we use for Christmas decorations each year are made from materials that are recyclable, many of these items should not be placed in your household bins. Long, stringy items such as tinsel, Christmas lights and even long string bits of packaging and plastic will get tangled in the machinery at the processing facilities and can cause serious damage and downtime.

If these items are still in good condition, donate them to charity or pass them on to a friend or family member.

If you do have to dispose of tinsel, it’s best to save it for your next verge collection, whilst old Christmas lights can be taken to your nearest drop off facility.

For more information on what to do with other unusual items this Christmas, download the recycle right app or visit recycleright.wa.gov.au.

Recycle Right and the Garden Gurus

You may have noticed Recycle Right on the recent launch of Waterwise Gardening with the Garden Gurus. During November we featured in two episodes which looked at some of the ways to help ensure we are all doing the right thing.

The first two episodes are available at recycleright.wa.gov.au/recycle-right-garden-gurus-tv-2016/ .

Be sure to tune in for another fantastic episode on Sunday the 4th of December at 3:00pm on Channel 9 where we will be taking a look at some of the ways you can minimise your impact on the environment by reducing your waste!

National Recycling Week

It all happened this National Recycling Week with the Recycle Right team taking part in all the fun that this time of the year brings.

The week saw 6 school groups and 2 community groups come for tours of the RRRC, an article in the West Australian newspaper, an episode about how to recycle right on Waterwise Gardening with the Garden Gurus and we even launched a competition for schools to the pallet garden we had on display at this year’s Royal Show!

City of Melville takes Outstanding Achievement Award for this year’s Garage Sale Trail

With an entire team in attendance at the WA Kick off session, Melville proved they were a force to be reckoned with from the very beginning and have received an Outstanding Achievement Award at this year’s Garage Sale Trail Council Awards.

Utilising a multi-faceted approach including social media, community group involvement, local newspapers and elected members, Melville succeeded in reaching top of the WA Leaderboard with 223 sales and stalls registrations, congratulations Melville!

The Southern Metropolitan Regional Council was also recognised, receiving a special mention at the awards.

The Message in a Plastic Bottle is being shared across high schools in the SMRC region

Waste Wise Schools has developed a cross curriculum unit for Year 7 students. Students study the topic of bottled water and plastic waste in science, maths, geography and English, whilst engaging with some very important sustainability issues. This amazing resource supports collaboration between different learning areas and provides students with not only the tools to think more sustainably about the world around them, but also practice essential NAPLAN skills.

Waste Wise Schools is a program of the Waste Authority and offers resources and support for all Western Australian schools to plan, implement and maintain waste minimising projects such as recycling, composting and worm farming. They regularly run free teacher development workshops to help your school reduce waste and become more sustainable.

Find out more by visiting wasteauthority.wa.gov.au/programs/wws/.

Paintback Drop Off Day

Paintback is an industry initiative to divert architectural and decorative waste paint and packaging from landfill. Paintback will be hosting 2 collection events in the Metropolitan region of WA in December 2016 for trade painters and householders to drop off waste paint and packaging at no additional cost.

North of the River: You can drop off your paint on the 3rd of December at the City of Wanneroo Operations Depot, 1204 Wanneroo Rd, Ashby,

South of the River: You can drop off your paint on the 10th of December to the City of Rockingham’s Council Carpark, Ameer St, Rockingham.

To help organise the events, if you intend on taking your leftover paint to these drop off days, please register your intent here: paintback.com.au/trade/registration_wa/

To find out your nearest HHW collection points year round, download the Recycle Right App from the App Store or Google Play, or visit recycleright.wa.gov.au

Would You Like To Join The Waste Recycling Education Network?

If you are interested in waste and sustainability, educating the community and making a difference, the Waste Recycling Education Network needs you!

All it takes is a few hours of your time to attend a meeting and assist with a community waste education project. Everyone is welcome to join.

The group meet on a Thursday every two months and will be involved in some exciting projects in the community in 2016. If you have any questions or would like to talk about joining, you can contact Taryn Davis at the SMRC on 9329 2700 or email tdavis@smrc.com.au

Tours of the Regional Resource Recovery Centre

With school holidays on the way, the coming months are a fantastic opportunity to come out to the Regional Resource Recovery Centre to find out what happens to your waste. If you’d like to visit our facility in Canning Vale, we have a number of Community Tours available over the next two months.

Upcoming dates:
• Saturday 3rd of December
• Saturday 14th of January

Bookings are essential. Call Emma on 9256 9528 or contact her via email tours@smrc.com.au

To provide feedback or request an accessible version of this document please contact us.

Copyright © 2016 Resource Recovery Group, All rights reserved.

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