WOW in Curriculum.pdf - Wipe Out Waste - WOW

Waste Minimisation
Currently over 1 million tonnes of solid waste is sent to landfi ll in SA per year.
That equates to almost 1 tonne / person / year in SA (or over 2kg per day).
South Australia’s strategic plan aims to reduce this by 25% by 2014.
To create a sustainable future, we must act now to reduce waste at school, at home and at work.
The Waste Hierarchy is an accepted philosophy for
prioritising and guiding efforts to manage waste. Waste
avoidance and reduction are the optimal approach to
waste management, followed by reuse, recycling and
recovery, with treatment and disposal of waste the least
preferred options.
Schools and communities are generally familiar with the
concept of the 3Rs (or 5Rs, including rethink and refuse).
These are outlined below, and explained in terms of
priority and effectiveness.
It’s important to remember that the 3Rs of
waste reduction are not equal!
Reducing the volume of products we consume is the
most important of the 3Rs because it reduces our impact
on the environment the most. Rethinking the types of
products we purchase and refusing excess packaging
are important aspects of avoiding and reducing waste.
Reusing materials comes next in the waste hierarchy.
When we reuse, we save more than just the material
from which a product is made. Large quantities of energy
that we can’t see and don’t think about – ‘embedded /
embodied’ energy – are also part of every product,
built into it from mining to manufacture to disposal with
transportation involved at every stage of its life.
Recycling lessens our environmental impact to
a smaller degree than reducing or reusing. While
recycling conserves energy and raw materials, it also
requires energy to collect, sort, clean, melt or pulp, and
remanufacture recycled materials into new items. With
some materials, each round of recycling diminishes the
quality of the recovered materials.
For these reasons, it is important to reduce and reuse as
much as possible and only then resort to recycling.
WOW - Wipe Out Waste: A program of Zero Waste SA delivered by KESAB environmental solutions
4
Recycle is only
halfway up the
hierarchy . . .
Waste Hierarchy
Waste: Beyond Recycling
AVOID
DISPOSE
Recycling?
You are here!