Christmas 07 Newsletter

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Wastedaq

Reduce – The amount of rubbish put out at the kerbside each week is going down and the amount of recycling is going up. Our community diverts 40 percent of household waste to recycling by weight and 62 percent by volume. Many recyclables are light and bulky so they take up lots of space in your rubbish bag. Save your money and the planet by getting them into your recycling crate.

Reuse – Sophie's latest survey at New World shows 2 in 5 of us says 'no thanks' to plastic bags, around 40 percent. Helen Clarke has committed to bagging the habit! Encourage your friends and neighbours to do the same. If you forget your bags ask for a cardboard box.

Recycle – Wanaka people are saving just over two shipping containers of recycling from going to landfill every single day. Over one year, that adds up to 765 shipping containers worth of recycling. If you put those shipping containers end to end, they would stretch for 4.6 kilometres!

That's a huge amount of space that would otherwise be taken up in the landfill, as well as energy and water that have been saved by making products out of recycled materials instead of starting from scratch.

The NSW Government has come up with a way to estimate these savings. According to their calculator, in one year Wanaka's recycling saved as much greenhouse gases as taking 160 cars permanently off the roads. We also saved eight Olympic swimming pools worth of water (19,500 litres), and the amount of energy used by 890 households in a year (19,200 gigajoules). Go Wanaka recyclers.

And when you’re out shopping, look for recycled products and recycled packaging.