The Ancient Egyptians left us their pyramids. What will we leave for future generations? In a way it’s a good thing that China has stopped taking much of our waste . It could be the wake -up call we need. We may finally notice what a problem it is. Locally it’s exacerbated by the fact that the biggest recycling company in Melbourne to whom we used to ship ours, has gone into liquidation, so now it may all have to go into landfill. So much for all that careful recycling, and this is just the waste that is recycled. Much of it still isn’t. With the exception of Melbourne, where the main recycling depot is, most of Australia still only recycles about 34% as does the USA, a rate at which it has stalled since about 2010 when recycling first became an issue. This seems to be as far as voluntary recycling can take us. It’s true that plastic represents only around 40% of the waste stream and plastic packaging even less, but plastic is so ubiquitous and persistent i...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people