The amount of waste generated in Australia has been growing fast on account of the materially intensive economy. The past decade has seen a doubling of waste generation from 22.7 million tonnes in 1996-97 to 43.8 million tonnes in 2006-2007. The areas with the largest populations produced the most waste while those with a relatively less population produced less wastes. The total volume of waste generation is growing faster than the country's GDP.
The three strategies of environmental waste management are reduce, reuse, and recycle. The last strategy is probably the simplest way of going green and reducing the amount of wastes in the environment. Recycling is the processing of used materials into new items to prevent wastage of potentially useful materials. It is the essential component in the waste reduction and management process.
Wastes in Australia are disposed of in many ways. One of which is through depositing in landfills. This is an unsustainable means of waste management because most trash deposited in landfills never decomposes. Landfills also get overfilled and leak pollutants that contaminate groundwater and even the air.
Recyclable materials can be collected and separated into different categories for the recycling. The materials that are recyclable include gypsum, tires, electronic items, aluminium, glass, cardboard, batteries, paper and even cell phones. Most of these materials are limited resources that are 100 per cent recyclable.
The recycling process for most materials is quite simple and inexpensive. For instance, Gypsum recycling involves taking the waste materials, removing any contaminants present, separating the material from its paper backing and re-using it. This material is mostly used in the manufacture of drywall. Its manufacturers can create drywall using a quarter or more of the recycled material. The recycled material can also be used to make compost, fertilizer, creating golf greens and cement manufacture among others.
Sustainability is very important for the future of the world's economy. Recycling also has huge significance on the environment. It reduces the amount of wastes deposited into landfills. This helps not just in preventing pollution but also in creating and conserving space that could be used for other activities. In addition, recycling allows materials such as aluminium and glass to be reused; this helps to conserve the materials used to produce the recycled products. Recycling such products uses less energy than manufacturing new ones. This conserves energy and reduces greenhouse emissions from industries that manufacture these products.
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This article is brought to you by Ecogypsum Gypsum & Plasterboard Recycling, for more information please visit us at http://www.ecogypsum.com.au/ .
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