Obsessive recycler shows off two months of trash and it’s miniscule

An extreme recycler has showed off two months worth of waste and shared the four tricks she used to cut her household waste by this much.

It’s not unusual to catch me in the communal bin room of my apartment block rifling though the rubbish while tutting to myself.

Plastic bags in the recycling bin! Glass beer bottles in the general waste! Once I start sorting through it, I just can’t stop.

Truth be told, I’m obsessed with rubbish.

I first realised I had a problem when I found myself glaring at anyone with a single-use coffee cup. The problem is, pretty much everyone in Australia uses single-use coffee cups. We love them so much we go through 1 billion a year. Where do they all go? Does anyone care? It drives me mad.

Then three years ago I became obsessed with plastic bags. I did the maths on bin bags alone and realised I was using over 100 a year to collect my rubbish in. Putting plastic inside plastic to go to landfill – it made so sense.

That’s when I decided to ditch bin bags altogether and sort my rubbish instead. This led to a complete overhaul of my waste – and in many ways, my life.

These days I’d struggle to fill a regular-sized kitchen bin in one year. In fact, pictured below is all the waste my partner and I have created in the past two months that will go into the red general waste bin.

In there is a tube of toothpaste, a few receipts and stickers that came on a new vacuum. Everything else I’ve consumed in the past eight weeks has been reused, recycled or composted.

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Two months worth of rubbish barely covers the bottom of my neglected kitchen bin.

When you consider that most of Australia’s general waste goes into landfill and our plastic waste gets stockpiled in warehouses or shipped to South-East Asia to be burnt illegally, then reducing our waste is key to keeping our planet clean and habitable.

It will also mean future generations don’t have to deal with piles of stinking waste that we created before they were even born.

If you want to do your bit then here are four easy ways to start recycling like a pro.

RECYCLE SOFT PLASTICS

I can guarantee that a lot of your bin is filled with soft plastic – biscuits wrappers, net bags for fruit, crisp bags, frozen food bags and plastic carrier bags. These plastics cannot go in your yellow recycling bin and instead need to be taken to Woolies or Coles to be recycled – there is a bin at the front of every store and they have to take them. These plastics are then turned into benches, socks, shops signs and all manner of things.

I wash and dry any plastics that might has residue on them such as frozen food bags and then collect them in a reusable bag to take when I go shopping. Too easy!

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Taking your soft plastic to supermarkets is a great way to keep plastic out of landfill.

Once I started separating soft plastics, it made me realise how much I was using. So now I try not to use it where possible. I opt for pasta that comes in cardboard boxes or shop in bulk buy stores, but sometimes this isn’t possible or is too expensive.

I also use my own reusable bags to buy fruit and veg in the supermarket and avoid buying any fresh produce that’s pre-packaged. Most fruit and veg has its own protective barrier and doesn’t need a layer of plastic to save it.

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Buy dried goods in cardboard if you can. Soft plastics are best avoided where possible.

It can take 1000 years for soft plastics to break down and it’s literally killing wildlife and littering our land and oceans, so this is a really good place to start if you want to do your bit.

CUT DOWN ON HARD PLASTICS

Soft drink bottles, shampoo bottles, fruit cartons, meat trays, razors, takeaway containers, toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, milk cartons, laundry soap bottles, smoothie cups, straws. We are drowning in plastic!

I never buy water in a plastic bottle – I have a reusable bottle that I carry everywhere and we’re so lucky in Australia that there are heaps of places to fill it. As they can’t even be recycled, I don’t buy coffee in single-use cups either, instead I use a Keep Cup or sit in a cafe to drink it.

I also don’t get a takeaway if it comes in plastic – pizzas are a good option or even ask your local restaurant if you can BYO box for them to fill.

One hard plastic that is really easy to cut from your life is shampoo, conditioner and shower gel bottles. There are loads of amazing body and shampoo bars out there that create little or no waste at all.

Use shampoo bars and a metal razor to save on plastic. They look pretty too.

I use a Ethique Pinkalicious shampoo bar, The Guardian conditioner and In Your Face cleanser, which you can buy at Priceline or online. Then I just pick up a cheap $2 bar of soap from Woolies and that’s everything I need to stay clean – no plastic!

In Australia alone we send 1000 tonnes of toothbrushes to landfill each year so I use a bamboo toothbrush and also bought a metal razor.

COLLECT BITS AND BOBS

Little bits of plastic and metal cause problems at recycling plants by getting stuck in the netting and jamming machines. Help out your Aussie mates who work in recycling and sort those pesky bits of waste.

I have an empty can in my cupboard that I put small bits of foil and metal tops from beer bottles in. Once it’s two-thirds full then I crush the top and put it in the recycling.

Collect stray metal and plastic and group together so they don’t clog recycling machines.

I also do the same with annoying bits of plastic such a bread bag tags and milk bottle tops. I put them in a Nuttlex box and then put the lid on and put it in the recycling.

COMPOST, COMPOST, COMPOST!

When I decided to stop using my kitchen bin, fruit and veg waste was my biggest challenge. I live in a one-bedoom apartment and don’t have a garden. That’s when I discovered the Bokashi inside compost bin at Bunnings.

It’s a compact bin that can fit on a work surface or balcony that fruit and veg waste can go in. You spray it with a microbe solution so it breaks down quickly and there’s no smell. There’s a tap on it so you can use the liquid as fertiliser and then I take the broken down waste to a communal garden down my street.

Store your compost waste in a box in the fridge and then take it to a compost bin or communal garden.

To make it easy, I put a box next to the chopping board while I’m cooking and throw all my scraps in there.

Composting means fruit and veg waste can be used to fertilise our beautiful land rather than sit in landfill. Anyone who has a garden has no excuse not to do it if I can do it in my one-bedroom apartment!

Compared with other developed economies, Australia generates more waste than average and recycles less. Australians produce about 560kg of waste per person every year, which is about half the weight of a small car – that’s 25 million small cars.

By us all doing our bit we can go from being the recycling embarrassment of the world to warriors of waste.

Riah Matthews is the commissioning editor for news.com.au and Kidspot.