By Deanne Jeffers
WITH changes to kerbside collection being rolled out, residents may be wondering how they will manage to keep on top of waste once it is collected less frequently.
What’s better than reusing or recycling an item? Avoiding it in the first place. At the checkout or before bringing any item home, ask yourself, do you really need it? If the answer is no, then avoid it altogether.
Shopping responsibly and in particular, minimising single-used items, will make a significant impact on the amount of waste your home produces. Sustainable shopping includes consideration of the way your food and other purchases are packaged.
According to Sustainability Victoria, Australians throw away around 1.9M tonnes of packaging each year – enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground nine times over.
Households can avoid unessential packaging by growing their own food, cooking at home, using reusable packaging where possible, making a shopping list to reduce food and financial waste, choosing items with little or no packaging, and saying no to straws and plastic bags.
For more sustainability tips, visit www.sustainability.vic.gov.au
