For a little over a thousand people in the Shepparton region, taking action on the amount of waste material that they have to deal with in their daily lives has morphed into a Facebook group that provides ideas on how we can all positively approach the increasing use of unnecessary packaging and other aspects of wasted resources.
Started a couple of years ago by Nikita Thomson who grew up in Shepparton, the Facebook page has taken a life of its own. For Nikita, Zero Waste has two major points of focus, activism that brings about positive change with government and regulation and in personal behaviour.
“When I was at university, I tried to contain all my waste for a month into glass jar,” said Nikita
“There are many people in the region trying to do the same thing. What we try to do with the page is to let people know where they can go to buy their goods, where they can recycle containers or sell package free and other useful tips. ”
Across Victoria, more than 22 million tonnes of waste is collected each year, in Shepparton, 66,000 tonnes is collected at a cost of $12M per year to manage the waste operations.
As we make adjustments to deal with climate change and environmental pollution, there is a need for that initial one thousand people to grow into tens of thousands of people around the district, each making a concerted effort to reduce the amount of unnecessary waste we each create in a year. It might start with buying fruit and vegetables that do not need plastic wrapping.
