Why Reduce Your Waste / Recycling Statistics

Why Reduce Your Waste / Recycling Statistics

Waste minimisation has several key benefits, these include:

1. It conserves valuable natural resources such as: Oil. By recycling your plastic containers and bottles you will help reduce oil consumption as all plastics are oil based. As oil stocks diminish the cost of crude oil will rise resulting in increased fuel costs and grocery prices will rise also.
2. Energy savings can be achieved by manufacturing new products from recyclables rather than natural resources.
3. Trees are used to manufacture paper products, an average of 13 trees are required per tonne of paper. Recycling your paper and cardboard products will help reduce the need to forest timber.
4. It can save you money in waste disposal costs. Less waste to landfill extends the life of the landfill site, this helps your council keep your rates charges at an affordable level.
5. Recycling helps to reduce pollution by cutting green house gas emissions.
6. In the main remanufacturing, product from recyclables will save water. In the tough Australian environment it makes sense to reduce our water consumption by every means possible.

Steel Cans

Since 1997 residents of Cessnock, Lake Macquarie and Maitland have recycled 7,500 tonnes of steel cans.

This has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by almost 6000 tonnes and equal to taking 1441 cars off our roads permanently. It has also saved enough energy which would supply 11,420 homes with their entire year’s power consumption. Water savings equal to filling 150 backyard swimming pools. Steel cans have an indefinite life span and can be recycled continuously.

All steel cans collected via your recycling service are taken to a sorting facility along with all other recyclable product. An electronic magnet extracts the cans from the stream and deposits it into a compactor; it is then squashed into blocks and transported to a steel works for reuse.

Steel cans can be used to manufacture any other steel product such as cars, whitegoods and even new cars.

Plastic Bottles and Containers

Plastic bottles are mainly sourced using crude oil, gas and coal.

Of the 40 plus polymers used in packaging today it is mainly those numbered 1 through to 7 in the recycling symbol which have a recycling demand for them.

Since 1997 residents of Cessnock, Lake Macquarie and Maitland have recycled over 12,939 Tonnes of plastic packaging. Enough pollution reduced equal to taking 14,447 cars of the road permanently, and enough energy saved which would power 29,000 homes for an entire year.

At the sorting facility the plastics are sorted into their respective code numbers, they are then pressed into a cube block then sold to industry for remanufacture into a wide range of products such as new plastic bottles, garden furniture and synthetic carpets. Much of the product is exported to countries such as China and remanufactured into clothing products.

Glass Bottles and Jars

The discovery of glass was around 5000 years ago. Today glass is manufactured from much the same ingredients, sand, soda ash and limestone. However today’s industry use cullet which is crushed glass sourced through household recycling and a blend of the other natural resources depending upon the grade of the required glass bottle and jars for packaging. In fact some glass bottles can be made from 100% recycled glass.

The packaging industry is moving away from glass due to the high costs associated with manufacture, transport and breakage. Over the past 5 years you would have seen many bottled products replaced with more durable and lightweight plastic packaging.

Glass recycling is extremely complex and strict standards apply to ensure the process is not contaminated by other products such as picture glass, pottery and china. Remember, only glass bottles and jars can be recycled via your recycling service at home.

Did you know that every tonne of recycled glass remanufactured saves 1.1 tonnes of natural resources?

Since 1997 residents of Cessnock, Lake Macquarie and Maitland have recycled over 77 million kilos of glass product. Thereby, saving enough energy equal to that used by 13,540 homes each year.

Paper and Cardboard

Today you can place all of your paper and cardboard packaging, magazines and newspapers in your recycling bin. This includes all milk and juice cartons known as liquid paperboard.

Residents of Cessnock, Lake Macquarie and Maitland have recycled over 182.2 million kilos of this product since 1997.

44% of all product collected for recycling is paper cardboard and all of this is recycled in Australia with over 90% being used for the manufacture of packing such as boxes. The remainder is used for printing and tissue paper manufacture.

Visy Recycling process the entire product collected from homes in Cessnock, Lake Macquarie and Maitland.

By recycling this product our residents have helped to conserve approximately 2.36 million trees, reduced carbon gas equal to taking over 17,500 cars off our roads permanently as well as saving enough power to supply over 150,000 homes with their entire annual energy needs and enough water which would fill 78,500 backyard pools.

Aluminium Cans and Pie Trays

Aluminium cans have been used in Australia for over 30 years.

Aluminium is manufactured from bauxite sourced mainly from mines in Queensland and Western Australia. The product is made into alumina and placed into a smelter in order to extract the aluminium required.

Australians use around 3 billion aluminium cans every year, however many are not recycled as the product is mainly consumed away from home. This means a valuable resource ends up in street bins or as litter.

Did you know that not only does recycling cans and pie trays save natural resources it also reduces energy? The energy needed to make just 1 aluminium can from natural resources is the same as that used to make 20 cans from recycled cans.

Residents of Cessnock, Lake Macquarie and Maitland have recycled approximately 13.9 million aluminium cans since 1997 via their home recycling service.

Aluminium cans and pie trays can be recycled over and over again and made into any aluminium product such as new cars, sporting goods, furniture and motor vehicle engines just to name a few.

Cessnock Tonnes

Maitland Tonnes

Lake Macquarie Tonnes