3 Free Recycling Options In Australia ♻️ Podcast Ep. 9 Don’t Be A Waster

3 Free Recycling Options In Australia ♻️ Podcast Ep. 9 Don’t Be A Waster

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In this episode of our recycling podcast we talk about 3 free recycling options that are available throughout Australia.

We discuss free drop off points for tricky to recycle items such as :

Plastic bags

Batteries

Ewaste

Coffee cups.

Hopefully this info helps you stick to your 2022 recycling goals!

Transcript – 3 Free Recycling Options In Australia

Hello and welcome to another edition of our podcast recycle don’t be a Waster and for regular listeners you’ll know that we cover all things recycling related today is the second week of 2022 and I hope you had some new year’s resolutions related to recycling so I think in today’s podcast we want to make those resolutions a bit easier for you and give you know two or three locations or solutions for tricky recycling that should help nearly anybody in Australia and I am I assume if you’re overseas in other countries you will have similar or equivalent opportunities in in most major cities.

Important Note: As of 9 November 2022, REDcycle is on a temporary pause. 

So today’s podcast is about let’s say three destinations three places that you are residential or household can recycle tricky items and you know you should be aware of these to boost your recycling rates this assumes that you have the standard bins you know at your house the cardboard bin the commingled bin for balls and cans and of course your general waste bin so what we’ll do is we’ll give you what I think are three grid options for those trickier things the first one is it’s called Redcycle.

>Download Now: Free PDF Business Owners Guide To Commingled Recycling Bin Services

Redcycle is a company that focuses or it’s a charitable base to my understanding non-profitable that focuses on recycling soft plastic so soft plastics are plastic bags, plastic wrap, crisp packets those sort of things packets for food those soft plastics that you cannot put in your commingle bin and so fundamentally if you don’t put them here they’ll end up in landfill so this you can drop them off for free at most major supermarkets I know they are at Woolworths and Coles I think they also are at most IGAs but you will probably need to check just check your local store they often have a you know a facility or a location at the front of the store just as you turn in in the door and you’ll see lots of plastic bags and items such as that piled up so what do they do with these materials.

I think if you’d listened to one of our previous podcasts you will know that plastics can only be recycled so many times and once they get you know lower grade they tend to be made into lower and lower quality products this is the case for plastic bags soft plastics dark plastic wrap and redcycle it makes items such as flooring for parks you know to stop kids hurting their knees if they fall park furniture like park benches and those sort of items so reasonably low grade plastic but at the same time still creating useful items and preventing these this material from going to landfill so I think that’s the first one and these solutions also at Waster we every day get you know many requests, queries about standard these sort of where can I put this where can I put that and we probably recommend redcycle to people at least at least once a day.

So this is one two to remember the second one I will say is office works so anyone in Australia will almost certainly have an office works location nearby and of course the major you know business office retailer selling all items associated with an office and they collect very a very wide range of e-waste electronic waste and associated items and you can drop them off for free and generally at the front of the store these items cover you know laptops computers cabling and in some instances CDs and vhs not in all but in some instances telephones mobile phones all those sort of items and these decide that these items will be taken for you know e-recycling whereby the valuable materials the metals etc are taken out so again a really useful service and it let’s be honest I think the vast majority of Australians live in in towns and cities.

See our video on how de-industrialisation hurts recycling here.

I think officeworks will probably be within you know 10 kilometres of let’s just say 90 of the aussie population so it’s a great option and generally a lot easier than going to a waste transfer centre certainly a lot less smelly and quite easy to drop off so another great option at those locations you can also generally drop off batteries you know those batteries that are probably now running out from the gadgets that Santa delivered a few weeks ago so you can drop off batteries you can also drop the batteries off at Aldi I believe who also offer a similar service so many of these drop-off points are related to companies such as or it’s a business recycling planet arc which is a semi-government backed organization that helps coordinate recycling with producer pes systems as well whereby some producers will help pay for the recycling so it’s a bit of a related product but that’s it that’s a great option the third one I’ll mention is one and I’ll be honest I think we should dig into it a bit more in a future podcast and that is at 7-eleven so 7-eleven who run obviously convenience stores and many service stations, gas stations throughout Australia.

I’ve seen that you can drop off take away coffee cups take away coffee cups have a terrible reputation and in very many instances they are not recycled but I note that at 7-eleven they are collecting coffee cups and you can drop them there for free and they are supposedly recycled I’ll be honest I will probably look into this more and do a future podcast because the last time I looked it is not that easy to recycle coffee cups due to the combination of different materials and all that sort of stuff so look I like to before I recommend stuff I like to know how it works how it’s processed and so I look into that but I think it’s certainly better than putting it in landfill and until we you know we look into it and do a future podcast on it I think we’ll say you know be aware that that option is there doesn’t seem to be any restriction on the brands or the type of coffee cup these are the takeaway you know convenience cups once one use so clearly using these is still a worse option than you know relaxing sitting down having an actual cup of coffee in a you know a porcelain cup or whatever it is.

Okay that’s the best option secondly bring you know a reusable cup with you and those are clearly better options but in the instance where you do get that takeaway cup look into this so those are the three things I’d recommend to you I think they are all at major retailers, sorry major yeah retail chains that will probably be within easy reach of the vast majority of our listeners so I think you know everyone has some ways of that nature so keep it in mind or maybe even write it down where you can drop these, there are other facilities of course that the local waste transfer centre will take a large amount of stuff you know a large long list of things and for free it always nearly always depends on location there can be slight nuances etc.

Certainly after Christmas we get lots of calls from people asking about how to get rid of large amounts of cardboard nearly always the best option is just drop it off for free at the waste transfer centre and they’ll take it take any amount of it really so there are options available there are a lot of free options for a lot of a lot of items and we’ll do future podcasts covering more of these but these are three that I wanted to yeah I wanted to remind people about and make you aware of if you hadn’t heard of them up to now so we’ll leave it there today I think I wish all our listeners a great 2022 and get busy recycling and yeah we leave you with the slogan recycle don’t be a Waster.