Recycled University Thinking Fails to Lead

UWA, the University of Western Australia, is a training ground for the leading thinkers of tomorrow... Or, is it just a factory for recycling of yesterday's fads?

Actually, that may be a bit unfair. It was the University Student Guild which recently demonstrated its lack of thought leadership. It did it in such an uninspiring way that it was only Inside Cover which found anything newsworthy in the latest Guild activity.

Look, said Inside Cover, A poorly worded caption on a photo! Ah! the excitement!

The photo was from a politician's newsletter. The photo accompanied a story about UWA Guild placing recycling bins around the campus food facility. It would seem that the student guild has finally realised that rubbish can and should be recycled.

It's a bit late, though!

The last year has clearly demonstrated that recycling does not work. Sure, we struggled to recycle a percentage of paper, plastic, glass, metal... Then we were hit by a financial crisis and recycled scrap failed to sell. So now we are gaining mountains of scrap. Sure, it's nicely separated by type of material. But no-one wants it. So our carefully recycled scrap is piled up -- on the premises of recycling companies -- and is no longer being re-used.

"Recycle" sounds good. "Re-use" is what is really worthwhile.

So the UWA Student Guild has implemented on-campus separation of scrap. So what? Recycling was the flavour of the month several years ago. It struggled and then it died, as soon as the recycling money ran out.

New ideas from UWA? You have to be joking!

Reduce the need for recycling

Every time that we recycle, we put off the inevitable. By just a little bit... There's a limit to the number of times that material can be recycled and re-used.

Use your brains, UWA: reduce the use of resources!

Does the Student Guild sell chips in plastic packets? Drinks in plastic bottles? Sandwiches in several layers of plastic? Perhaps it sells batteries for calculators and cameras, wrapped in plastic, backed by cardboard, held together with a metal staple or two? All of these are a waste of our non-renewable resources.

Be brave, Student Guild! Avoid the popular and pointless follow-me fads. Become a thought leader for conservation! Reduce what you waste!

No matter how well we recycle, every use of a resource will lose some of that resource. No matter how well we recycle, we are using up a little bit more of an irreplaceable resource. The best way to reduce waste is to not use it at all.

Make a stand. Be clever... be brave.

Garbage in... garbage out

Reduce the garbage in: less packaging, less use of wrapping. That will reduce the garbage out. Less garbage out, less resources lost.

And then -- because it's better to be late to the bandwagon that not get on at all -- you can still recycle the reduced volumes of garbage out.