Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
Wasted resources (Image: Wikipedia). |
Reduce
- Increased Warranties: - Landfills are full of goods that were only manufactured a
few years ago that have now 'failed' and cannot be economically repaired. Mandatory warranty
periods for goods would drastically reduce this wastage at little extra cost.
Warranty periods could come in two parts:
- Full replacement or repair by the manufacturer.
- Customer repair of the good supported by the manufacturer who supply the free parts with simple instructions.
Under this regime white goods might come with a few cheap spare parts attached to the frame. These parts are often worth only a few cents at the time of manufacture but unobtainable five years later.
- Standardisation: - Often working goods have to be discarded because they are now
'non-standard' and cannot be used with anything else.
All mobiles will soon use a standard charger using a micro-usb plug. This approach should be applied to many other products to reduce the waste stream.
Recycle
We support:
- A Federal deposit levy on containers as is done in SA.
- Controls on the materials used in products and their labelling to assist with recycling. Ideally this would match standards that are in use of being developed in the EU and other regions.
- Some hard-to-recycle products should have levies applied which fund recycling. This may apply to tyres, for example.
The Simple Solution
23rd Jun 2009: "What chance do we have of getting in place the complex solutions for climate change when it appears we can't even tackle a simple solution for the problem of plastic bags: banning them.". more...