Putting all of our eggs in the net zero basket is merely kicking the can down the road.
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Articles on Waste
Displaying 1 - 20 of 149 articles
Plastic washed ashore from the ocean is hard to recycle. What else can we do with it?
Australia needs a viable domestic recycling industry – here's the current state of play.
There's a buzz around sustainability, but consumers still struggle to develop new habits. Here's how to change that.
Australia's recycling woes belong to everyone, from households to government to business. It's time to stop pointing fingers and get to work on a solution.
From Orwell to Trump, the wealthy have a long tradition of stereotyping working-class communities as "dirty" – that has to stop.
Satellites monitor climate change, guide people with GPS and keep us connected through texts and social media, but they're under threat.
China has put the onus back on Australia to take responsibility for our waste, and Germany has shown us the way with extended producer responsibility for construction and demolition waste.
Festival-goers increasingly treat tents as disposable, imagining they are put to good use when discarded. They're wrong.
Australia doesn't want to deal with its own recycling waste, so why do we think other countries should do it for us?
A throwaway economy harms more than the natural environment. It also harms our mental environment.
Recycling is a messy system at the moment. Here's how we can clean up our act.
A year after China stopped accepting most scrap material exports, other Asian countries are following Beijing's lead, forcing wealthy nations to find domestic solutions for managing their wastes.
Poorer countries can now refuse shipments of plastic waste and slow the build-up of pollution on their shores.
Scientists are finding ways to generate something useful from the pollution in our environment.
China's refusal to take Australia's rubbish has started to bite, and it's clear we're not ready to deal with the consequences.
For as little as $4 a day Indian workers process dangerous, toxic waste by hand. This unregulated, highly polluting industry is hidden away from police eyes.
Asian countries have become a dumping ground for the plastic waste from wealthy countries.
Since China stopped accepting Australia's recyclable plastic, the majority of exported plastic waste is now going to developing nations in South East Asia.
Dumping your closet debris on a charity shop just means giving volunteers the cost of sorting out your landfill.
Top contributors
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Research associate, Loughborough University
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Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash Sustainable Development Institute), Monash University
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Professor and Principal Scientist, University of Southern Queensland
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Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
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Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
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Kate O'Neill is a Friend of The Conversation.
Associate Professor, Global Environmental Politics, University of California, Berkeley
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Senior Research Scientist, CSIRO
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Principal Research Scientist, Oceans and Atmosphere Flagship, CSIRO
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Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
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Director of the School of Architecture, Professor of Architecture, University of Portsmouth
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André Stephan is a Friend of The Conversation.
Lecturer in Architectural Engineering, University of Melbourne
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Research Fellow, University of Leeds
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Lecturer in Food Systems, University of Melbourne
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Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney
