 Have you heard of REPLAS? They are the leading Australian company that turn your plastic waste into new products. Did you know that all REPLAS products are made in Ballarat? Yep, that’s right. All those recycled plastic products such as seats, signs, bollards, boardwalks, garden edges, and lots more. You may have seen these products when visiting parks, towns, sports-grounds, jetties, and even milking sheds across Australia, New Zealand and parts of Asia. The industry started in Ballarat back in 1991. That’s 28 years ago! One of REPLAS’s partners is RedCycle. RedCycle collect the soft plastics you drop off at Coles and Woolworth. They sort the plastic and deliver the bales to the REPLAS factory in Elsworth Street, Ballarat. The plastic is then melted into the moulds that create new products that are versatile, colourful and durable. Although the Ballarat office is not the main showroom, they have a small selection of products on show and friendly staff. You’ll find their formal REPLAS showroom in Melbourne. There you can see the wide variety of products they create with your plastic waste. Educational tours are also run out of the Melbourne showroom. Four good reasons to consider purchasing recycled plastic products for a job:
When it comes to recycling soft plastics through RedCycle we can do better as a community. We need to recycle more. Coles and Woolworths provide tiny bins in their stores for your soft-plastics to go into. These bins are often full. This may deter some people from dropping-off their soft plastic, especially large amounts. Don't be deterred. These supermarkets are the only drop-off points. If the bins are full or you have a large amount, ask the floor manager if they can empty the bin or take the soft plastics to the supermarket's storeroom. Plastic is apart of our life, and it's here to stay. Lets embrace the positive side of plastic. It's a product that never breaks down, so is perfect for continual re-moulding into our lives. We need to support this fantastic Ballarat manufacturing industry. An industry that is creating a positive future for generations to come. RedCycle drop-off locations: https://www.redcycle.net.au REPLAS: https://www.replas.com.au 
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 There’s no Container Deposit Scheme in Victoria, but you can still get money for your aluminium cans.
Take your cans to a metal recycler. The price you get for the cans changes with the market price for aluminium at the time. You can call before dropping your cans off to find out the price they will pay. The bonus with sending your cans to metal recyclers is that you can also add other aluminium items into the mix. Cash for your cans in Ballarat:
(let us know if we’ve left any Ballarat business off the list) Some great Christmas present ideas by Leah Musch, The Un-Material Girl.
Wishing you all a Merry Aussie Christmas!  When you buy 1 to 20 litres of architectural or decorative paint in Australia now you’ll be paying an in-built levy of 15 cents per litre. This levy charge funds the non-for-profit company Paintback Ltd. As from 1st May 2016 Paintback became responsible for the safe disposal of waste paint and paint tins. Disposal use to be the responsibility of State and Territory Governments but under their schemes only half of all waste paint was disposed of responsibility, which meant an awful lot of paint ended up in landfill and other non-legit locations.
Waste paint that's dumped in unauthorised locations, like many other toxic substances; contaminates the soil, has a high chance of entering our waterways, and is detrimental to the health of our native flora and fauna, and ultimately our health. Paintback will collect waste paint from paint drop-off locations around Australia and will dispose of it appropriately. In Ballarat our drop-off location is the Transfer Station on Gillies Street South. Paintback also plan to do a whole heap of other work. They’ll be increasing the number of drop off locations so there’ll be a drop-off location within a reasonable distance to 85% of Australians. Setting up more drop-off locations and establishing mobile pick-up points will achieve this. They’ll run educational campaigns, research new ways to repurpose waste paint, and also fund research so they can find better uses for waste paint. They will continue to work collaboratively between industry and government, and will welcome new companies to join them. The development of Paintback Ltd didn’t happen over night. It came about after a lot of planning and collaboration between industry and Government. Paintback is a Paint Stewardship Scheme and is supported by the Federal Environment Minister under the Product Stewardship Act 2011. This Act is designed to help reduce waste and to prevent toxic substances ending up in landfill, while also increasing recycling and the recovery of valuable materials from products. Lets hope more industries develop such schemes to close the loop, and that consumers support them. So...your role in all this? Don’t dump paint in the bin. Make sure you take your waste paints to the Transfer Stations for appropriate disposal. This is the link to the Paintback website. They also include a few other products in their scheme so be sure to familiarise yourself with these and pass the word around your network. (information sources used in this post are here, here, and here) Based in sunny Brisbane, Leah is a mover and shaker in the slow fashion world. She provides great tips and reasons as to why we need to be shopping for our clothes differently. Slow fashion is a way of the future, not because its cool or a fad, but because we have to. We simply can't be consuming as we do. There are SO MANY positive reasons to change, 'no waste' is just one of them. Check out Leah's The Un-Material Girl blog and her entertaining new digital entertainment channel. Episode 5 is also well worth watching as Leah buys a beautiful sequin dress ... what's the 'fashion trap' all about? |