Our strategy to work with the community focuses on 5 key actions
Political Leadership
Hats off to the NSW Government, which in September 2015 made ‘Keeping Our Environment Clean’ a priority for the state and aims to “reduce the volume of litter in NSW by 40%, by 2020”. This, combined with the tough new litter laws and the commencement of “Return & Earn” in December 2017, has sent a clear message that the rubbish on our streets and waterways isn’t OK.
Incentives
A common feature shared by most of the cities often labelled the cleanest (Honolulu, Copenhagen, Vienna, Helsinki, Calgary, Freiburg, Hamburg, and of course, Adelaide), is the use of a refund scheme for bottles and cans.
By turning rubbish into community money, the NSW Government has created the cash incentive to declare a real war on waste. CitizenBlue will help you tap into that money and grow recycling of drink bottles and cans.
Convenience
Recycling is one of the environmental activities that everyone has embraced. Australia’s kerbside recycling system reaches roughly 97% of the population, but when you’re drinking a juice or water or soft drink away from home, bottle and can recycling isn’t as easy. The Reverse Vending Kiosks will do a great job of helping, but they can’t be expected to be on every street corner. To complement that effort and cut the amount of rubbish in streets, parks and beaches, CitizenBlue will offer business, events and local government specially designed recycling bins to be installed and serviced by us across the city. We have also entered into a partnership with Coca Cola Australia to offer bins that can collect for charities. Check out our story here.
Accessibility
While “Return & Earn” creates a new recycling network for glass and plastic bottles and cans across the state – businesses like cafes, pubs and clubs, are big consumers of packaging and other convenience items, and find it difficult to manage their waste, let alone the rubbish that some of their customers leave on the outside of their premises.
CitizenBlue can help businesses become better recyclers with advice and infrastructure.
Community Mobilisation
All hands on deck are required to clean up the environment.
From picking up the rubbish to 10cent refund schemes and recycling depots to making new products can create a circular economy where resources are not wasted. CitizenBlue has a role, as do many other community and business groups.
We also work with business including Coca Cola who have committed to improving recycling, and hotel groups such as the Hilton to improve their separation of wastes for recycling.
