Let's Talk Waste Workshop 1: March 2025

This was the first workshop we did on waste with a diverse group including an industry expert. We will continue on this topic in April.

Mar 19, 2025

This month, we continued to work with The Shady Lanes Project and ACF Community Brisbane Northside to explore how we all might come together to play our part in creating a more sustainable future in our region.

Cyclone Alfred has highlighted issues with existing waste systems and will create massive amounts of flood-damaged waste. What can we learn from this event? Are there opportunities for change?

This was the same format to our February meeting on Urban Heat and Heatwaves, adapted to zoom, using the framework of Doughnut Economics and the methodology of Strategic Doing (read more here).

We aimed to move the conversations from Someone Ought to DO something to What can I DO to make a difference? and What can WE DO to make a difference?

We started with a Framing Question

Waste is so often framed in everyday conversations and marketing with simple solutions: buy this product instead, put your plastics in the recycle bin, put it in the right bin and someone will deal with it.

This form of question (appreciative inquiry) pulls the conversation away from these simple solutions and engages imagination and curiosity to build a shared view of where we want to go.

What if Brisbane could become a thriving city where homes and businesses produced little or no waste that needed to go into landfill, waterways, or the air, and could cope with extreme weather events without there being any extra spoilage and waste?
What would success look like?

The diversity of our group meant that we had participants with deep knowledge of the waste industry, the problems of resistance and unintended consequences, and on the ground experience of how some people will dispose of things wrongly no matter how much you try to educate or make it easier for them.

Some ideas that come out about our low or no-waste city were:

There would be lots of repair hubs dotted around the city
Everything we buy will be repairable with no inbuilt obsolescence
This low-waste city wouldn’t need to allocate so much space to cater for large rubbish trucks and wheelie bins which could influence design of roads and places like townhouse complexes
Some form of 3D printers that you feed in your plastic waste to create new things you want
A city without litter on the streets and beaches - no longer any need for “clean up Australia” type events.
People’s attitudes will have changed away from “just chuck it away, in the bin, on the ground, someone else’s problem”
More than just 2 tip stores in Brisbane. Local places where people can take their things to be donated or resold without having to drive long distances
Every suburb could have some sort of drive-thru recycling hub for bigger items, whitegoods, furnishings etc. (Expanding on the current transfer stations)
Much less material being input into the system eg packaging
Ways of large, unused medical items (eg hospital beds) being diverted to someone who needs them here or elsewhere
People and families would have more time so that they don’t go to convenience items eg disposable nappies, tv dinners, plastic sauce containers. More home preparation of jams, biscuits, etc. Cloth nappies.
Changes to procurement systems and demands of supply chains where packaging is needed for display, scanning bar codes, security, etc
New commercial premises no longer automatically redo shop-fitting for every new tenant.
High fees or laws for disposal of unused items was suggested, but it was acknowledged that this raises the risk of illegal dumping. How can we make carrots instead of sticks?
Businesses will minimise waste because of demand from consumers on one side and measurable financial benefits on the other side.
“Containers for change” is a good model and could be expanded where disposal is built into the cost of the products. This reframes from waste to opportunity.
Clear pathways so better ways of reusing and dealing with waste come to mind quickly.
The separation between biological and technical materials would be maintained as much as possible, see the Butterfly diagram from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation.
Foodwaste would go into compost, worm farms, and Bokashi bins as close to the source as possible.

We could have continued on this for hours but having generated a shared and still evolving vision of where we wanted to go, we moved on to the next question.

How do we get there?

We Start with What We’ve Got. (Finding our assets in Strategic Doing)

We talked about what we all brought to the table. A lot of this overlaps with the previous meeting on heat. I won’t name people here, but between us we bought:

interest in ideas and drawing connections between them
participation in bushcare groups, environmental and other groups
Different styles of communication:
Diverse range of skills and professional backgrounds in the group including professional and subject matter expertise in waste, sustainability, communication.

And we have the

Use of the library room via ACF Community Brisbane Northside (ACFBNE) and support of the national Australian Conservation Foundation.
The ACFBNE and Regen Brisbane networks and Substack websites and newsletters
Our own individual Substacks
Shady Lanes Project public resources

External opportunities include:

A stall at the Sustainable BNE Festival in May (confirmed) https://www.sustainablebrisbane.com.au/whats-on/sustainablebnefestival/
Stall at Queensland Day event in Banyo in June (confirmed)
Platy-themed events in September (planning in progress)
Doughnut Days in November TBC

And then we think about how we can combine some of that jumble of assets to create something bigger together.

What Could We Do?

How do we get there as a society? What can we as individuals and as groups do to help make it happen?

Verge gardens as an example of the circular economy changing a linear process with greenwaste and emissions into an asset that produces no waste
Conversations in the local community, at work, online, and offline
Individuals and local groups organising containers for change, recycling, compost in our communities and local organisations. Schools, clubs, etc
Making activities visible and normal - the more people see it, the more likely they will change
Work with schools encourage children to educate their parents
Sharing and promoting existing initiatives finding better ways or getting information out (several added in chat)
When people write an article, help them by liking, sharing etc
Biggest bang for buck is diverting food waste from landfill (FOGO has many issues including cost, contamination, end market)
Displays at our stall at the Sustainable BNE Festival
plant your verge garden, write stories about it, hold verge visits
put in positive submissions for good projects to counter all the negative submissions
Celebrate the good work being done and tell people why it is good
Build alliances between professionals and the public in the middle ground
Community education
Find ways of bridging the gaps in knowledge between expert knowledge and public knowledge and everyday actions
Move innovation to include product design all the way through end of life.
Keep in mind initiatives can have unintended consequences. Eg bigger recycling bins that don’t discourage consumption and may even encourage it.
Raise waste as an issue in environmental groups, etc.
Advocate to politicians

What should we do (doable now)?

Encourage compost, worm farms, bokashi use in the community.
Connect and promote with sites like sharewaste (no longer operating), BCC rebates on compost bins and worm farms, etc
Write articles, share on social media
Research on what initiatives are already out there.
Build habits of liking and commenting, and joining conversations. Stop seeing internet as a television and more as a place for holding conversations
Nurture our networks

What will we do this month?

Tony will add Bokashi info session to his verge visit on April 5^th. Robyn’s writeup will then include information about foodwaste.
Saskya will write an article linking waste and her new verge garden
Richard to research what is happening. Penny and Richard to explore how they could share it.
Gayle to write up this session
For those learning about Substack, see articles on SLP
Everyone will read, like, and comment on each other's articles.

Next Event

5^th April - Verge Garden Visit and Bokashi information
13^th April - Let’s Talk Waste Workshop 2 (week earlier because of Easter) will be on zoom. We will focus more on the part of the framing question about extreme events. Register here.