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Australia‘‘s marijuana smokers have created an unexpected problem for the country‘‘s recycling efforts: home-made bongs thrown into domestic recycling bins are contaminating material that could otherwise be reused.
The Australian reports that just one bong, or water pipe, could stop hundreds or even thousands of PET plastic bottles from being recycled because a bong‘‘s PVC hose would contaminate the material, says environmental campaigner Planet Ark.
"Bongs are a big problem for recyclers," said Planet Ark‘‘s founder, John Dee, after launching National Recycling Week in Sydney yesterday. "The hose can cause black specks on bottles and it is really difficult to get out and adds to the expense of recycling," he said. Bongs are just one example of a wider problem: confusion about what can and cannot be recycled. The glass industry has been particularly hard hit by contaminated material. Just a small amount of non-reusable glass from light bulbs, wine glasses, ceramic plates, mirrors or window glass could stop a whole tonne of normal glass from being recycled.
"The level of awareness about what glass can be recycled is very, very low and that is coming through from the Roy Morgan research," Mr Dee said."It is a far bigger problem than has been let on by the glass industry and it is about time we talked about it.
"We need to see a bigger investment in recycling technology that allows for the extraction of those contaminants and we need new markets for recovered glass."
Australia consumes about 850,000 tonnes of glass a year but only 300,000 tonnes or 35 per cent is recovered for recycling, said the general manager for Visy Environment, Nicholas Harford.
Mr Harford said greater automation of rubbish bins, more coloured and more broken glass in rubbish, and non-reusable material contaminating recyclable glass all created a problem for recyclers.
"If contaminated material goes through with the glass bottles and ends up in the furnace it can affect the quality of new glass bottles or even damage the furnace itself," he said.
However, he said that new technology was making it easier to manage contaminated material. Earlier this year, Visy Recycling opened a new fully automated glass recycling plant in Victoria that will recover about 100,000 tonnes of glass every year.
The plant can sort up to 16 million different colours and remove non-recyclable material such as caps and corks
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