AN OVERWIEW

UPdated 0ct 31 2025

A Work in Progress - Was & Always Will Be

It needs to be said that aruably REcycling turns out to be hollow rhetoric and all too often used to GREENwash an environmental practice. It promised/promises to put the 'materials' in a 'product' back into NEWproducts just like it. Typically, it just does not happen! Nonetheless, the 'materials' can become something else other than LANDfill FODDER. 

It is a different MINDset and IF we look around us there is myriad of opportunities. Indeed humanity has been exploiting them and if we look to our histories we'll find the evidence.

To plan to maintain WASTEmanagement Centres is, arguably, socially and culturally repugnant – delinquent indeed. However, should such 'places' change the sign on the gate to RESOURCErecovery Centre that would flag a welcomed MINDset change.

Albeit that the functionaries and administrators required to order the signage and give effect to change will provide a long list reasons not to change.  That is reasoning like the stationary needing to be changed etc. Risk adverse as they are, typically there will be a CONGAline of concerned functionaries finding an ever increasing bunch of reasons not to do anything, or  change anything – let alone a sign on the gate.

In 2009, The (Sydney) Magazine listed Michael Mobbs, as one of Sydney's 100 most influential people. He 'disconnected' his inner city terrace house from the grid and city water supply. He set out in 1996 to renovate his inner-city Sydney terrace and make it almost entirely self-sufficient in terms of energy, water and waste disposal. It was a journey few other Australians had attempted but he has shown it can be achieved and that it's possible for almost anyone. 

Nonetheless Mobbs has encountered relentless resistance to his notion of living 'sustainably'. In large part this resistance has come from THEauthorities and in no small way this caused him to coin the term "premeditated ignorance". [LINK Sustainable House] Mobbs was an Alderman on the City of Sydney Council 1985 to 1987 and he holds a Bachelor of Laws from the Australian National University. He was an Associate Lecturer in the School of Engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney and he specialized in environmental law. 

LINk

And then there is Prof. Veena Sahajwalla: Prof.Sahajwalla tells

us that "The truth is, there's no such thing as waste. What do you see when you look at this – rubbish, something familiar, unwanted, disgusting even? You might see waste, but what I see are opportunities, ones that are not to be missed."

Prof. Veena Sahajwalla is calling for Australians to reimagine waste as a valuable resource that can drive manufacturing, create jobs and support sustainability.

At the National Press Club in Canberra, Prof. Sahajwalla called on policymakers, industry and communities to embrace a new vision for Australia’s waste.... OR might she have meant Australia's available resources [LINK – 21 October 2025]

When he was President of the USA Ronald Reagan told whoever were listening at the time that ... "the status quo you know is Latin for the mess we are in." He was on the money at the time and as we look around us, that is "us" being 20th C people, while we might not have been the people who initiated the mess we are currently the curators of it. Humanity has done precious little to mitigate the circumstances within which the planet has been diminished, is diminishing and is being laid to waste before our eyes – some argue relentlessly.

While risk adverse functionaries, self nominated "representatives" and those who believe that some miracle worker will save humanity from itself and/or who will not change signs on gates, sadly it seems that they/we may yet make the planet ready for better equipped, and better class of beings than us – insects perhaps.

In order to be seen to be doing 'something' governments – local, region & national – of all persuasions put agencies in place ostensively to demonstrate, rather than explain, to deal with environmental 'matters'- ie environmental protection agencies. It turns out to be a somewhat cynical exercise. All too often these agencies exist, strategically, to maintain the status quo and everything that is invested in it.

Whatever, humans are incapable of miracles but humanity can create the circumstances within which miracles can reveal themselves. We may yet have grandchildren with grandchildren.