From trash to treasure: Australia in a take-make-remake world

Not only do many of these products contain hazardous materials that should not be going into landfill, they also contain valuable, finite materials such as gold, copper, and platinum. Ten kilograms of electronic waste can yield 2 grams of gold, equivalent to the gold in a wedding ring. This may not seem much, until you compare it against the 10,000 tonnes of ore that would need to be processed to extract the same amount of gold from a mine site.

The term ‘circular economy’ (CE) has begun to appear in the popular lexicon in recent years, featuring heavily in discussions about policies for resource efficiency and seen as the latest way of greening the economy. As anyone who watched the recent ABC series War on Waste, or followed the controversy on what happens to our waste and recycling when it leaves the bin out the front of our houses, will understand – waste is a big issue, and it is an issue that will only continue to grow.

Have you ever really given thought to the life cycle of the clothes you’re wearing? Gone are the days of wearing clothes until they wore out – the fast-fashion business model means that many of the estimated 150 billion garments that are manufactured across the world each year, have a short use period before being discarded to various waste streams. Such is the volume of used textiles – and their increasingly poor quality – that many developing countries that were destinations for these used