Waste

Dead cats don’t belong in charity bins. Same goes for sex toys, dirty nappies, sharp knives, broken furniture and the leftovers from your Christmas dinner. But try telling that to the people who’ve dumped hundreds of tonnes of crap in the charity bins of suburban Sydney and Melbourne this past week.

According to news reports in both the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun, people in our eastern states’ most “affluent” suburbs decided the local Salvos, Smith Family or St Vincent de Paul charity bin was a more convenient way of getting rid of unwanted Christmas detritus than paying a visit to their local tip. The measly $12 entrance fee to most local council tips clearly proving far too expensive for their “affluent” tastes.

Dumping broken furniture, dirty clothing or unusable bric-a-brac is not charity. And our suburbs have not been suddenly overcome by an urgency to give to others. Stuffing your local goodwill bin full of unwanted stuff (some living) helps no one. It’s just thoughtless, lazy and selfish.

Continue reading "Only the selfish dump their crap in charity bins" »

Nobody likes to look incompetent or inept. So it’s no wonder the Federal Government fought to keep secret a report that revealed the $3.5 billion it spends each year on indigenous programs has generated “dismally poor returns”. 

Close to two years after a 470-page Finance Department report slammed the Government’s management of indigenous programs and expenditure there’s been no radical movement, no overhaul of the Departments responsible, and none of the 115 recommendations adopted.

The report may never have even been made public save for a long-running freedom of information case brought by Channel 7.

Continue reading "Billions of government waste not closing the gap" »

Those too selfish and lazy to properly stash their trash better listen up. It’s time to take a leaf out of Singapore’s book and treat litterers like the criminals they are.

I was a race virgin until recently. Sydney’s Rosehill Gardens is, as expected, an eclectic mix of beautiful and hideous dresses, faceless men with mobiles plastered to their ears on the balcony, hardcore punters in trackie dacks casting a hex on their rivals by invoking Tony Abbott’s name. It was like Parliament, really, with a touch of sunshine and horses.

But somewhere between struggling to walk back and forth from the racing track to the bookies on uneven ground in stilettos, something did surprise me. Betting tickets, plastic drinking cups, hotdog buckets, and loose change everywhere.

Continue reading "For god’s sake, bin your damn rubbish" »

Deck the halls and fill the cupboards; despite the pre-Yuletide complaints from some shops Christmas is invariably a multi-billion dollar smorgasboard of retail excess.

The question, though, is what to do with all that stuff once you’ve unwrapped it?

Because it’s not like we truly need a lot of it.

Continue reading "What are you doing with all those unwanted gifts?" »