Tip Tourism

By Anne Brackley, Coordinator SpringDale Neighbourhood Centre

A few years ago I was lucky enough to have a guided tour of the Tip by the Drysdale Landfill Supervisor, Ray Stratton. I can’t remember why I was invited but I jumped at the opportunity. I came away believing that members of our community would love to visit the landfill and learn about the processes.

After almost 4 years of suggesting that we should run Tip Tourism Tours, thanks to City of Greater Geelong and especially Dave McNamara and Mark Davies, we did. Almost 30 people came on our trips to the Tip over two days, during Adult Learners’ Week, and they are still raving about how good it was. We had people attend from all over the Bellarine and one from Geelong.

I was lucky enough to go to 3 of the 4 sessions that were run and I loved talking to like-minded people about the recycling opportunities offered at Drysdale Landfill. We saw the free recycling areas for paint, cardboard and paper, e-waste (small appliances with a power cord eg toasters or kettles, computers TVs etc), bigger white goods including fridges, scrap metal, hard plastic and now soft plastic. If you took all of this out of your bins each week, there might not be anything left to put out on the curb.

We learnt that broken glass is one of the chief contaminators of the comingled yellow bin, thus causing the recycling to be placed in the landfill. We learned so much and many have committed to separating the recycling at home and making monthly trips to the landfill. Because the feedback has been so positive, I am sure we will continue to partner with City of Greater Geelong to bring these tourism opportunities to our community, hopefully a couple of times a year.

And how is this related to climate change action?  Well, every item that has been manufactured takes energy to make and this energy is mostly from fossil fuels. Re-using or recycling containers, appliances and furniture cuts down on the energy required to make new materials and objects. Also preventing food and garden waste from being buried in landfill means that it doesn’t breakdown to give off methane, which is also a greenhouse gas.

Tip tourism is a motivating way to think about waste – and prompts discussion of how we can reduce waste in the first place and how to reuse and recycle so that very little needs to be buried in landfill.

At SpringDale we try to do our bit by collecting clothing and bedding for the Homeless in conjunction with Corio Norlane Lions Club, household batteries in conjunction with Rotary Club of Drysdale, food in conjunction with Drysdale Community Church, Plastic bottle tops in conjunction with Envision Hands and more.