Flinders Island, north of Tassie in Bass Strait, has a waste
problem.
Got some more bottles for ya.
Islands dwellers in the tiny town of Killiecrankie know their
council's rubbish tip will soon be full.
Do you want to do it or you want to do it?
And so they're finding new ways to deal with recyclable
materials, starting with glass bottles.
Each bottle is churned by a special glass crushing machine.
The bottle goes in, and then out the bottom of the machine into a
tub falls the cullet.
The sparkling recycled material is like sand. You can run your
hand through and it is coarse, but not sharp. Just like the
sand at the beach.
How many bottles have you brought along today?
I think that was a total of 67. Not all bottles, some were jars,
so I didn't drink that many. But it's gonna be great, that it
doesn't go into landfill.
In one year, around 6,000 bottles have been crushed and
used around Flinders Island in all sorts of practical and fun
ways.
Well, this is - the path has been laid with some of the glass
crushings. This is some GeoHex because it's subject to erosion.
And a lot of people are quite, quite keen to use it on their
garden paths, because it sparkles in the sun and looks
really pretty.
I feel like I'm in the Emerald City from the Wizard Of Oz.
(Laughs) Yes.
In an orchard tended by Anne Rae and Bronwyn Stubbs, the glass
crushings are being added to soil where it helps water to
penetrate the soil, and even deters snails.
So, you bury it into the ground a little bit, Bronwyn?
It's being used in the garden, to lighten the soil when it's
very clayey.
For irrigation, under irrigation pipes, ag pipes and that kind of
thing. So it acts like a sand, because that's where glass comes
from sand.
Garden paths. It's endless.
Neighbour Jude Cazaly gets as much of the crushed glass as she
can. There aren't many potholes left in her driveway.
Well, slowly but surely, my potholes are being filled. I've got
a gravel drive, which is using local gravel, and there's no
doubt, with a bit of traffic, the potholes start to appear. So,
I've just got to snaffle my share of the glass, so that I
can slowly fill up my potholes. It's a very slow process because
you have to - it's a lot of glass bottles that come down to
the amount that's here.
How many glass bottles do you estimate are in that pothole?
I can tell you that because that was probably six wine bottles . . .
six wine boxes - normal wine boxes - and a small wheelie bin
full of bottles.
The recycled glass cullet has even been used as an ingredient
in concrete,
I think it's probably about one part cullet, two to three parts
sand, in one part cement. And it really increases the strength of
the cement, particularly the tensile strength.
Now, with the crushed glass, should people be worried if
they're using crushed glass about breathing it in?
Glass these days is made from quartz, but once it's melted
down at 1,650 degrees Celsius, it forms an amorphous solid,
which is quite different.
There's no evidence to suggest that it's dangerous to use in
your vegetable gardens or anywhere else, bearing in mind
that the soil that your vegetable garden is made up of,
or orchard or whatever, is essentially silica anyway in one
way or another.
In six months Flinders Island rubbish tip will be full. But
the council has a plan to divert glass and other wastes from
landfill.
But what this plan will do is to really sort of like go with the
whole circular economy. You know, rubbish is not waste
Everything's got a value. So if something can be repaired,
great, it'll get fixed. If it can't be repaired anything
that's of valuable get stripped out of it.
The glass recycling trial demonstrated by the community at
Killiecrankie might only be small scale for now, but
residents hope it won't stay that way for long.
Have you tried tapping into the local pubs?
We haven't yet because this machine really requires a fair
bit of individual effort to keep it going. We believe these kinds
of machines are actually built for pubs and more remote places,
so they can get rid of their glass.
This was really a trial to see how it can go. We've been so
happy with it. We could take all the glass from the pubs but we'd
be forever feeding the machines. We think maybe other people can
find other solutions as well. And also our council has been
proactive in getting a big glass crusher, which will happen, and
that should really help, on a much larger scale.
In the meantime, these island dwellers are keeping recyclables
out of their landfill, one bottle at a time.