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At first glance, Australians appear to be good recyclers: ABS figures report that in 2012 about 94% of households participated in some way in kerbside recycling. State waste authorities also report a consistent increase in the volume of materials recovered for recycling.

However, these figures do not justify complacency. Our total household waste is increasing and our kerbside recycling rate – the amount of materials collected for recycling as a percentage of the total waste generated – is actually relatively low by global standards, and is only growing slowly.

The recycling rate increased from 45% in 2007 to 51% in 2011, just creeping above the average of 50% across comparable countries.

One reason our kerbside recycling rate isn’t higher is because many people find the rules confusing: a Planet Ark survey found that 48% of Aussies struggle to figure out what can and can’t be recycled, and many incorrectly identified materials that could be recycled. Much of this is likely due to the variation in rules in different places, and the extent to which recycling has changed in the 35 years since it began in Australia.

Many people are confused about what can and can’t be recycled. Adapted from Planet Ark, 7 Secrets of Successful Recyclers Why is there variation in recycling rules?

Every local council makes its own decisions about what it collects for recycling, based on factors like population density, economics, local infrastructure and facilities, waste contracting services available, and potential end markets.

For example, the volume and value of recyclables collected from smaller or remote populations might be too low to be economic, once the costs of collection and transport are factored in. In other words, one size will not fit all council areas.

The type of facilities available to a council also affects what can be collected. For example, combination products like Tetra Pak juice cartons are made of multiple materials: cardboard, plastic and foil linings. Specialised machinery is needed to separate the product into its component materials before it can be recycled and this may not be available in all areas.

In the past the variation between councils was big, as some got access to facilities and new technologies quicker than others.

The good news is things are getting simpler as councils move towards much greater consistency. Now more than 80% of people can place the same things in their recycling bins, by following a few golden rules.

How has recycling changed over time?

Household kerbside recycling schemes were introduced in the 1980s, initially in Sydney, and then spread to the other major centres. By the early 1990s nearly half of households had kerbside collections, and by 2014 94% of Australians had access to kerbside recycling.

Early recycling collections used council-provided bags and crates, or boxes or other bins that were provided by the householder. But mobile garbage bins, better known as “wheelie bins”, have steadily gained in popularity and are now the major form of recycling bin provided by councils. This shift was in part driven by waste service contractors desiring greater cost-efficiency.

Initially, recycling had to be sorted into paper and plastic/glass. Over the past 15 years many councils have moved towards “comingled” recycling, in which all recyclables are placed in the one bin. For example, in 2006, only 47% of Sydney councils had comingled recycling, while in 2012, 95% of councils across NSW did.

Research suggests, however, that while comingled recycling is more convenient for households, it leads to lower recovery rates and more contamination than separated recycling.

Again, the shift to comingled recycling is partly due to a desire for reduced costs. While sorting was traditionally done by hand, recycling is increasingly sent straight to automated machines in materials-recovery facilities, which use the physical properties of different materials to separate them from each other.

Is recycling enough?

Like most conversations about recycling, so far we have only discussed the “supply” side: how things get recycled. It is also important to recognise the “demand” side: what happens to recycled material.

A strong recycling system requires a closed loop, where there is demand for products made from recycled material. Increased demand supports a more circular economy by providing an incentive for investment in recycling collection schemes and infrastructure.

People who want to be super successful recyclers can increase demand by “buying back” their recycling; looking for products with recycled content, such as toilet paper, wrapping and copy paper, boxes, plastic containers and packaging, as well as bigger items like outdoor furniture and carpet underlay.

Recycling also needs to be considered in its appropriate place in the scheme of things. While it is extremely important to ensure useful materials don’t go to waste in landfill, many might be surprised to know that recycling sits below a number of waste avoidance actions. Recycling and other waste management should be more of a last line of defence.

The ‘waste hierarchy’ prioritises actions by those with the greatest environmental benefit. UTS: Institute for Sustainable Futures

Most of us only think about recycling when we’re disposing of something. However it’s much more effective to think about recycling where we’re acquiring it. For most of us, that is in the supermarket when buying groceries.

When considering a product, if we think about the waste that will be produced when we get home, we could choose refuse to purchase products with too much packaging, thus reducing the amount of waste that needs to be recycled. Similarly, we could buy reusable items instead of single-use, disposable items.

New social movements are also trying to encourage people to be even more creative about how they can avoid waste, introducing concepts like “repair” and “re-gifting” back into our consciousness. They are trying to create an extended waste hierarchy with more emphasis on waste avoidance.

An extended waste hierarchy, focusing on waste avoidance. UTS: Institute for Sustainable Futures

Recycling is vital to reducing resource use and waste to landfill, and getting it right is crucial. But it’s also important for recycling to take its place alongside waste-avoidance actions for a more sustainable lifestyle.

Jenni Downes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Ofgem considering further steps to protect billpayers as a result of suppliers’ failure to cut back-bills’ limit from 12 to six months

Britain’s leading energy providers are under fire again after missing a deadline to help households with smart meters avoid being hit with unexpected bills.

Electricity and gas suppliers, including the big six and smaller providers, had pledged that by the end of 2016 they would cut back on sending backdated or catchup bills to customers whose smart meters inaccurately measured their energy usage. However, not one of the big six or dozens of smaller suppliers have met the self-imposed target of cutting the limit for back-bills from 12 months to six months.

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The Arctic sea ice hosts algae, which sustain a food chain up to the beluga whale. But the ice is decreasing – and in summers, it may be gone entirely by 2050

The beluga whale is one of the most extraordinary species of marine creature known to science. It is a gregarious, pure white Arctic dweller that emits strange, high-pitched twitters that have given it its nickname: the sea canary. Belugas are on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s “near threatened” list, because of past whaling and the impact of water contamination.

Now scientists have discovered that Delphinapterus leucas is facing a new global threat. Like many other species that live in the far north, their lives are being disrupted by global warming, according to Thomas Brown of the Scottish Association for Marine Science (Sams), who has been studying belugas for several years.

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It’s desperately important that we redouble our efforts to combat pollution and waste

Recycling is a bit like fitness. The moment you stop putting in the effort, you lose your muscle.

This was on my mind as I watched microwavable black plastic containers whizzing up a conveyer belt at a recycling depot in Kent. This is progress. Innovation in plastic chemistry means these trays can now be recycled.

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Scientists locate the source of powerful tsunamis that swept across Mars three billion years ago.

We're discovering new species at an accelerating rate. The disposable cardboard glider or the living transport system? Not quite, they're something completely different.

In the mid-2000s, in a room at Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, Professor Julian Bayliss used Google Earth to discover a hidden rainforest in Northern Mozambique which is home to dozens of new species of flora and fauna. Professor Bayliss and Alliance Earth Director Jeffrey Barbee ventured with a team into the heart of the forest.

To find out more about the expedition click here

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Research is underway to determine how clock changes affect children's sleep patterns.

Dent Fell, west Cumbria Runners in the Jarrett’s Jaunt race have little time to appreciate the fell’s panoramic views of the Solway Firth

By hump-backed Wath Brow bridge, weary fell runners step gingerly down slippery banking into the icy waters of the river Ehen, swollen by overnight rain. Ah, the blessed relief as they rub and knead their calves with fingers and thumbs, jabbing deep into the muscles, soothing aches caused by scaling fellsides so steep they sometimes needed hands to help.

Related: Cumbria’s iron man

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The Minke Whale Project records observations from the public. Recent sightings of dwarf minke whales are down.

In February 2016 Cyclone Winston saved the southern Great Barrier Reef from severe bleaching due to extreme water temperatures. The intense rainfall helped cool ocean waters.

What evidence is there that Finland's famous baby boxes actually reduce infant mortality rates?

Tensions in the small town grow, and 'piss off pipi hunters' is written across a public toilet wall. And all the while, under the sand at the beach, a small clam opens up its gills and filters its phytoplankton dinner off the incoming tide.

The state government’s determination to open up protected land for logging is a saga that moves from ridiculous to absurd

I thought I’d seen the turbid depths of policy driven by ideology and perceived political self-interest, but then I turned my attention back to the Tasmanian forest “wars”.

I first started reporting on this issue in 1988 when Bob Hawke and his environment minister Graham Richardson appointed a former judge, the late Michael Helsham, to investigate whether parts of the Tasmanian forest were worthy of world heritage listing. That resulted in the first of many agreements over the decades (in 1989, 1997, 2005 and 2013) in which federal and state governments paid hundreds of millions of dollars to “end the forest wars once and for all” by restructuring the industry and determining which forests should be protected and which should be open to logging.

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Campaigners will occupy work sites, chain themselves to machinery and clog phone lines, Galilee Blockade says

A group of activists say the mining contractor Downer Group is the “prime target” of a civil disruption campaign to force it to walk away from a $2bn deal to build and run Adani’s proposed Queensland coalmine.

Galilee Blockade organisers warn members of their network will occupy work sites, chain themselves to machinery and clog phone lines, among other actions that will cost Downer money until it exits a non-binding contract over the contentious Carmichael site .

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Evidence of doctored paperwork found at Areva-owned forge, which has made parts for Hinkley Point

An international team of inspectors has found evidence of doctored paperwork and other failings at a forge in France that makes parts for nuclear power stations across the world.

The UK nuclear regulator said the safety culture at the site, which has produced forgings for British plants including Sizewell B and the planned new reactors at Hinkley Point, fell short of expectations.

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Sarah Mukherjee accuses the EU proposal to ban neonicotinoids from fields of being “political” (Europe poised for total ban on bee-harming pesticides, March 24). Damn right. If she means supporting the long-term interests of people over the short-term blinkered interests of a few businesses, I can hardly think of a better definition of the word.

From DDT to lead in petrol, businesses have fought tooth and nail against legal restrictions, until they came and the predicted disasters never happened. But why stop at fields and neonics? Our parks and gardens have become vital havens for all kinds of wildlife and yet our garden centres are filled with wildlife-unfriendly herbicides and pesticides, ironically shelved alongside the “bee and butterfly friendly” plants. At least farmers can argue, whether or not you agree, that their livelihoods and our food is at stake. Little is at stake if we ban all poisons from our parks and gardens, beyond a few weeds on our paths and some greenfly. Future generations will be astounded that we took so long.
Charles Harris
London

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For centuries, people in the Alps have attributed health issues, headaches in particular, to the mountain wind known as the Foehn.

The State Department says the project, blocked by Barack Obama, is in the national interest.

Malaysian activist Bill Kayong fought to save forest lands from logging and oil palm development. Like a troubling number of environmental campaigners around the world, he paid the highest price, reports Yale Environment 360

Environmentalists at risk: read part one in this series

It was 8.20am on 21 June 2016. Bill Kayong, an up-and-coming political activist in Miri, a coastal oil town in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, was 15 minutes into his morning commute, waiting in his pickup truck at a traffic light across from a shopping mall. Suddenly, two bullets shattered the side window and struck him in the head, killing him instantly.

Kayong was one of dozens of people killed while defending environmental and human rights causes in 2016. His life was taken just one day after a report from the human rights group Global Witness revealed that the previous year had been “the worst on record for killings of land and environmental defenders”, with 185 people around the world killed while taking a stand against development projects ranging from dams, to mines, to logging, to agricultural plantations.

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