COUNCIL IN FOCUS
Breaking the barriers THE CITY OF COCKBURN IS HOPING TECHNOLOGY WILL HELP THE COMMUNITY TUNE IN TO ITS LATEST WASTE EDUCATION CAMPAIGN.
A new education program includes videos that show local heroes demonstrating various sorting, recycling and waste reduction methods.
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irtual Reality (VR) headsets and videos featuring local waste champions will be among a suite of tools the City of Cockburn will use to help its Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) community learn about the importance of reducing waste. The city has received a $16,500 State Government Infrastructure and Community Education 2021-22 WasteSorted grant to help with the education program. It aims to foster waste avoidance by improving waste sorting by the community.
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Clare Courtauld, City of Cockburn Waste Education Co-ordinator, said diverting more items from landfill through better waste sorting would help the city achieve its local government targets, as set out in Western Australia’s Waste Strategy. The program will use multilingual waste education kits, games and videos, plus virtual reality tours of recycling and landfill facilities to demonstrate how everyone plays a vital role in preventing rubbish from ending up in landfill. “There are many alternative uses and streams of recycling for so
many products that we all use every day and it can be quite confusing unless you understand the reasons behind this,” Clare says. “We hope this fun educational opportunity will help people understand why it’s important for the planet and our hip pocket that we all take responsibility for the rubbish we generate. “From plastics and packaging to paper, bottles, tins and cans that pass through our hands every day, there are lots of ways to recycle these and to reduce