How long rubbish stays in the environment

You are born

Fruit peel begins to break apart

1 in 41 casualty crashes on country roads involve a vehicle hitting an animal. Throwing food like fruit scraps from your car could be the reason an animal is drawn to the road.

• Keep a bag in the car for rubbish.
• Wait until you get home to throw fruit peels into your compost, or food and garden organics bin.

Start primary school

Cigarette butt begins to break apart

Cigarette filters are made from a plastic called cellulose acetate. When tossed into the environment, they dump not only that plastic, but also the nicotine and heavy metals.

• Smoke near a bin.
• Use a butt bin in your car or when you’re on the go.

Start high school

First full time job

By age 20, you’ve used 2,600kg of plastic. That’s about the same weight as the tongue of a blue whale.

Buy your first home

Takeaway coffee cup begins to break apart

Disposable cups appear to be made of paper, but the majority have a thin plastic lining meaning they will never decompose.

• Use a reusable coffee cup.
• Always remember to put your cup in a red or general waste bin. These cups can’t be recycled.

First child

Confectionary wrapper begins to break apart

Wrappers are made of a mix of materials like plastics and aluminium, which will never break down. It releases toxins into the environment.

• Keep a bag in the car for rubbish.
• Hold onto small pieces of rubbish until you find a bin.

Takeaway container begins to break apart

Takeaway food packaging makes up over 30% of litter items in NSW. Even biodegradable packaging can take hundreds and thousands of years to break apart.

• Say no to extra packaging.
• Always check how to dispose of your takeaway packing.

Your average lifespan

Batteries begin to break apart

Batteries contain chemicals that are extremely toxic when leaching out into the soil and marine environments.

The nappies you wore as a baby begin to break apart

A baby can go through an average of 2,220 nappies in the first year. That’s a whopping 2 billion disposable nappies that go into landfill in Australia each year.

Plastic bags begin to break apart

Australian's use up to 10 million plastic bags every day, with around 150 million ending up in our oceans and waterways. Over 100,000 marine animals and 1,000,000 sea birds lose their life to plastic each year globally.

• Say no to plastic bags.
• Keep reusable bags in your car for groceries or retail shopping.

The masks worn by the doctors who delivered you begin to break apart

Small animals can become entangled in the elastic within the masks or within gloves as they begin to break apart.

Plastic bottles begin to break apart

One plastic bottle can break up over time into 10,000 pieces of microplastic. Glass bottles will never break down. They will stay in the environment for a million years if not recycled.

• Use a reusable bottle.
• Always recycle glass bottles.

Fishing nets start to break apart

A seemingly harmless discarded fishing net left to drift in the ocean can strangle animals like sea turtles travelling to their nesting ground.

In a million years glass will begin to break apart

Aussies consume 1.36 million tonnes of glass packaging per year. If you don’t recycle your glass bottle but dump it instead, it can take up to one million years for that glass to completely disintegrate. The good news: glass is 100% recyclable.