Getting pretty tired of the amount of waste that gets generated, even by somewhat recycling conscious individuals like myself, kind of depressing considering how much we send to landfill as a society.

Being in IT doesn’t help, a lot of stuff provided ends up being waste or is generally non-recyclable.

• Amount of packaging – stuff often has way too much packaging, bubblewrap and worst of all – polystyrene.
• Cables wrapped in plastic bags! IT companies worldwide, looking at you…. WTF companies, it’s a frigging *cable*, it doesn’t require a special bag.
• Poor recycling in Wellington – the number of times that recycling has been incorrectly rejected or completed missed is beyond infuriating, and with apartment life it’s not possible to do organic recycling ourselves.
• e-waste is almost impossible to get rid of in Wellington, without resorting to dumping or paying high fees to get it recycled – if it can be recycled.
• Conferences – this is actually what got me started on this post, whilst tidying my room – every time I leave a conference, I end up with a bag, booklets,  lanyards, trinkets and other junk that I actually just don’t really need, and a number of bits if unable to be given away, will end up being landfill (this point ties into my goal for less stuff somewhat)
• Media – we can’t recycle CDROMs, floppy disks, yet I receive hundreds of these disks that I don’t need every year.

Unsure what (if any) improvements I can make, at this stage my procedures are pretty much limited to:

• Storing and reusing packaging – typically boxes, which are easy to store.
• Recycle anything that Wellington city council will take.
• Sell or give away older electronics, recycling by reuse – but this isn’t always feasible, people tend not to want certain items, like obsolete cellphones or CRT displays.
• Try to avoid foods that have non-recyclable packaging – this tends to be less of a problem for me, most stuff I reuse, even takeaway containers.