Transport Tuesday by Holly Royce
Yesterday, Australia’s commuter newspaper, The mX launched an app.
The website explains:
“We’re expanding beyond the CBDs of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to give you the best news, gossip, sport and talk for free no matter where you are anytime of the day or night.”
“We’ll have your favourite sections including News, What in the Weird, Goss & Glam; Sport and Talk plus a whole raft of new content including galleries, videos and weather and transport Twitter feeds to give you a smooth ride to work and back.
We know you love our Talk pages so there will be more opportunities than ever before to comment and share with us on the mX app and we’ll share your thoughts in our printed edition as well.”
Right, so now you are probably saying to yourself, “that’s all well and good – but what does this have to do with climate change?”
The very premise of a commuter newspaper is that we take it to read on the ride home and then dispose of it. Even the official website dubs the paper, “an afternoon pick-me-up”, a quick hit of information which is then dumped on the way home.
It was surprisingly hard to find information on how much waste is generated through the distribution of mX.
A survery* conducted in 2012 explained the newspaper had a reach of “741,000 people daily.” That’s 741,000 newspapers being dumped after a 15-minute skim through, more than half of which won’t be recycled.
That’s a lot of waste.
The new mX smart device application is an ideal solution. It means that commuters will be able to get their pick-me-ups anytime, and it’s no longer just limited to those readers in the big cities. It also means that a lot less people will be picking up the paper of an afternoon, resulting in more directly recycled.
For those who will continue to pick there daily mX, and those who contribute to the 28 tonnes* of commuter waste left in and around our public transport systems every month, it is very important to remember how recycling benefits everyone.
Why is recycling important?
The recycling industry is estimated to generate about $10 billion a year in economic activity in Australia, including supporting thousands of direct and indirect jobs. The more you recycle the more carbon and other pollution you’ll be reducing – and the national economy will benefit as well.
Nothing that can be recycled should be going into landfill.
Best of all, everyone can help to save energy and resources and to cut pollution in simple ways.
Here’s an easy-to-do tip published by the Australian Government: When out walking, collect discarded containers (for example, bottles and aluminium cans). Recycling a shopping bag full of containers saves at least five kilograms of greenhouse gas and reduces litter.
We are daughters, mothers, sisters and grandmothers getting on with practical climate action to live better for us and the planet. Join the movement at www.1millionwomen.com.au
*Nielsen Media Research, CMV National (March 2012, Survey 2).
1 Million Women 