When I was growing up, recycling was just another chore that needed to be done. Unlike mowing the lawns or weeding the garden however, recycling was in my mother's DNA. Food scraps to the mulch heap, cans and anything with aluminium into the steel tub, paper in the paper tub, glass in the glass tub .... you get the picture. I have very strong memories of the corner of our garage, that was filled with different tubs full of 'waste', ready to be reused or taken to the various scrap yards for recycling.

Every few months, we'd load up the station wagon and do the rounds of paper, steel and glass recycling yards. Whilst I remember it as a chore, it was just a way of life in our family and I always knew that after a trip to the steel man who would pay us for our cans, I could save just a little more to buy a new hockey stick!

In more recent years, I've noticed we've become 'lazy' recyclers because our yellow bins gives us an easy out. We simply chuck anything we think is recyclable into the bin with the yellow lid, knowing someone else would 'take care of it', thinking we are doing our bit for the environment. Every two weeks our yellow bins get picked up and they get chucked into bigger bins for mega recycling collection companies like SKM to 'take care of it'.

They in-turn have chucked their collections into containers and shipped them overseas to Third World Countries to 'take care of it'. Throughout the entire process, we chuck stuff in a bin, thinking and hoping someone else will 'take care of it'.

As our Mayor Samantha McIntosh has said (Saturday 28 Sept), we need a "positive new approach". As part of a community, we need now to take responsibility for the waste we generate and not leave it entirely for someone else to 'take care of it'.

I am confident that the overwhelming majority of our community are good people who believe we need to manage our waste better. The first step in achieving this is taking responsibility for our own waste and considering ways to reduce, reuse and recycle. The City of Ballarat asks us to 're- think HOW we recycle' as the first step in improving the way we manage our waste.

The City of Ballarat is asking that we manage glass differently. This is not unreasonable. All we need to do is change our behaviour and separate glass from other recyclables, then drop off our glass to one of the collection centres provided around the town.

Consider it this way: We buy the products that come in glass and bring them into our house. We are being asked to take those same glass containers, now empty, out of our house and drop them off at a location around town.

If as a community we do this well, demand will drive new opportunities. Industry will invest in new technologies, drive innovation and entrepreneurs will produce new products made from recycled materials, including glass and reduce the costs of recycling.

It is not inconceivable to think that if we do this well, we will FLIP the recycling industry such that recyclers might pay us for our waste as a high-value resource that's crucial to the circular economy.

Most importantly, we will do a little more to help relieve some of the stress on our environment.

Behavioural change is hard and as Australians, we rarely respond well to being told what to do by our governments. However, here is an instance where I think we can agree, it cannot continue to be someone else's problem to 'take care of it'.

There is not one simple answer to waste and recycling. It's multidimensional and complex. We can start to unravel the complexity and manage our recycling better, simply starting by separating our glass from the other recyclables that get chucked in our yellow bin.

We all have a right to a sustainable future and with that, a responsibility to act.

Michael Poulton

CEO, Committee for Ballarat.