Extract from ABC News
By Backstory editor Natasha Johnson
Craig Ruecassel has learnt a lot about rubbish and recycling over the six years since he became the face of the ABC's War on Waste program.
But a couple of things he discovered while making the third series of the show alarmed him – how much plastic is in the clothing we wear and how much is ending up inside our bodies.
"I think fashion continues to be one of the areas that shocks me the most," he says.
"We've gone from fast fashion to now we have ultra-fast fashion.
"Online organisations are pumping out an extraordinary amount of fashion at very cheap prices that's fossil fuel-based but predominantly plastic.
"Over 60 per cent of our clothing is made from plastic and in Australia, we continue to buy more and more and wear it less and less and we need to do the exact opposite — we need to buy less and wear it for longer."
Taking on big pharma and fashionistas
War on Waste dramatically illustrates the scale of our waste problem with public displays, such as a 50-metre-long table laden with 500 kilograms of food thrown out by the average Australian family every year, and cheeky stunts to expose those industries that could be doing more to reduce the waste they create.
In this latest series, Reucassel "returns" boxes of medicine blister packs to pharmaceutical companies to highlight their failure to recycle a product that doesn't have to end up in landfill.
Frustration at fast fashion led to Reucassel gatecrashing Melbourne Fashion Week, wearing a dress made from plastic. He was surprised at how long it took for anyone to realise he wasn't meant to be there.
"That was one of those fun days at work," he laughs.
"We were not expecting to get in but were at the back of a long queue and I was like, 'stuff this, let's just try to get in' and they just opened the gates and let us through!
"I even managed to get on one of the runways. It's funny, if you dress up like that, people assume you are part of the show.
"Then I got booted out, which I'm used to from the Chaser days."
He might be used to it, but that doesn't mean such stunts are easy.
There's rarely a good reception when you turn up to an office or event unannounced with a camera crew in tow, asking awkward questions.
Reucassel says he, the producers and camera crew plan and talk through various potential scenarios but inevitably they have to be ready for anything to happen and just roll with it.
"Sometimes these stunts can be really stressful," he says.
"We have to be cautious legally, obviously, but I've been doing this sort of thing for a long time now.
"I still get surprised when we get reactions at both ends of the spectrum — I am surprised by people who are really friendly and by people who are extremely grumpy, I expect something in the middle."
How did plastic end up in my poo?
One of his least fun days at work was providing a poo sample while investigating how microplastics are getting into our bodies and if there's a potential impact on our health.
"It's really interesting that a lot of the microplastics in me are in fabric fibres," he says.
"I think we think of plastic in our lives as being the drink bottle in front of us, the packaging around our food — but an enormous amount of the plastic in our lives is actually our clothes and that's creating a microplastic problem that is a difficult one to get the solution to.
"I think one of the concerning things about it is that we are a bit of a lab rat at the moment as we don't have clear answers about the impacts of a lot of this stuff long-term.
"I don't want to freak people out, I don't want anyone to think that they're going to get cancer, we've got to be cautious about recognising that there's still a long way to go in terms of figuring out the science, but it's concerning when we know it's become part of our food chain. We find plastics in our ice caps, in our breast milk, in our drinking water."
Are we making progress or going backwards?
When previous series of War on Waste aired, the show helped raise awareness and motivate action — a tram full of throwaway coffee cups and the dumping of perfectly edible but imperfect-looking bananas pricked the community's conscience.
Alongside broader campaigns and initiatives, the show helped make reducing waste a national priority, with governments moving to ban or phase out single-use plastic bags, big supermarkets setting zero food waste targets and consumers shunning plastic straws and snapping up compost bins and re-usable coffee cups.
So why the need to look inside our rubbish bins again?
"It's been six years since we did the first series and War on Waste had an enormous impact on the way we did things, from consumers, to governments, to retailers and it was all going pretty well. Then along came COVID," says executive producer David Galloway of Lune Media, which produced the series for the ABC.
"I think the whole world was on pause for a couple of years and that good work we started doing with single-use plastics, packaging and coffee cups was put to one side because we had other things to worry about.
"The soft plastics recycling scheme, REDcycle, that was run in conjunction with the supermarkets, collapsed and that led to quite a bit of cynicism, I think, about recycling and then China banning imports of Australian waste started to have an impact, but interestingly it's actually had a positive impact because it's made people in Australia start taking steps to develop recycling infrastructure here.
"So, all those things together made us feel the time's right to check back in, get people motivated again and put it back on the agenda because I think there really is a desire among people to do something about waste."
One of the lessons, Reucassel says, is that governments can't just leave it to the public to do the heavy lifting.
"I think COVID was a period where people felt we went backwards," he says.
"And I think what the REDcycle collapse has shown is that governments actually have to lead and put in place a system where, while there are incentives for people to recycle, there actually needs to be infrastructure there to recycle.
"That's one of the things we're focusing on in this series, what needs to change.
"Australians are pretty good at recycling but previously, we just put our waste on a ship and sent it overseas and said, 'well, that's not my problem'. Now that we can't send it overseas, we have to deal with our own waste onshore."
While post-COVID fatigue might have many of us feeling like this is just another insurmountable problem, War on Waste shows there are solutions and people are having a positive impact.
And Reucassel argues every little bit we do helps.
"I think we try really hard with War on Waste to not be perfectionists and not be overly judgemental," he says.
"We recognise that when you've got young kids, dealing with nappies is really hard, I don't go around judging people about that kind of stuff.
"I will admit my faults — despite doing War on Waste, I still have food waste come out of my kitchen.
"I've gotten better at it but it still happens.
"I never say I'm zero plastic or zero waste, I'm not and I don't even think that that's realistic.
"I think if people say we are going to be zero waste, it's an unrealistic goal and it leads to unrealistic solutions.
"I think recognising what can and can't be done is the better approach.
"Change is not going to happen overnight and the change that needs to happen has to have government, businesses and the community working together."
In previous series, the "pester power" of young viewers helped drive change in individual households.
Working with the ABC Impact team and experts in the fields of waste, recycling, science and environmental issues, the program hopes to reignite audience interest in reducing rubbish and demanding action from governments, councils and businesses with the ability to make a difference on a bigger scale.
"In the first series, we had a clip about the enormous waste due to cosmetic standards applied to bananas and that clip was shared 20 million times on YouTube, which is just phenomenal," says David Galloway.
"We're creating these clips to share online and on social media again and we'll also have hashtags for Twitter and other platforms so people can get on board and engage with the subject and talk directly to retailers or fashion houses or councils and let them know if they're not happy.
"So, we're encouraging people to take action as part of watching the show, the more cages we can rattle, the better."
War on Waste begins Tuesday, July 25 at 8.30pm on ABC TV and iview
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