Get involved in Keep Australia Beautiful Week

Keep Australia Beautiful Week (KAB Week) kicks off on Monday 24 August 2009, providing an ideal opportunity to set your Junior Rugby League team or club a challenge to reduce its waste. <br><br>Not only will you be helping the environment, but you could also be in the running to win your club or school a range of prizes to help keep your grounds litter and waste free.<br><br>According to Keep Australia Beautiful, Australia’s longest serving grassroots environment group, Australians are one of the highest producers of waste in the world per capita. <br><br>Up to 80% of what we discard can instead be reused or recycled, with many items and packaging made out glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, aluminium and steel providing the resources&nbsp; to create new products. &nbsp;<br><br>Meanwhile, a third of the total waste we throw away is organic (food and green) waste that could have been composted or avoided in the first place.&nbsp; Removing organics from the waste stream could reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 2%. <br><br>If Australians continue producing waste at the rate we are today, then it is estimated that around 70 million tonnes of waste will be generated in a year by the year 2020.<br><br>“We simply cannot continue rubbishing Australia like we do and unnecessarily sending waste to landfill if we are serious about conserving our natural resources and tackling climate change”, says KAB Week Campaign Director, Lara Shannon.<br><br>“What we throw away today, may still be polluting our environment for generations to come, so this year’s campaign aims to show how Waste Lives On.&nbsp; By involving schools and junior sports clubs and teams in the waste reduction challenge, we hope it will result in less waste and litter being produced on training and match days, not only during the Week, but on an ongoing basis.<br><br>“We also want to remind people that rather than throwing away take-away bottles and other packaging, to recycle them in recycling bins provided at the ground, or to take them home to be recycled at kerbside if no recycling bins are provided at the ground. By recycling, we can give new life to our waste”, she added.<br><br>The NRL One Community Program is a promotional partner of Keep Australia Beautiful Week for the second year in a row and will be helping to encourage its clubs and wider membership to get involved in one or more of the litter and waster reduction activities.&nbsp; &nbsp;<br><br>Example activities include undertaking a Neighbourhood Litter Count to determine match day litter impacts and implementing procedures to reduce this; running a MobileMuster at the club during KAB Week to recycle old or broken mobile phones and accessories, refilling or recycling empty printer cartridges from the club or home through a local Cartridge World Store to earn refill discounts, composting food waste, and much more. &nbsp;<br><br>Related resources will be available at <a href="http://www.kab.org.au/">www.kab.org.au</a> from mid-July to assist clubs with running local activities to reduce litter and waste.&nbsp; The waste reduction challenge competition is open to schools and junior sporting clubs nationally (ages 16 &amp; under) with eight prize packages up for grabs - total prize pool valued at over $10,000. &nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br>Prizes include a $2500 Bunnings Gift Voucher (overall winner only), plus free Do the Right Thing rubbish and recycling bin stickers, and metal signage from the Packaging Stewardship Forum of the Australian Food and Grocery Council; Samsung printers provided by Cartridge World; Scholastic Book Club prizes; Tumbleweed Can-O-Worms and more. <br><br>Visit the Keep Australia Beautiful website from the beginning of July at <a href="http://www.kab.org.au/">www.kab.org.au </a>for further details and information to help you get involved.