A Shell Cove mother and her two daughters wanted to save the planet by making simple changes to reduce waste in their household.
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Then they started helping other people to reduce waste and recycle more.
Now Kellie Kaschubs has won two Keep Australia Beautiful sustainability awards for her efforts.
Mrs Kaschubs started her crusade after watching the ABC program War on Waste.
“My daughters Jasmine and Sienna wanted to help the planet but we knew we had to fix the problem in our household first,” she said.
“We were overfilling the 240 litre red bin every two weeks.
“We challenged ourselves to see how much we could reduce our waste in two weeks.
“We went down to having two rubbish bags, about 50 litres, for the two weeks.
“We thought, if we can do it, we should help others.
“That’s when we started the Two Week Red Bin Challenge Facebook group.”
Mrs Kaschubs challenged people to make easy, simple changes that did not have a big impact on their life but still made a difference.
“Australia is the second highest generator of waste per head in the world,” she said. “We are only second to America.
“We have to do something urgently to reduce our waste.
“We don’t need to have a zero-waste policy but there needs to be a shift in every household so we save our environment and planet.”
Mrs Kaschubs said families should educate themselves about how to correctly separate and dispose of waste, the Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) scheme as well as other community waste services that provided free disposal of items.
Shellharbour Council is one of dozens of councils that has a FOGO scheme where all food scraps are recycled rather than disposed of in landfill.
Wollongong Council is considering whether to implement a FOGO strategy.
“There is still a lot of confusion about what can go into the recycling and FOGO bins which means there is a lot of contamination,” Mrs Kaschubs said.
“The Facebook group gives bit-sized information so people remember how to correctly dispose of their waste.”
Mrs Kaschubs said she was “over the moon” to win the NSW 2018 Tidy Towns – Sustainable Communities Awards in the categories: Waste Less, Recycle More and the Hey Tosser! Litter Action awards.
