January 2026
I’ve had a win recently. After attending a Planet Ark circular economy conference I began working for textile recycling on our shire. We have donation points at our charities but most of the material isn’t saleable and goes to landfill. After gaining support of some of these charities I managed to get a majority of councillors on board to pass a motion for a staff report on textile recycling options. The end result that came online in October is a textile recycling system where all textiles are tracked and are either resold, made into cushion filling or industrial rags. The non profit organisation ethreads does the sorting work and all profit goes to the Sebastian Foundation’s youth mental health program. In just two months we have saved 15,300 Kgs of textile from landfill and funded 72 students attending resilience programs!
Another issue I am working on is getting better tree protection in our Development Control Plan with local native trees protected at 3m high and exotics at 40 cm diameter (down from 5 m and a whopping 80 cm respectively). We are now in the exhibition period so time will tell whether the community support is sufficient but I am hoping it will hold.
Nola Firth