Is this the end of the Hipster?

Like many people in the Macedon Ranges, I was excited to receive my new bins this January. As I stuck the new “Let’s Get Sorted” waste management flyer to my fridge I noticed a change to our recycling: Tetra paks are can no longer be recycled in our kerbside yellow bins.

What??

No more soy or almond milk? No oat or rice milk??

Surely not. I quickly called the trusty team at the Operations department at Council. They confirmed what I had begun to suspect: all Tetra Paks had previously been processed off-shore, shipped around the world with all our other co-mingled recycling: just another bit-player in the great offshore recycling swindle.

But now Australia has banned offshore recycling and vowed to take care of its own mess, which means that long-life milk and juice cartons have nowhere to go other than landfill. There is no Tetra Pak recycling in Australia.

Could this be the end of an era? Ordering a soy or almond milk latte, cappuccino, chai or macchiato might no longer be so achingly on trend as the cartons pile up in plastic-coated mountains of landfill. All that trash has to go somewhere, and Councils are notoriously shy of building new landfill sites. Perhaps having a top-knot, beard or groovy undercut will stop being cool and instead infer pariah status of “Waster”. Imagine future 2010s-themed parties, complete with fake retro Bonsoy cartons – a real “remember when” moment for aging Millennials and Gen Xers.

Cafes everywhere will soon be weighing up the cost of soy and nut milk popularity when they start having to fork out more for their weekly garbage collection. Perhaps they’ll just pass the costs on to customers, or perhaps there will be a return to genuine Italian coffee – straightforward espressos and cappuccinos. No added flavours, no weird milks, no “large”, no cold brew, no “bullet” coffee. Maybe even no take-away – simply knock it back while standing at the bar like they do in Rome. How strange.

I may be making light of this First World problem, but it serves as yet another litmus test for whether or not it is possible for us to reign in our excessively wasteful lifestyle. Are we brave enough to imagine a world without soy lattes and almond-milk smoothies? Or will we simply accept the new reality and continue chucking the cartons in the garbage? The Andrews government in Victoria thinks it has an answer.

We could simply burn all those Tetra Paks.

Approval has been granted for a huge waste-to-energy plant to be built in Laverton, Melbourne. $150 million of public money has been allocated to this project, while local recycling solutions fail under extortionate insurance requirements and little governmental support. (Hey! I have an idea, what about a local Tetra Pak recycling plant?)

The waste-to-energy plant, which is set to operate non-stop, would process 200,000 tonnes a year of waste from household bins and other residual waste.

The Age

Well, if we haven’t worked out by now what “business as usual” leads to, perhaps we never will.

Disclaimer: I have been a soy milk drinker of some 19 years, and while I am re-familiarising myself with the taste of black coffee and tea, I am also considering a new career selling soy and nut milks in refillable glass bottles. Any takers?