World Habitat Day, 1 October 2018

The first Monday of October every year has been designated by the United Nations as World Habitat Day to serve these aims:

(i)              remind that everyone holds the power and responsibility to shape the future of where we live and work as we reflect upon the state of these towns and cities, and

(ii)             (ii) reiterate that everyone has the basic right to adequate shelter.

This is also when all levels of government and relevant stakeholders are engaged to pave the pathway for adequate and affordable housing by implementing concrete initiatives in the context of New Urban Agenda as we work towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals.

Therefore, HOPE Australia would like you to be part of this purposeful annual event as we focus on this year’s theme for World Habitat Day 2018: Municipal Solid Waste Management. Each year, a new theme is adopted to draw attention to UN Habitat’s mandate of promoting sustainable development policies that ensure adequate shelter for all.

Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSW) includes waste from households and local government activities such as parks maintenance. This is especially close to our heart, as our daily activities are the culprits of municipal solid waste. As of June 2017, some 20 million tonnes of our garbage made it to the landfill sites - mostly clustered around our capital cities; accounting for about 40% of total waste generation in Australia. While we cannot avoid building landfills, we can look into adopting well-managed best practices locally so we can safely dispose of our residual waste and harness the potential for resource recovery. Proper management of waste is just as essential as electricity and water.

Most of us know the 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, but we can relook into how we can ultimately reach the goal of recycling programs where we maximise the recyclability of all its materials. While most of Australia is embarking on the single-use plastic bag ban, at home we can do more repurposing our household trash - for example: purchasing refillable household items, use soaps bars and shampoo bars, going paperless, using your unwanted clothes as rags, composting food, segregating waste more knowledgably, and rethinking how we can reduce our reliance on plastics. You can start small – do I need to use a straw for this drink? Can I provide my own cup for take-away coffees?

Closer to the date, UN Habitat will update their page (https://unhabitat.org/world-habitat-day/) on World Habitat events. Affiliate pages are also here on Habitat3 and Urban Campaign. They are also contactable at [email protected] This is also a chance to connect with groups like HOPE Inc. to learn more about how we can play a bigger part to manage our waste better. Check out HOPE Inc.’s webpage at https://www.hopeaustralia.org.au/.