Don Burke

From: Don Burke
To: Don Matthews
Sep 11


Hi Don,

You are on the money. We too at Burke’s Backyard looked at plastic recycling ad focussed on several areas including the recycling claimed by Reln plastics who make similar products to rainwater tanks – they do large water troughs etc for horses, cattle, etc. They insisted that their tanks were 100% recycled, so we said “Great, we’d like to film the process to support your activities.” They immediately went into damage control, saying that they were going to recycle plastic but supplies were short etc etc. Many years later we still have heard nothing more from them.

Small water tanks do nothing for the environment in terms of water saving. They are obviously a distracting feel-good activity to mask government failures in water catchment and supply.

At the moment, the plastic water tank industry seems to be in freefall. We were recently offered a large number (possibly 2,000) pvc bladder 1,000 litre Handytanks as a give away from K Mart (value $269/each).Many retailers are selling tanks at or below cost price. I would like to think that we at Burke’s Backyard played some part in this decline. We have vigorously campaigned against silly little (<5,000 litre) tanks.

Congratulations – and how can I help?

Don