Melbourne Metro YHA's war on plastic

If you’ve been keeping an eye on Melbourne Metro YHA's Facebook, or indeed if you’ve stayed there recently, you may have noticed this monster sculpture…

Duty Manager Freddi took some time out of his busy schedule to explain the story behind this bizarre installation.

“It all started in one of our staff meetings last year - our housekeeper Carolina raised her concern about how many water bottles we find in our bins,” Freddi said.

“She came up with the idea of making a visual installation in our common areas, in where people would be able to see how many bottles we throw out daily and provide the information that people need to make the right choice.”

Thus, the idea for the Plastic Tower of Shame was born. Some metallic frames that were previously used to display travel brochures were recycled (so sustainable)! With the help of Melbourne Metro superstar handyman Ray, these were welded together and a base with wheels was added.

Melbourne Metro started bottle collection on 28 December 2018. On average, it takes about two weeks to fill the cage that holds around 500 water bottles. 

Since plastic 500 water bottles is about 500 too many, the team empty the sculpture in various locations around the hostel to really get people's attention...

The point of the project? Bringing guests’ attentions to the facts, which are:

• It takes 460,000 barrels of oil annually to meet Australia’s need for plastic water bottles. A pretty poor way to use a finite resource!
• Producing plastic water bottles produces 600 times more carbon dioxide emissions than tap water.
• Plastic water bottles currently make up 38 per cent of the total Australian litter volume.
• Far more water bottles end up washed out to sea than disposed of responsibly, and the impact on our beautiful oceans is severe. Ingestion of plastic pollution is deadly for marine animals. The chemicals in the plastic are also being revealed to kill the reproductive health of some fish species – did you know it can even have the ability to make a male fish, female?
• Of the 42 million disposable water bottles made every single day in the world, only 30 per cent are reycled.
• 7 billion bottles end up in landfill or our oceans every year, taking 1000 years to break down and leaching dangerous chemicals into the environment.
• It’s a big fat waste! You're paying for the production of the bottle, not the water. Plus, only some bottled water comes from spring or groundwater sources, while 45 per cent of it comes from…you guessed it, the tap!
• Australian tap water is free, and regulated by the government so it's totally safe to drink!

At YHA, we don’t believe that something that takes us a few minutes to drink should be continuing to poison the environment for hundreds and hundreds of years after we’re gone. Plus, paying for something we can get for free is totally against the Backpacker Code of Conduct. 

This is why Melbourne Metro have resorted to such dramatic measures…and they’re working!

“Our sales on reusable water bottles have increased drastically which is a great sign!” Freddi said.

The moral of this story? Don’t bring a plastic water bottle to Melbourne Metro YHA, unless you’d like it to end up in the Plastic Tower of Shame.

Instead, invest in a reusable water bottle at one of our hostels, and fill it up with our cool, filtered tap water as many times as you like, for free!

Check out this video for more on this unique project.

Read more about our super sustainability initiatives here!