Sporting chance for charity
ALMOST 500 guests attended the Ray White Surfers Paradise Group Business Meets Sport charity lunch at The Star Gold Coast on Friday.
“We did the calculations just before the lunch and Ray White Surfers Paradise Group has raised more than $1 million for our Surfers Paradise Surf Lifesaving Club since the event’s inception,” Ironman legend Trevor Hendy said.
Special guests included form e r Australian Test cricketer Darren Lehmann, Brisbane Broncos chairman Karl Morris and a host of surf lifesaving champions including Ali Day and Courtney Hancock.
“We are so glad that we can host our charity events once again and raise crucial funds needed for our local surf lifesaving club,” Ray White Surfers Paradise Group’s Andrew Bell said. “I thank all the businesses for coming out and supporting such a crucial cause.”
JARRYD Hayne has emphatically denied sexually assaulting a woman, with the ex-NRL star telling a court she never said “no”.
Mr Hayne (pictured) is on trial in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court, where he has pleaded not guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual assault recklessly inflicting actual bodily harm. The woman has testified that she repeatedly said “no” and “no Jarryd” after inviting the former Parramatta and NSW fullback to her Fletcher home.
Mr Hayne had travelled to Newcastle for a two-day buck’s party for Fijian Test teammate Wes Naiqama in September 2018. He and the woman had been communicating via social media for weeks, sharing sexually suggestive messages.
Mr Hayne told the court that when he arrived at the house, the issue of consent was still “up in the air”.
But he denied her claim that she repeatedly said “no”.
The trial continues.
IN AN Australian first, a group of companies has joined forces to produce the nation’s first soft plastic food wrapper made from recycled content.
While Australia has long recycled soft plastic waste for road base and furniture it has not been able to be turned back into the product it once was.
But the KitKat wrapping from recycled soft plastics is being hailed as the missing link in a circular economy to keep waste out of landfill, as part of the federal government’s pledge at the national plastics summit last year.
The prototype KitKat wrapper initiative emerged from a trial on the NSW Central Coast, where Australian recycler iQ Renew and Nestle worked together on a door-todoor collection of soft plastics.
Other companies involved include CurbCycle, REDcycle, Taghleef Industries, Amcor, Viva Energy, Lyondell-Basell and Licella, each inputting their expertise to collect and process to turn it into oil and back into a wrapper.
The successful prototype wrappers for the chocolate bar will now roll out nationally.
Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley said the initiative was “next level”.
Nestle Australia chief executive Sandra Martinez said the project had been driven by a shared determination to resolve the soft plastics challenge, and an enormous amount of good will.
“Between us, we have shown that there’s a pathway to solve the soft plastics problem. To build this at scale, across all states and territories, across hundreds of councils, is going to take a huge effort from government at all levels, from industry and from consumers,” she said.
Danial Gallagher, chief executive of iQ Renew, said the trial involved soft plastics collected from kerbside recycling bins, then sorted and sent to Licella for conversion into oil which was then turned into food grade soft plastic.
Australian Food and Grocery Council CEO Tanya Barden said learnings from the trial would determine how best to develop an extended producer responsibility scheme for hard to recycle plastics.
“Among other things, we’ll be looking at how this model can be scaled up, ensuring there is healthy demand for packaging with recycled content and helping bring to life local industries that can unlock billions of dollars of value that’s currently lost to landfill,” she said.