Recycled Sound
Recycled Sound
Location/Club: Toorak, 9800, Victoria, Australia
Keywords: CIRCULAR ECONOMY, Recycled Medical, Hearing Aids
Description
Recycled Sound is a Community Service Project initiated by the Rotary Club of Toorak to collect, clean, reprogram and recycle hearing aids to those people in our community with a special need who are unable to meet the expense of hearing aids in the private market.
The Rotary Club of Toorak has partnered with audiologists Blamey Saunders hears and Better Hearing Australia to undertake the specialist cleaning and reprogramming to enable the hearing aids to be recycled. Toorak Rotary Club’s role is to promote the programme and to format a template of how to get the programme up and running. The template will enable other Rotary Clubs and Rotary Districts to establish the programme in their areas. The long term aim is that this programme becomes Australia wide with the potential of eventually being refined for international use in developing countries. Toorak Rotary Club will establish collection boxes at suitable collection points and forward the hearing aids to Blamey and Saunders hears where they are cleaned and checked that they are in working order. They are then sent to Better Hearing Australia where they will be reprogrammed and reconditioned so that they can be fitted to the recipient. This is all done at little or nominal cost to the recipient.
Hearing aids play a critical role in overcoming hearing loss and can greatly influence the quality of life and ability to gain and keep employment. An unaddressed hearing loss inevitably leads to isolation and other disorders and in many cases a reliance on social services for support. www. recycledsou nd.org.a u Heather has been aware of a hearing loss for many years and has a twin sister who uses hearing aids. Her loss became more problematic about 10 years ago, and in 2009 she had a test at BHA. At this time she didn’t want to get hearing aids as they were economically beyond her reach. Being close to retiring age Heather hoped she would be able to manage until she was on a pension and eligible for government help.
