Stick a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster and smear them with butter and a thick layer of Vegemite.

So what’s all the fuss about a Newcastle café making national headlines just because of its so-called innovative smear of Vegemite served on a board with a dollop of butter and two pieces of toast that costs $7.

The foodie hierarchy has branded it ‘un-Australian’ and ‘tantamount to treason’. 

TV chef Matt Moran asked: ’Why the hell would you do that?’ while My Kitchen Rules judge Colin Fassnidge said Vegemite toast was a classic and should be shown respect.

Well, Orange coffee shops have been going gangbusters for months doing something similar, serving up inch-thick slices of bread with toppings like Vegemite, ricotta, fig and honey, mozzarella, avocado and tomato.

But Orange has more than 50 coffee shops so there was an opening a mile wide for them to offer a trendy variety of golden brown offerings that you certainly wouldn’t make at home.

A quick sample shows Orange cafes are up there with them, with Byng Street Café offering toasted banana or apple with walnut bread while you can get house-made tomato relish and sourdough toast at Nile Street or sourdough toast with Vegemite, jam or honey at Anything Grows.

But not on boards.

IT didn’t take Orange City Council long to warn of a proposed increase in recycling garbage costs after China announced it would only accept material with a lower contamination rate, no more than 0.5 per cent.

In Australia around 620,000 tonnes of materials a year will be affected by the restrictions, so ratepayers will end up having to pay councils more for recycling services as companies struggle to offload all the junk.

Things like pizza boxes with grease on the base will be too contaminated for China to accept, so this kind of stuff will have to be put in normal red waste landfill bins.

Other things you can’t recycle include plastic bags, polystyrene such as meat trays and foam packaging, window glass, glass contaminated with food waste, ceramics, crockery and drinking glasses.

Clearly the Chinese are fed up with us dumping our junk on them.

But the council needs to tell us what we can recycle and what we can’t to avoid confusion, particularly because less of what we normally put in our yellow bins will be recycled.

IT’S a new word that’s about to become popular with people who want to get fit and are concerned about the environment.

Plogging originated in Sweden and is combining jogging and picking up rubbish along the way.

The word is a mix of jogging, and the Swedish word for ‘pick up,’ which is plocka upp, hence plogging.

You often see Orange walkers who are concerned about litter on our streets picking it up as they go.

Now there’s a word for it.

The next time you go for a run or a walk, take along a bag and pick up any rubbish you see and while you’re keeping fit, you’re doing your thing to help our struggling environment.