These two key greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere rose sharply in 2007, and carbon dioxide levels this year are literally off the chart, the US government reported today.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, rose by 0.6 per cent, or 19 billion tonnes last year. Reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in ts annual index of greenhouse gas emissions. The amount of methane increased by 0.5 per cent, or 27 million tonnes, after nearly a decade of little or no change.

Methane’s greenhouse effect is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide’s, but there is far less of it in the atmosphere. Overall, methane has about half the climate impact of carbon dioxide.

The primary source of carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels, which is increasing, said Pieter Tans, who studies greenhouse gases at the laboratory. China was now the world’s biggest emitter, followed by the United States.

The Melbourne Qantas Club lounge has lifted glass recycling rates from 10% to 80%, using a new bottle crushing machine.

Usually glass bottles are thrown in tubs and lifted into large co-mingled recycling bins. Because of factors such as breakage and contamination, at the recycling plants smaller pieces cannot be sorted and go to landfill. The BottleCycler helps stop this occurring.”

About 80 other venues are also trialling have taken up the two-month trial offer in Melbourne and the program is about to commence in Sydney, with the Department of Environment and Climate Change also coming on board to support the project.

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Carbon neutrality is the next challenge for property groups and the Initial Report of the 2020 Summit says: “Through a National Sustainable Cities Program the Federal Government could lead a nationally consistent approach to urban and regional planning which drives water efficiency and reductions in emissions.

“This could be supported by the implementation of tax and other policies that encourage the use of public transport relative to other modes of transport.”

Another idea to come out of the summit was an initiative to require carbon neutrality for all new buildings constructed after 2020. The major question is what will be the definition of what makes a building carbon neutral. The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) reported lots of questions about this and commented that “Buildings need to have zero emissions in their construction, operation and embodied energy to be truly carbon neutral.”

It is possible to achieve zero net operational carbon emissions from buildings but truly carbon neutral buildings, including their embodied energy are a significant challenge, unless carbon offsetting is used. Personally, I feel that people should regard offsetting as a last resource AFTER exhausting other avenues.

The 2020 summit in Australia had the environment and climate change as one of the major issues with the result that it really hit the news and also public awareness. Last week I went to a local small business networking function and the change in attitude to my business was enormous. Instead of the majority of small businesses saying it is too hard and their little bit does not matter, there was general concern about what they can begin to do.

Enviro Action has a stand at the Carbon Trading Expo in Melbourne this week and I think the timing is very good. Personally I have deep reservations about the emphasis on carbon trading. My belief is that this should be a last resort AFTER people have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions in other ways. The whole regulatory framework around carbon trading is very unreliable at this stage and the scheme that was developed in Europe has major flaws.

There is a lot of work to do to reduce our emissions and change our behaviour and the strength of Enviro Action’s training is that we teach people HOW to identify their environmental impacts, including their carbon emissions and to change the culture within their business to get all their personnel “on board” with behaviour change to implement their system. I firmly believe that to get the true benefits of environmental management systems, skills and capabilities must be transferred into the businesses themselves and their people and not stay with consultants.

Turtles in the lower lakes of the Murray are dying because the water is becoming saline bringing an influx of marine tube worms into what was a freshwater system and the poor turtles are becoming a surface for tube worms to grow on so the

There are parts of the ocean, in the centre of gyres of current that resemble minestrone soup. There is more plastic than plankton and the twin problems of plastic are that it does not break down in any sensible time frame and it neither floats nor sinks so there is a mass of plastic suspended in these gyres just blow the surface of the water.

I was watching a documentary of this a one guy trawled the “soup” in the Pacific Ocean and brought up hundreds of umbrella handles, tooth-bushes, plastic bags and six-pack holders. The latter two either look like jelly fish or they trap animals in the holes where the beer cans were.

Some beaches on Pacific islands now have a “sand” that is largely made up of small pieces of plastic.

Almost all of this plastic comes from garbage tossed into the streets, rivers and watercourses. The metalized plastic potato chip bags also featured in large numbers.

The throw away concept of living is increasing.