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.

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.

The Murray at Murray Bridge, in South Australia, is currently 35cm below sea level and is to drop around 50cm lower by the end of April.

Meantime, wheat crops are being planted off the Darling and flood irrigated, cotton and rice which uses enormous amounts of water planted.

60 -70 year old farmers are crawling out over the mud at Lake Albert to extend pipes to keep stock alive and get muddy water for their homes and Lake Albert in parts is receding at 500 m per week.

Meanwhile Victoria refuses to hand control of the system to the Commonwealth 14 months after the $10 billion plan was offered.

So much for the ‘spirit of cooperation’ between States and Commonwealth we were promised with Labour coast to coast. I thought Australia was one country but nonsense things like this sound like squabbling between different nations not states in the same country.

My personal take is that when there is a shortage of water, the Federal Government should share the resources equitably and account should be taken of the $ earned per litre of water used for the various crops and industries. The farmers losing their water allocation should have compensation but as climate change bites, and Australia is one of the worst affected places, it is hard to see how anyone can justify water-wasting crops like cotton and rice, in the upper reaches of the river while the bottom end dries up and whole towns and cities are without water and without the industry and jobs that depend on the river.

Update on 26th March

This week all the State Premiers and the Prime Minister are meeting in Adelaide to the regular talk & argue-fest. In this morning’s paeter, the Victorian Premier was quoted as saying that Victoria has the best managed water resources in the country and he is not going to go anything to dissadvantage any Victorians.

It is easy to have the best managed water (for Victorians only) when Victoria has more rainfall and is on the headwaters of the river.

The management that is of concern, if how they equitably share resources with other states and in particular with South Australia where the river is rapidly drying up.

Victorians are able to go on driving around happily with “Victoria- the Garden State” on their vehicle registration plates. I guess that is what matters to Mr Brumby and his voters.

Technorati Tags: drought, interstate squabbling, River Murray, Adelaide, Victoria, Australia, The Murray, Murray Bridge, Lake Albert, water resources, global warming

I read an interesting article by SITA who is a major recycling and waste disposal business. They find that plastic bags cause many problems in recycling but that they are relatively benign in landfills - so long as they do end up in landfills. Left around as litter they cause enormous problems to wildlife.

SITS feel that the they are not nearly so significant a problem as degradable organic waste which generates methane and contribute to climate change., particularly in older land fills without gas capture.

They suggest a levy for the bags at supermarkets to act as an incentive to people to remember to bring their re-usable bags. Let’s be realistic there are times when the most dedicated environmentalist needs to dash into a shop and buy things when the bags are not with them.

Unless they go to an alternative waste treatment facility where there is aerobic digestion, biodegradable bags are apparently not the answer because they are carbon based and they end up emitting methane.

I remember to take my bags 95% of the time but sometime forget even though the back of my car sometimes seems to be overrun with green cloth bags. I have one bag that the others are all supposed to be stored in but they seem to escape and take over the back of my car at times!

Technorati Tags: domestic waste, waste, reducing litter, litter, SITA, recycling, waste disposal, plastic bags,   green cloth bags

The Australian Minister For Environment, Peter Garret, has suggested that they be banned by the end of the year. Outcry from retailers!

50% of consumers bring their own bags and don’t use the plastic ones. The big issue for me is remembering to carry them up from the car. I keep enough bags in the car to cope with forgetting to take them back to the car from the house.

The waste processors tell us that the bags cause problems in many automated and manual resource recovery systems. They also tell us that the bags do not cause as much problem in landfill as degradable organic waste which generates methane and contribute to the greenhouse effect.

The problem is the litter that they cause when people are irresponsible.

A sensible solution would be to charge a small levy per bag and let the market decide what they feel is the best way for them to move their groceries from shop to home BUT couple this with an education campaign or signage on the bag to remind people about the damage bags cause as litter.

Extending this subject to farming and aquaculture - what about stock feed and fertilizer bags. I am sure lots of my clients would love some helpful comments on how to deal with this problem.

Technorati Tags: plastic bags, resource recovery systems, landfills, degradable organic waste, methane, greenhouse effect 

Three days a week I walk to the local Gym and workout with a trainer for 30 minutes. I normally enjoy the walk down a back lane away from the traffic but this Wednesday it was very different!

The first obstacles were separate waste management trucks collecting recycling, general house hold and green waste from a series of bins in the lane. Very noisy and hard to avoid as they sped past me to the next bin, then stopped and mechanically lifted the bins, put them down, then sped on past me again to the next bin to repeat. It was horrendous in a narrow lane. Necessary I guess – but bad timing. They seemed to be leapfrogging me all the way to the main road which I need to cross to reach the gym.

Next came a council truck, mulcher and chain saw gang who were pruning overhanging branches – wow – they may have had ear muffs on to reduce the noise but the residents and pedestrians did not.

Then there were the frustrated commuters who were trying to reach their parking spots that access the lane and the more help up they were, the more furiously they planted their foot when there were a few spare metres between other obstacles.

All in all, the normally pleasant walk to gym was rather horrendous and unbelievably noisy. Not a pleasant way to wake up and get going in the morning. I am not sure that our inner city environments are really very human friendly places. I rather like the concept where people in many parts of Europe take their rubbish to the appropriate bins themselves. That way they all get some exercise as well as reducing the stop starts and the distances the waste removal trucks have to travel.

Technorati Tags: waste management, recycling, commuting, walking, gym, adventurous, environment, waste removal, noise

I live in a north facing apartment block and since I erected a canopy over the windows to keep out the summer sun, I seldom have any real desire to use an air-conditioner. The apartments are all very well insulated so that we don’t hear sound from one to another. Really quite environmentally friendly.

We have a series of recycling bins in the basement – I feel that if they were better labelled for cans, bottles, plastics etc it would be better. Paper is pre-sorted and most of us are good about using these. The household waste has to be bagged and put down a shute with organic waste going into an in-sink-erator that grinds it up which prevent odours in the waste bins but does add to the biological load in the sewer. I use a worm farm on my terrace in winter but the heat on the tiled surface cooks them in summer.
My concern is for bagging the rubbish. Like most council waste, our waste all must be bagged and I have not found a satisfactory biodegradable bin liner bag that I can use that avoids plastic bag use. With the Federal Environment Minister wanting to make plastic shopping bags illegal by the end of the year, it would be great if all the bin liners sold were biodegradable too. In Australia almost 50% of shoppers bring their own cloth bags for shopping but here are still millions of the plastic bags entering the environment and killing wildlife, especially when they reach the sea and are mistaken for edible jelly fish by wildlife who then choke to death.

Technorati Tags: environmentally friendly, environment, recycling, recycling bins, organic waste, biological, biodegradable bin liner bag, avoid plastic bag

Our food prices are going up partly due to the drought, partly due to the increased cost of oil used in production and transport but also because grains are being diverted from food to biofuels. If this is a problem to consumers in the affluent countries – just think about the impact on those people who live in the third world! This is MADNESS!
Apparently people are clearing tree covered land to grow grain as well. Actually I have heard of people clearing established ecosystems of native trees to grow TREES – then claiming greenhouse credits for this.I am unsure whether these people are insane, greedy or both.

Waste organic material can and should be used for this instead of being allowed to become a disposal problem. There are some examples below of this being done. I would love to find more.

• Algae grown on sewage waste can be used to make biofuel.
• Methane can be captured from landfill to provide an energy source and also prevented from entering the atmosphere as a serious greenhouse gas.
• I read this week that fish waste, including fish oils can and is being used in fishing vessel boilers around the world or converted to esters for biodiesel. Alaska burns quite a bit of their fish oil and in Nova Scotia , Canada they take the saturate ethyl ester fraction from the production of omega 3 concentrates and burn that. I believe it is being used in the Halifax bus system.

Technorati Tags: biofuels, biofuels make food, drought, cost of oil, grains, established ecosystems, ecosystems, waste organic material, organic material

We all need to think about what we do, how much we consume and how big our “environmental footprint” (not just carbon) is.
It was interesting looking at the results of the Live Earth Concerts. These were aimed at raising awareness of the issue but the evidence did not demonstrate this. OK they used carbon credits to offset energy use but I have never seen so much litter left everywhere as by this set of supposedly “environmentally concerned” concert goers.

This ties in a bit with my recent blog about the leader of the Australian Greens Party having a carbon footprint that is almost three times that of the Federal Environment Minister.

What we say and what we do need to match.

Technorati Tags: Jean Cannon, envirojean, our environmental footprint, environment, Australian Green Party, Live Earth Concerts, environmentally concerned, ISO 14001

Cigarette butts and smoking have been pet hates of mine for many years but I found myself feeling sympathetic recently at my apartment complex AGM. I live in an 8 storey complex and everyone has a small balcony except for 6 of us who have large, 8 metre wide terraces. I find that there is an offensive habit by some people who live on the 6 floors above me to “toss the butt” treating my nice potted garden terrace as an ashtray. I hate cleaning up this toxic litter that has been in some stranger’s mouth. YUK.

However I did feel sorry for the poor addicted smokers when there was a motion by some people to ban smoking on balconies because others get the smoke wafting into their apartments. Yes, I agree that would be horrid but if an addict lives on the 6th floor it is a big ask to have to go downstairs to smoke.

This is a really difficult area.

Passive smoke is so dangerous and some of us are highly allergic or sensitive to it. Smokers tend to congregate around doorways so it is almost impossible to get out of a building or walk down narrow city canyon like streets without feeling seriously gassed. I can see both sides and I think we need a serious debate about where they can safely smoke now it has been banned indoors.

Butts are a whole extra problem. 49% of Australia’s litter is cigarette butts. This is up from 46% a year ago before smoking was banned in front bars of pubs. Australians discard around 7.5 billion butts each year. They are highly toxic and don’t break down.

Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, smoking, litter, location, Australia, cigarette, cigarette butts, AGM