[Peakoil] Food Matters Workshop (Alex Pollard)

[evfit at quokka.ace-hosting.com.au]

I spent the last month in England. They are years behind us. Although they
have lots of posters, documents, rules, websites and good intentions,
almost everything goes straight to landfill. Unfortunately, we are going
backwards to join them. In the ACT 15 years ago "Zero Waste by 2010" was a
reasonable, viable plan and would have also been a low-carbon solution.
But it has been bastardized and now almost abandoned. The only solutions
being considered now are those relying on cheap oil, or, like Palerang
Shire, adding $600 pa to the rates to pay for transport (oil) and disposal
of waste. Palerang were given a plan for all waste to be picked up and
recycled by viable local eco-businesses, but the bureaucracy couldn't be
bothered and quietly killed it.

Keith
> Hi all,
>
> Related to the food footprint + waste front:
>
> The ANU ran a tour of the Canberra Tip yesterday. According the the tour
> guide, the dump will reach full capacity in a mere 6 years time. Compared
> to 30 years ago, there is now an artificial hill of rubbish and dirt
> (methane gas is tapped as an energy source). Short of building a new dump
> somewhere in the ACT, I can imagine a short term solution (ala Sydney) and
> dumping rubbish in the Woodlawn mine site:
> http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/01/1091298577063.html
>
> Naturally you've got transport energy use, emissions etc from having to
> drag tons of waste the 75km or so to the mine site:
> http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&saddr=canberra&daddr=-35.064779,149.572592&hl=en&geocode=&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=14&sll=-35.077634,149.588127&sspn=0.050714,0.105658&ie=UTF8&ll=-35.201306,149.37973&spn=0.405099,0.616608&z=11
>
> A little food for thought...
>
>
>
> Ben