When I was younger and living in Quesnbeyan, there was a councilor Tom Baker was a real inspiration he was the one that got the Green Bin up and running in Queanbeyan. I first got to know Tom when I was working at the YMCA recycling center in Queanbeyan. Basically every household in Queanbeyan was provided with a Green Bin that accepted most garden and kitchen waste. A waste processing system was set up to accept the organic waste for processing into compost.
I have been lobbied the ACT government to do this for a long time. It is silly how much organic waste goes into land fill every day. There is a real lack of genuine, practical measures that Canberrans can use to help address climate change. This is why the See-Change groups are so critical in getting everyone to reduce their environmental foot print.
The majority of our compostable house hold waste continues to be heaped in with the rest of our landfill waste. We really need to achieve a genuine reduction in waste going to landfill.
My ideal programs’ purpose is to reduce the amount of waste shipped to landfills by turning organic waste into compost. The program would collect kitchen and related organic waste (pet waste, sawdust, and garden waste) using the a waist-high green curbside bin. The pickup of the waste would be on a frequent basis, fortnightly at this stage, along with other garbage and recycling collecting. We would then collect to a single point an composts it in an industrial composting facility. While it is true that backyard composting can also serve this purpose, the Green Bin programs are more convenient and more inclusive of source materials.
olie, August 7th 2008 |
Tags: Environment, Planning
Posted in Opinion
What I would like to do is to create “business clusters” around centres of knowledge in Canberra. These clusters will be located close to universities like the ANU and research centres like the CSIRO, and will help to commercialise the world-leading innovations and technologies created at these institutions.
As part of the plan, the CAP will re assess ACT government laws and taxes, in order to reduce barriers for small technology startup firms. If this is not done, the knowledge and information will “leak” to where demand is highest and the barriers are lowest.
At ANU, two technologies stand out as examples of Australian ideas that are internationally competitive:
Seeing Machines is an award winning company that designs vision based human machine interfaces, and grew out of research work at the ANU. It now employs a considerable amount of people and has a client list including some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers and their suppliers.
The Solar sliver cell technology is a unique design for flexible, inexpensive and efficient solar cells, developed by Professor Andrew Blakers and Dr Klaus Weber of the ANU. Sliver cells are being commercialised by Origin Energy, who have built a pilot manufacturing plant in Adelaide.
The second stage of the project would utilise urban design to maximise human capital – a key component of value in a knowledge-based economy. Measures to be included would focus on housing, lifestyle and communications infrastructure which would allow people to work from home. Cultural and social design issues that improve cultural openness and social connections within a community would also be considered. Such measures are key to the informal information flows that help a knowledge economy to thrive.
what I mean is that in order to retain and build upon our existing high quality of life in Australia, we need to develop our knowledge economy. Australians are great at coming up with innovative, practical solutions, but we are terrible at making money from these ideas. Business clusters will help Canberra to develop our great ideas and get the rewards in the marketplace.
olie, June 27th 2008 |
Tags: Business, Environment
Posted in Opinion
