WITLESS WHITSUNDAY COUNCIL REJECTS RECYCLING

Friday, 31 July 2009 21:53

“The Whitsunday Council needs to be transparent about what they have, and more importantly have not, included in their analysis,” said Jeff Angel, Director of Total Environment Centre.

“The Mayor talks about the greenhouse impact of the use of diesel fuel but that’s not the full story.  We want to know if Council has included the big carbon cost of methane emissions from landfills, and the benefits of recycling, which include more jobs, reduced carbon emissions, and energy, water and virgin resource savings in the economy.  These things have major economic and environmental implications for the community.”

“We suspect the Council is taking a narrow, parochial view,” Mr Angel said.  “The majority of people are willing to pay for recycling. This is the case for all ratepayers who have a kerbside recyclables collection system in Australia.”

“However it’s also a fact that the lack of a government waste levy on landfills makes landfill artificially cheap by ignoring the environmental costs.  Queensland is the largest state in Australia not to have a waste levy, while grossly underpricing landfill and making it very difficult for resource recovery to compete.  Local councils have opposed waste levies in Queensland and the inevitable result is more waste and pollution.”

Mr Angel said this is totally irresponsible. 

“Without a waste levy and council support for recycling, the environmental and social impacts of land filling, which include buried resources, methane emissions, toxic leachate, degraded and contaminated land, are simply disregarded,” Mr Angel said.