Page 3264 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 18 August 2009
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Mr Stanhope: It is a truth; it’s not an excuse.
MS LE COUTEUR: how is the government planning to deal with this truth?
Mr Corbell: Didn’t you hear the rest of my speech?
MS LE COUTEUR: I was here; I did hear the rest of your speech, Mr Corbell.
Mr Corbell: You must not have been listening then.
MS LE COUTEUR: Given that you see affluence as being the issue here, I pose this question: do you see the solution? Is there a solution apart from reducing affluence? We would really like—
Mr Stanhope: We have the best results in Australia. What do you say about that?
MS LE COUTEUR: What I want to say about this is that they were better and they could be better. We would like to see the government seriously commit to zero waste and work towards that. We believe that it is a goal that, from an environmental point of view, we need to work with.
Ms Bresnan went through the bigger picture. I am going to talk some more about some of the more specific waste management issues. I am going to start off principally by talking about the disposal of hazardous material such as batteries and light globes.
Waste is a community problem, and we all have a part to play. But the government has a significant part to play in ensuring that there are adequate facilities for waste to be disposed of correctly and in the most environmentally friendly way.
With agreement from the states and territories, the federal government has commenced the phase-out of incandescent light globes. The Greens support this move as a sensible and practical measure to reduce energy consumption. Fluorescent light bulbs are expected to last four to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs.
There are expectations that between 50 and 60 million bulbs will be consumed or disposed of across Australia each year. This amounts to an incredible 10,000 tonnes of mercury in these bulbs which could potentially be dumped in landfill across the country each year. If exposed to the environment, mercury can have toxic effects on people, wildlife and habitats. These tubes are simply unsuitable for disposal in landfill. Those of us who remember the phrase “mad as a hatter” may be interested to know that the mad part referred to mercury, because hatters used to use mercury in the processing of their hats.
Professor John Buckeridge, Head of the School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, recently told Ecos magazine that the public health effects of having millions of mercury-contaminated fluorescent tubes dumped in landfill would be disastrous, with possible severe environmental and health costs, including mercury poisoning of animals and humans.
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