Page 1651 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2011
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(2) What work has the Government done to assess the provision of domestic battery and CFL recycling points at convenient places such as Government shopfronts and libraries.
(3) What are the costs, or approximate costs, of providing such as service.
(4) What analysis has the Government done of similar services provided by governments in other Australian and international jurisdictions, as well as by private companies.
Mr Stanhope: The answer to the member’s question is as follows:
(1) There are no separate charges for sending batteries and fluorescent lights to landfill and no means of tracking these individually. This means that there is no precise data on how many items or tonnes are sent to landfill each year.
(2) TAMS has submitted a bid for consideration in the 2011-12 Budget. That bid will be considered as part of the usual Budget process.
As advised to you in a letter from Mr Corbell MLA dated 15 December 2010, the ACT Government is also supporting national approaches to manage fluorescent lights and end-of-life batteries. For instance, in May 2009 the Environment Protection and Heritage Council (EPHC) announced support for FluoroCycle, a voluntary partnership between government and industry to increase recycling of lamps containing mercury by the commercial and public lighting sectors. That scheme is expected to be rolled out in 2011. Its initial focus is on those sectors that account for the largest consumption of lamps containing mercury, namely the commercial and public lighting sectors. The scope of the program is expected to expand to include lamps from the domestic or household sector.
(3) The Department has made costing assessments for the purposes of preparing its Budget bid. Costs are indicative only. Exact costs will not be known until and unless the programs go ahead and contracts are awarded.
(4) The Department has not conducted a comprehensive analysis of similar services provided by governments in other Australian and international jurisdictions and by private companies. Detailed work would be conducted as part of the Budget proposal mentioned above, if the ACT Government approves it.
Preliminary inquiries were made of several councils and some businesses in late 2009 and early 2010. Those inquiries indicated that different services were offered in different places, but few were offering drop-off services in places like libraries and shopfronts. There was little information available about risks involved and no consensus about whether such services should be offered.
Environment—solar flares
(Question No 1596)
Ms Le Couteur asked the Minister for Energy, upon notice, on 10 March 2011:
(1) Are the powerlines and transformers in the ACT vulnerable to being affected by Geomagnetic Induced Currents (GICs) resulting from solar flares.
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