Page 240 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 6 March 2007
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Xavier have reduced the waste going to landfill from their school by 45 per cent, therefore reducing their environmental impact. This is an excellent early result and I commend the school for their efforts. Creating sustainable waste practices in the school takes the waste minimisation message to the home and to the wider community.
During the same week I visited the Hume Resource Recovery Estate at Mugga Lane, fondly known as “the MURF”, along with my colleagues on the ACT Assembly Standing Committee on Planning and Environment. There we had a guided tour of the site, including the kerbside recycling collection, green waste and building waste recycling and the management of landfill sites, and where we saw biogas extraction and the energy generation process. Did you know, for instance, that recycling an aluminium can uses 19 times less energy than making a new can, and recycling one glass bottle saves enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for four hours or operate a television for three hours?
Mr Mulcahy: Is that an incandescent one or a fluoride?
MS PORTER: I cannot answer that question for you but I will make sure I do later. Recycling one tonne of paper saves 17 trees, three cubic yards of landfill space, two barrels of oil, 7,000 gallons of water and 4,100 kilowatt hours of electricity—enough energy to power the average home for five months. Plastic requires 100 to 400 years to break down in landfill; producing new plastic from recycled material uses only two-thirds of the energy required to manufacture it from raw materials. Recycling one tonne of plastic can save 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of petrol. Recycling tin and steel cans saves between 60 and 74 per cent of the energy used to produce them from raw materials.
So I congratulate the executive of the school, especially the principal, Angus Tully, for making the commitment to the program, and all the staff, the board and the parents and citizens council for their commitment to this program. I must also acknowledge a former staff member, Donella Johnston, and her team of students whom I met on the day. I also congratulate every single student for their participation in the program, ensuring its success, because participation will only make it successful now and into the future.
Waste Wise reflects an important partnership between the government, the ACT NOWaste staff and the schools of the ACT. This partnership is crucial to our success if we are to change attitudes and habits towards waste creation and sustainable living.
Bushfires
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (5.35): Mr Speaker, recently—in fact on Saturday—while shopping at Weston Creek I met with a group of residents there just by accident; they were having coffee. They were congratulating the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bill Stefaniak, for bringing on the no-confidence motion against the Chief Minister regarding the 2003 bushfires. They all said it was a great pity that the man did not show more courage and resign from his position. This is not me; this is these people talking. They really are very, very disillusioned, disappointed, in the fact that they could have and should have been warned. No amount of wanting the issue to
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