QLPA CatchUp!

Welcome to the fourth issue of the QLPA CatchUp!

I hope everyone is settling in to their newly amalgamated Councils. In this issue of the QLPA CatchUp! We look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, in fact two massive litter vortices in the Pacific Ocean. Check out the new Alliance Mobile Butt Zone Bins and Butt Hunter gear in 'what's new on loan?' The Next QLPA meeting has been set and being hosted by the Sunshine Coast Regional Council at the Tewantin Office. It promises to be a very interesting meeting starting with an early Bird walk along the Noosa River checking Council's Litter infrastructure and education programs. We hope you enjoy this edition and look forward to seeing you all on the 2nd May!

In this issue

Goodbyes and Welcomes
New executive Committee
Member Profile
Recycling illusion Exposed!
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
What's new for loan?
Partners meeting
What's on?

Welcome to our new members!

Alicia McArdle Ipswich City Council (replacing Anna Ricketts)

Julie Jones and Lena Taylor EPA

Goodbye to Kim Markwell from Redland City Council.

We wish you all the best and look forward to Kim's replacement.

Recycling illusion exposed!

Recycling ... an illusion?
Photo: Kitty Hill

Marian Wilkinson and Ben Cubby
April 7, 2008

THE amount of paper and glass packaging being recycled by Australians has been seriously overestimated, a confidential leaked audit of a national recycling report sent to federal and state ministers has found. The draft audit shows figures recorded from the leading packaging company, Visy Industries, included glass recycled from New Zealand, which bolstered the Australian result by almost 70,000 tonnes.

The report also took figures from Visy and another company, Amcor, that confused newspaper and office paper recycling with cardboard and carton packaging, boosting the figure by almost 300,000 tonnes.

The draft audit reveals a crisis in how recycling is measured and suggests Australia will not reach its target of recycling 65 per cent of consumer packaging by 2010.

"The covenant and the council have already agreed to amend the data," said a spokesman for the National Packaging Covenant Council, Russell Peel. "I don't believe the alterations are serious, or undermine the improving recycling performance."

But a source connected to the council said it had been happy to keep up the appearance of continual improvement, when the figures were not so rosy. "The system is not working," the source said. "The ministers have to face reality. The 65 per cent recycling target won't be reached. I think they have been negligent in not properly checking the figures because they were happy with the nice figures."

The official report for 2006 put the national recycling rate at 56 per cent but the new adjusted figures put the rate at 48 per cent, with the qualification that confidence even in this figure is low. The audit shows confidence in the figures on recycling is less than one-third of best practice.

The Federal Government has hinted that stronger measures could be brought against the packaging industry if the voluntary system fails.

The most successful recycling effort has been for aluminum cans, because they are seen as more valuable to the companies. But glass recycling is facing mounting problems because of breakages in the recycling process and because many beverages are consumed away from home.

A spokesman for Visy Industries, Lee Smith, said new sorting technologies, which could better separate small fragments of broken glass from other waste, had improved recycling in the past year. "We believe we are on track to meet our targets," he said.

Restaurants were increasingly using waste contractors, who found dumping the glass in landfill cheaper than recycling it, said a source connected to the National Packaging Covenant Council, the government and industry body that manages the environmental effects of packaging.

Revised figures show the worst recycling rates are for glass and plastic. It says about a third of bottles and other containers are being reused. Those figures do not include South Australia, which recycles more glass and offers a deposit for returning used bottles, and may not include imported wine bottles. The audit raises serious questions about how recycling is measured for the National Packaging Covenant Council, which includes all the big retail and packaging companies, such as Coles, Woolworths, Coca-Cola Amatil and Foster's.

The consultancy MS2, which compiled the original report, said there was debate about whether the draft audit, produced by another independent consultancy, Pitcher Partners, should be adopted, and said it doubted the reliability of the new figures.

This year is the crunch year for the National Packaging Covenant, with a mid-term review under way and state and federal ministers to meet next week to discuss recycling rates and phasing out plastic shopping bags.

The federal Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, is expected to be pressured by environmentalists to support legislation for deposits on glass and plastic bottles.

Industry representatives said the inflated results were supplied by mistake and would be corrected, and that recycling figures continued to rise. The target figure of 65 per cent by 2010 was still within reach, they said.

Floating rubbish dump 'bigger than US'

By Xavier La Canna
February 04, 2008
Article from: AAP

It has been described as the world's largest rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, and it is starting to alarm scientists! It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents.

Discovered in 1997 by American sailor Charles Moore, what is also called the great Pacific garbage patch is now alarming some with its ever-growing size and possible impact on human health.

The "patch" is in fact two massive, linked areas of circulating rubbish, says Dr Marcus Eriksen, research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore.

Although the boundaries change, it stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. The islands of Hawaii are placed almost in the middle, so piles of plastic regularly wash up on some beaches there.

Click here to see the Greenpeace animation of "The Trash Vortex"

"The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup," Dr Eriksen says.

"It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States," he says.

The concentration of floating plastic debris just beneath the ocean's surface is the product of underwater currents, which conspire to bring together all the junk that accumulates in the Pacific Ocean.

Moore, an oceanographer who has made the study of the patch his full-time occupation, believes there is about 100 million tonnes of plastic circulating in the northern Pacific - or about 2.5 per cent of all plastic items made since 1950.

About 20 per cent of the junk is thought to come from marine craft, while the rest originates from countries around the Pacific like Mexico and China. Australia plays its part too, he says.

The waste forms in what are called tropical gyres - areas where the oceans slowly circulate due to extreme high pressure systems and where there is little wind. The garbage in the patch circulates around the North Pacific Gyre, the world's largest. A lack of big fish and light winds mean it's an area of the Pacific less travelled by fishing boats and yachts.

Moore says he discovered the floating mass of rubbish by chance, after steering his catamaran into the gyre while returning home from a yacht race. Historically, flotsam in the gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics do not break down like other oceanic debris, meaning objects half a century old have been found in the North Pacific Gyre.

Instead the plastic slowly photodegrades, becoming brittle and disintegrating into smaller and smaller pieces which enter the food chain and end up in the stomachs of birds and other animals. Because the plastic is translucent and lies just beneath the surface, it is apparently undetectable by satellite photos.

"It is not like going to a parking lot after a rugby match. It is not like a landfill," he says. "The material is breaking down continually. It is photodegrading all the time. It is what I call a kaleidoscope or an alphabet soup. You won't see it from a satellite shot of the ocean. You only see it from the bows of ships," he says.

If the waste is to be controlled people must stop using unnecessary disposable plastics, otherwise it is set to double in size during the next 10 years, Moore warns. Dr Eriksen said the small plastic particles acted like a sponge to trap many dangerous man-made chemicals that found their way into the ocean, like hydrocarbons and DDT.

"What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate, It is that simple," Dr Eriksen said. Larger pieces of plastic are also a threat to birds, which mistake them for food.

Pictured right:
Bottle caps and other plastic objects are visible inside the decomposed carcass of this Laysan albatross on Kure Atoll, which lies in a remote and virtually uninhabited region of the North Pacific. The bird probably mistook the plastics for food and ingested them while foraging. Photo by Cynthia Vanderlip

Dr Eriksen said he has found syringes, cigarette lighters and tooth brushes from the patch inside sea bird carcases.

Professor David Karl, an oceanographer from the University of Hawaii, said the garbage patch represented a new habitat, and more studies were needed to find out what impact it was having on the ocean's eco-system.

Source: Article AAP (Australian Associated Press)

For further reading click on the following links:

Best Life Magazine: Travel & Leisure: Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we?

What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

New equipment for loan

Make your next Event
'Butt Free'
with Butt Zone Bins for Public Events

The New Qld Health smoking regulations require that smoking is not permitted within 4 metres of the entrance to any venues and 10 metres from children's playgrounds. Designated smoking areas are the way of the future for organisers of public events.

To address these new requirements the QLPA has sought funding to purchase 25 mobile Butt Zone bins for use at public events throughout South East Queensland.

The Butt bins, sponsored by the Butt Littering Trust and designed by KESAB (Keep South Australia Beautiful) are constructed of stainless steel and are suitable for outdoor situations. The bins are easily serviced with a key and bucket.

Butt Zone Bins proudly sponsored by

Butt Hunters

The Butt Hunters are a team of street theatre characters who, dressed as 1930's Safari Hunters, engage the public to 'Do the right thing' - Please Butt it, then Bin It.

The Butt Hunting team is available for performances for a per head per day fee.

Minimum 2 Butt Hunters half day.

or

The Butt Hunter's Kit contains shirts, pith helmets, props and butt collection accessories is available for loan by contacting the QLPA.

Note: All bookings are on a first to book basis.

Partners Meeting

What's On?

FUTURE READY

A sustainable futures expo presented by Permaculture Noosa

For further info: futureready.org.au

For further info: www.enviroconvention.com.au

For further info: www.creec.org.au

QLPA Catchup! is Proudly Sponsored and Partnered By

Current Partners

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