Parliament’s compost controversy
It’s hard to comprehend just out frustrated, possibly even outraged, environmentally leaning ministers like Jim Anderton, Trevor Mallard and Clayton Cosgrove must be feeling after they learnt that their months of separating out the compost from their parliamentary waste in beehive offices has all been for naught. As Jeanette revealed today:
Ministers, presumably including the Prime Minister and Minister for the Environment, have been dutifully separating their compost, only for it to be recombined with general rubbish and sent to the landfill - resulting in totally avoidable waste and harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
Oh, the gnashing of teeth. Poor old Parliament which is supposed to be showing leadership to the public sector on the Govt3 waste system has been caught greenwashing:
For over a year, compostable waste has been sent to the tip, while Ministers and their staff were being told that by making the effort to separate out their waste they were doing the right thing.
Subsequently the Greens shoulder tapped Parliamentary Services with the name of a company which is able to collect and compost organic waste and things should be sorted next month.
Unless Parliament can get its own house in order on simple things like composting waste, reducing consumption and offsetting flights, then the task of leading the country to a sustainable future will be exposed as hypocritical.”
Jeanette reckons that each year, 30 tonnes of compostable waste from the Parliamentary complex is being sent to landfill unnecessarily. I’ll leave you all to deliver the punch line to that.
Photo credit: Pete Ashton
June 25th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
“the task of leading the country to a sustainable future will be exposed as hypocritical”
They’re under the impression we look to them for leadership?
June 25th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Are you sure that it’s not all contaminated b/sand toxic to all normal life forms?
June 25th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
samiam said: Are you sure that it’s not all contaminated b/sand toxic to all normal life forms?
Only what comes from the NZFirst offices samiam! Need to be much more careful with that - risk of contaminants from Asia, you know!!!.
June 26th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Right on BP - leadership? Somebody’s either joking or has spent too much time in parliament and don’t realise the rest of the country sees them as a bunch of foot-draggers footling around while the disdained commoners get on and do things.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
They might, but they’re also quick to kick up a stink when they behave poorly/how they don’t want them to behave. They can’t win!
June 26th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
This is standard operating procedure. Most curbside recycling apart from metals gets landfilled as well due to a lack of a market.
It’a all greenwashing. What there needs to be is large high-tech non-polluting incinerators near each city turning paper/plastic/waste into lovely electricity.
But instead we dump it into valleys and congratulate ourselves on burning landfill gas!?!?
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
re: uk_kiwi…
I’m getting the feeling that the whole recycling movement has been counter productive in terms of sustainability. It just gives people an excuse to consume more with no regard to the quantity of packaging being disposed of and then congratulate themselves on being eco-friendly. The impending introduction of massive capacity wheelie bins in Auckland and Christchurch is an example. “Throw more stuff away! That’s great, no need to feel any remorse for overconsumption!”
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle… (in that order of priority)
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
I really don’t think people need an excuse to consume more, recycling is just a way of mitigating this.
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Yes, but why does so much effort go into setting up recycling and very little into reduce or reuse?
July 3rd, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Those two are a LOT harder, basically. The Waste Minimisation Bill might have an effect though…