Category: Planning (Page 2 of 3)

[NB: My original title for this post was “Waste not, want not”. I actually think Canberra does a great job of waste management.]

The ACT has been ahead of the curve when it comes to municipal waste management for almost two decades now. It was the first government in the world to set a zero waste goal all the way back in 1996.

The no waste by 2010 goal may not have been achieved, but we successfully lifted our recycling rates from 40 per cent to more than 70 per cent of our total waste steam – the highest in the country at the time. We also have the lowest litter rates per capita.

The ACT government’s updated waste management strategy shows how over the past 15 years the ACT has managed to decrease its waste levels sent to landfill annually.

In fact, per capita the ACT generates the highest amount of waste in the country. (However, it should be noted that this increase has largely come from the commercial and construction sectors, and not from households.)

The business of recovering and reselling waste products is now a significant money-earner. The most recent national statistics show that waste management organisations in Australia were paid $8.6 billion annually, with $2.4 billion in waste products shipped overseas for processing.

While it is obviously better to recover waste than to leave it in landfill, it is better still not to generate the waste in the first place. Having manufacturing processes that allow continual reuse of its materials is sometimes referred to as a “circular economy”.

For example, in the US the jeans maker Levi Strauss wants to reuse cotton from old garments in new products to eliminate its waste by 2020.

Customers are given a 20 per cent discount when purchasing a new item if they bring in an old garment for recycling. Subaru recently celebrated 10 years of zero-landfill manufacturing of cars, where all waste is either recycled or turned into electricity.

In the construction industry, there is increasingly a shift towards building deconstruction instead of demolition. Deconstruction is a process of taking a building apart with sufficient care so that the materials can be reused and recycled. As disposal charges for building materials increase, deconstruction will become normal.

This encourages innovations in modular, prefabricated building materials that are easy to assemble and disassemble. Reuse rates of 95-100% are typical when fully modular building components are used.

Lastly, no discussion of waste would be complete without looking at the option of a third bin for garden waste (grass clippings and plants) and/or organic waste (kitchen scraps) – a long-time topic of discussion for ACT residents. With around 25 per cent of waste going to landfill coming from residential sources at the moment, there is scope to do better.

A 2011 consultancy found that a third bin for green waste would be largely ineffective since the ACT already recycles more than 90% of its green waste. The same report also found that a third bin for organic waste would be much more expensive ($20m / year) than using dedicated machinery at the landfill to extract organic material from both residential and commercial waste ($8m / year).

With a separate organics bin, on average households will place no more than half of their organic waste into this third bin. So even with a third bin, the regular bin will still contain significant amounts of organic waste that go to landfill.

From this point of view it is regrettable that in 2012 the Greens and Liberals joined together to block the purchase of the specialised equipment required. As a comparatively straightforward way to reduce waste sent to landfill by half or more, it would be nice to see this put back on the agenda.

Regardless of whether you think that using clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar is the “right” thing to do for our environment, within a few years it’s going to be the smart thing to do financially.

Renewable energy has become a hot topic for both Federal and ACT politicians. The Federal Government has directed the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to stop investing in rooftop solar and wind farms, with Joe Hockey chiming in to the debate with complaints about the aesthetics of the wind farm at Lake George.

Meanwhile, Bill Shorten has just announced that the Federal ALP will adopt a target of 50 per cent renewable energy for Australia by 2030.

Initiatives to increase renewable energy use often face scare campaigns about the high costs of adoption. However, these campaigns ignore the incredibly rapid improvements in renewable energy technology. Just in the last five years wind power generation costs have dropped by more than half, and solar generation costs have dropped by nearly 80 per cent.

Wind power generation costs are now almost identical to coal and in the best case scenarios, substantially cheaper. While rooftop solar installations still require a substantial feed-in tariff to be financially attractive, larger “utility-scale” solar installations are cost-competitive. With innovations like the 1.5MW solar power plant in a box, solar power today is a simple and scalable way for countries to increase their power generation capacity.

The second common objection to renewable power is that it cannot be a base load power source – that is, to provide continuous energy at low cost. However, wind farms spread over a large geographic area are actually a very consistent power supply because there is always wind somewhere. Solar power also works well because the sun shines brightest during peak periods of electricity usage. New technologies such as molten salt thermal storage are also proving to be an effective way to store excess solar power for delivery to properties at night.

The ACT Labor Government is leading the country with its goal of getting 90 per cent of Canberra’s power from renewable energy by 2020. The Government already purchases power from a number of solar and wind power sources, with the locally built utility-scale Royalla Solar Farm opening in September last year.

After a second Australia-wide auction to purchase additional wind energy, two-thirds of Canberra’s energy will come from wind and solar power sources. Even once 90 per cent of Canberra’s power comes from renewable sources, household power bills are only predicted to rise modestly, with household energy-efficiency initiatives helping to offset the impact of price rises.

When it comes to renewable energy, it is now clear that Tony Abbott and the Liberals are on the wrong side of history. Given that the cost of wind and solar power will continue to decrease, within 15-20 years the debate on whether renewable energy is a good idea or not will seem as old-fashioned as anyone who thought the introduction of universal health care was a bad idea.

The Telstra Tower is one of our most iconic Canberra landmarks. It is something tourists look for when they are lost, and a great relief for Canberrans to see when travelling on the Barton Highway after a seven-hour (or longer) drive from Melbourne.

The Telstra Tower opened on 15 May 1980 and there is something stylishly 1980s about it.

Many long-term locals will remember the controversy caused by this symbol of Canberra. When it was first proposed, it was the cause of bitter disputes and protests culminating in a High Court case in 1975. The protests about Telstra Tower have entered into ACT folklore. For example, in the ACT Legislative Assembly in 1991, we heard this:

Craig DUBY (No Self Government Party/Independents): … last week when I was attending a function at the Telecom Tower [Chief Minister Rosemary Follett and NT Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon] confessed while they were at the function that they had led the protests back in the early days of trying to stop the bulldozers from being involved in the construction of the Telecom tower on Black Mountain. At the time many people felt that the Black Mountain Tower was an abomination. Some people still do, I am sure …

The then Chief Minister explained that her view of the tower had changed a great deal over the years as part of justification to build the Canberra Casino:

Rosemary FOLLETT (Australian Labor Party): I was part of the protest against the Telecom tower. I must admit that I still do not like the look of it and I still think it is too big, but there is no doubt that it is an enormous attraction for tourists. It offers a facility that our city can be proud of and it is obviously extremely popular. So, it serves a useful purpose. People who oppose the casino because it represents change and something new in Canberra ought to remember that history and should not be frightened by the prospect of having a small and appropriate casino in the location proposed by this project.

Of course, when Telstra was fully privatised in 2006, the tower ceased to be a government-owned asset. I can only imagine Telstra’s managers trying to figure out what to do with a revolving restaurant!

No doubt this is why management of the tower is currently outsourced to a local real estate company. But despite the Alto revolving restaurant closing in 2013, the tower still officially attracts 430,000 visitors a year. And it opened its executive briefing centre in 2014 for business room hire, which does demonstrate some creativity in thought.

Despite clocking up its 35th anniversary, just last year Mick Gentleman told us that Telstra Tower is a “cool” place to our youth:

Mick GENTLEMAN (Australian Labor Party): … children and young people have told us that … Canberra has lots of cool things like Lake Burley Griffin, Telstra Tower, and Questacon.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr is on record as wanting Canberra to be the “coolest little capital city”. And while the tower might have seen better days, it is iconic and will continue to attract tourists. As one of the first experiences that many tourists have of Canberra, let’s use some creativity and investment to make it unforgettable.

Here are some examples of what other significant towers have done to attract tourists:

• Sydney Tower Eye includes a 4D Cinema movie
• Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in Tokyo has a sky aquarium
• Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas has SkyJump and three other thrill rides

There are many other possibilities. Would you visit an art gallery in the tower? Go to live theatre performances? Or maybe we should relocate the Casino to the tower?

What are your thoughts?

Photo credit: David Peterson