NOT RUBBISH: ABOUT RUBBISH OR RESOURCE

When a city, any city that is, has a sign over its DUMP cum TIPgate calling it a “Waste Management Centre,” how dumb is that? That is a centre where resources are sent to be buried .... AKA 'wasted'

When a council spends millions of ratepayer’s dollars engineering its waste management infrastructure to:

• ... The effect that an increasing amount of its waste stream is being consigned to landfill, How dumb is that?

• ... When the intention was claimed to be otherwise it is not only dumb but also very lazy.

For some Councillors, and the staff they employ, collectively they just cannot see that internationally it has been recognised that burying our waste stream is understood as being socially, culturally and environmentally delinquent.

A recalcitrant town/city like the ones we describe here are sadly way too many. However, there are many examples of better understandings of what is needed to break the impasse. Lets find them and let's see what fits regionally and what can be added to the mix.

Towards getting something actually going that challenges the status quo, and that perhaps may be some kind of model for others to take advice from, maybe we need to:
• ... Identify what it is that needs to be done in the short, medium and longer term to progressively find regional solutions to resource recovery;

• ... Develop a strategic and marketing plan based on that information and something that fits the local situation;

• ... Set about developing a community network and/or cooperative that can get on with doing what needs to be done on the ground.

Given that in order to succeed, essentially community participation is a fundamental requirement, and community aspirations need to be responded to.

It is possible therefore that there will often need to be some kind of public forum and/or public consultation process to effectively progress regional resource recovery.

It seems that Local Government functionaries are basically allergic to this kind of thing plus the thinking, and are comfortable with claims that it is a very expensive exercise – indeed far too expensive. All too often community consultation processes are tokenistic, self-serving and patronising. This need not be the case and the 'too expensive claim' needs to be tested.

Let’s have your feedback so that the next steps can be planned for – steps that include you.

Also let us know about good things happening anywhere so that we can all learn from them!

OBSERVATION: NOW which bits below are the "rubbish" and which bits have another use?? Mulch, furniture, shoes, pathways, garden edging, fuel,???????

It needs to be pointed out that every skerrick of the ‘recoverable resource’ here has already been diverted from landfill and dumped ‘elsewhere’ (on a vacant block in the burbs) the trouble being its recoverability went, and goes, unacknowledged.

RESPONSE: There was a lot of timber there that could be used, tyres could be used for plants apart from that nothing.

CHALLENGE: AND here I was thinking that this was ZERO WASTE exercise and not a CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA event. This is not a criticism of this community groups efforts as the outcome is self evident and laudable. Since its said that "the Council will be" taking this stuff away there are resources there and available that they may not have been taken away to LANDFILL YET.

Here's a challenge!! Does anyone think that 'the group could' divert every last piece of RECOVERED RESOURCE documented here AWAY from landfill or 'the dump' somewhere??

• IF they could/would could they document it and the recovery process??

• Might they need advice and/or help??

• If they do, do they know how to get the advice and support that you need(want??)