Denmark is one of the nosiest Scandinavian countries with 70 per cent of the population suffering from noise pollution. Dario Bosio documents one woman’s experience in Copenhagen.

Four Australian guys are driving across the globe attempting to ‘fill-up’ only on biofuel. Jamesina McLeod reports.

Four Australian guys are attempting to drive across the globe the green way. Image: thegreenwayup.com

Burgers and Friday afternoon fries – the next solution to our environmental energy crisis?

According to the boys from The Green Way Up, it could be a possibility. The Green Way Up team consisting of Justin, Oscar, Bob and Chuck, are recycling all the plant and animal fats they can beg, borrow or steal from restaurants and street stalls to drive, sail and moped their way from Tasmania to Belgium.

Using biofuel to make their way across multiple continents, their aim is to never have to fill up at a petrol station.

Harnessing their respective DJ-ing, marketing, engineering and welding talents, Justin, Oscar, Bob and Chuck have been planning the six-month trip for two years. Most of this time was spent designing and building the portable biofuel converter and aluminium boat they are using on their trip. When finished, they will be donated to a tsunami-affected community.

Starting with a big idea but with no money, the team was stunned by the generosity of supporters who heard about them through their Facebook and Twitter pages.

The Green Way Up interview with Justin

“Fundraising has been really good at the moment, we’ve been getting support from all over the world,” said Justin, who was surprised by the number of anonymous donations after word spread about the project online. The $20, 000 needed to microfinance their boat was raised in three weeks through online donations.

Apart from carving donators’ names onto their boat, the boys will continue to thank their supporters through an interactive googlemaps page allowing people to track their progress and comment on their journey on thegreenwayup.com.

Their trip is being made into a documentary to be released later this year.

Read the transcript below.

Jamesina: So Justin, it’s yourself, Bob, Chuck and Oscar setting off on this epic expedition. How did this all start?

Justin: You know initially when we started the idea we didn’t have an idea of what the benefit would be apart from just engaging our friends and followers as we got on the road and for us that was an attractive idea simply because it was going to inform what we saw along the road, where we went and what was cool and interesting to do.

Jamesina: And how does the Green Way Up concept campaign fit in?

Justin: The Green Way Up concept was exactly that it, it was to make the whole movement palatable, to show what was good and interesting and to not associate environmentalism with guilt and negative emotions. Not to ram a message down anyone’s throat or run a hard line with a particular sort of perspective on the environment but we just wanted to create conversation around what was happening in every aspect of sustainability.

And that’s what we’ve done with our website – greenwayup.com – it’s a commentary on what was cool and interesting, innovative and just fantastic in the world of green design, green technology, green art, all of the above.

Jamesina: How important has social media been for you guys?

Justin: We knew the best way to spread the message was through a medium that our generation was familiar with and community participation, social media participation has been critical. That’s one of our main tools for engaging as we go. No one had seemed to have done that facebook-twitter-googlemaps mashup before, enabling one to geographically find and follow our route.

Jamesina: You’re on the road for 6 months and almost as many continents – what are you looking forward to most?

Justin: Once the website really gets up and rolling, when we start getting a lot of comments on the [interactive google]map, I’m really looking forward to actually meeting the people who are engaging with us through our facebook and twitter and maps and saying “come visit us here and here and here!” I think that’s going to create a really nice organic element to the whole trip.

The four of us haven’t really contemplated what to expect once we hit the road because it’s been “go-go-go!” working on the boat, the biofuel processor, the trailer. It’s pretty intense at the moment and most of us haven’t had time to look forward to what it’s going to be like on the road. But it’s going to be a hell of an adventure.

The food industry will face widespread contamination and human health will be put at risk if trials for genetically engineered (GE) wheat are allowed out of laboratory conditions and into the field. Elise Dalley reports.

If GE goes ahead, your next slice might be a health risk. Image: Emily Carlin

Sydney foodies have voiced their opinion firmly against engineered food products, after Greenpeace launched their Spliced Bread report late last month about the threat of GE wheat in Australia.

Executive chef at Sydney’s three-hatted Quay restaurant, Peter Gilmore, said interfering with the genetic structure of something as basic as wheat, is “wrong on so many levels”.

The respected restaurateur and advocate of fresh food, whose often servces fresh produce grown on his Blue Mountains farm, said he was deeply concerned about the implications genetically modified wheat will have on producers and consumers who value a clean and unpolluted path from farm to fork.

“The problem I see with GE food is that it is going to contaminate all the farmers who produce their own organic food. When the genie is out of the bottle, it’s out of the bottle and that is a real worry when you want to give your customers food that hasn’t been genetically modified,” he said.

Author of the Spliced Bread report, Claire Parfitt, said the key danger in injecting foreign genes into a seed extended beyond market concerns and into the human health realm.

“Australia is the global testing ground for genetically engineered wheat,” she said.

“But human consumption tests haven’t been done. What we do know is that feeding trials with animals have shown negative results, including enlarged liver, higher levels of allergic reactions and reduced fertility.”

In July this year, the federal government approved over 1300 GE wheat trials across the country and a month later, Monsanto, the owner of 90 per cent of the world’s genetically modified wheat crop, purchased a 20 per cent share in Intergrain, Australia’s largest wheat company.

Co-author of the 2010 Foodies Guide to Sydney, John Newton, said “the most instant, basic and nurturing of foods” and an “incredibly important” part of our western culture was on the verge of containing the seed of destruction for our environment, health and industry.

“The export market will be severely damaged.”

“The Italians, Japanese, Korean and Chinese told the world they would not buy GE wheat. America rejects it, Canada rejects it and we embrace it – I just don’t get it,” he said.

Research undertaken for the Spliced Bread report said commercial cultivation of GE crops “means the unfettered release of GE organisms into the environment”, and once released, such organisms are physically impossible to contain, due to wind and particle movement among animals.

“GE seeds have the potential to have all Australian wheat genetically modified and I personally think this is what [Monsanto] want,” Newton said.

Such claims have been made because GE seeds are patentable and farmers facing contamination would legally have to pay for future seeds to allow any further development.

And even without a GE future, the market has been slammed into the dirt in recent years.

In a separate report released in late October by the Australian Food and Grocery Council and KPMG, food imports were found to have risen above exports and the last five years have seen the industry shift from a $4 billion dollar surplus to a $2 billion deficit.

Sustainable gardener and presenter of SBS’s Garden Odyssey, Costa Georgiadis, said people were not aware of the GM war that had been waged against nature and have no idea of the implications it could have not only on the economy, but also on our health.

Georgiadis said more emphasis needed to be placed on educating the general public about the best ways to consume “fresh” food.

“If you grow something yourself, you realise things you put in your mouth are living and if you put chemicals in them, those chemicals end up in you.”

“We all are owed, as a right, chemical free food,” he said.

Michael Klausen, Peter Gilmore and Maarten Stapper at the Spliced Bread report launch. Image: Elise Dalley

“Good food is what you can taste and still see where it comes from. When you can’t see where food comes from, we should leave it on the shelves.”

“The consumer has all the power in the world, because you decide who has the products and who loses,” Stapper said.

Spokesperson from the Baking Industry Association of NSW and Director of Brasserie Breads, Michael Klausen, said the industry would keep the debate alive in order to get results.

“We have got to stand up and say that we do not accept that these things can happen and we do not accept it without the proper science behind it.”

Carbon capture storage is promoted by governments and the mining industry worldwide as a solution to climate change. But can it hold up to its promises? Lauren Kelleher reports.

Coal Power Station. Image: Greenstone Girl

In March this year, the New South Wales government announced the allocation of $28.3 million to develop the state’s first large scale commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) facility.

Addressing the problem of climate change has been, and continues to be, a major concern of governments globally. CCS is one of the options at the foreground of providing a solution to this issue.

CCS involves capturing carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere, compressing it, transporting it to a suitable site, and injecting it into deep geological formations where it will be trapped for thousands or millions of years.

Ralph Hillman, Executive Director of the Australian Coal Association, believes the NSW government’s announcement is a right step forward for the future of CCS in Australia.

“The close working commitment and relationship shown by the coal industry and Federal and State governments to CCS technology will ensure that Australia has a number of commercial scale CCS projects ready within the next ten years,” said Hillman.

The Australian Coal Association and both the federal and NSW governments equally fund the project, managed by Delta Electricity.

At the 2008 G8 Summit in Japan, all parties committed to the development and broad deployment of CCS by 2020. In conjunction with this promise came the 2008 Hokkaido Recommendation to launch 20 large-scale CCS demonstration projects by the end of 2020.

According to the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI), over 80 large-scale projects are at various stages of development around the world, including in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Australia, named by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as one of the major countries committed to CCS, has invested heavily in the clean coal scheme. In 2009 the Australian Federal Government created the Clean Energy Initiative (CEI), which includes spending $2.4 billion on CCS projects. The Rudd government also invested $100 million a year into the Global CCS Institute.

But according to Greenpeace, CCS cannot deliver in time to avoid dangerous climate change. The environmental organisation believes that deployment of CCS at utility scale cannot be achieved before 2030, and to avoid the worst impacts of climate change gas emissions will have to start falling by 2015 at the very latest.

Time is not the only concern revolving around the use of CCS. Issues about the feasibility, costs, safety and liability of CCS all need to be addressed.

Journalist and environmental consultant for Greenpeace Australia Pacific Julie Macken said, “Carbon capture and storage is like the tooth fairy. It’s fantastic. But it’s totally delusional.”

According to Macken there is serious doubt whether the capture will work on such scale and that it will work commercially.

“At the moment we use coal because it is cheap. But using CCS will make fuel more expensive, the price of fuel will rise from $35 to around $120. The government and companies involved are saying that tax money will subsidise CCS to make it more commercially viable, and therefore cost will not become an issue.

But we say – why not subsidise on new green renewable technologies that are already available and will cost less?”

Macken argues that spending money on CCS is diverting urgent funding away from renewable energy solutions, such as wind power and many types of sustainable biomass.

According to the 2008 Greenpeace report, False Hope: Why Carbon Capture and storage won’t save the climate , funding for renewable technologies and efficiency has stagnated or declined. Australia has three research centres for fossil fuels, including one committed to CCS, but there is not one committed to renewable energy technology.

McKinsey & Company predict that by 2030, carbon capture and storage costs could be reduced to $45-$70 per tonne of CO2 abated, compared to a price of $90-$140 per tonne for current demonstration projects. This amounts to a 50% per cent cost reduction over the next 20 years.

Nevertheless, environmental concerns include catastrophic leakage, contamination of water and the escape of captured flue gasses. Such concerns highlight the unpredictable nature of CCS and demonstrate one of the key challenges it faces: the safe and permanent storage of captured carbon.

According to New Gen Coal, ‘there is no single technology available today that will enable greenhouse gas emissions from energy production to be stabilised and reduced to the levels scientists say are needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change. There are currently no facilities that capture CO2 emissions from a power plant at commercial scale’.

In 2006, a United States Geological Survey (USGS) field experiment demonstrated the unpredictable nature of carbon dioxide and the inexperience the world has when it comes to the long-term storage of CO2.

The 2008 Greenpeace report tells how the USGS scientists were testing deep geological disposal of carbon dioxide at a pilot project in Frio, Texas. The buried CO2 dissolved in large amounts of the surrounding minerals responsible for keeping it contained. Leading scientist of the field experiment, Yousif Kharaka, told Greenpeace that the results are a ‘cautionary tale’ for future detailed and careful studies of injection sites of CO2.

Macken also considers legal liability a major concern regarding CCS. Industry views liability as a barrier to wider deployment of CCS and is unwilling to fully invest in CCS without a framework that protects it from long-term liability.

“Who owns the Carbon once it is stored underground? Who owns it once it explodes, leaks, or causes an earthquake? The answer is no one. The fact is [CCS] is uninsurable. It is a risk that can’t be managed and therefore can’t be done,” said Macken.

The International Energy Agency claims significant progress has been made on the development of legal and regulatory frameworks. It will be producing a bi-annual review of CCS Legal and Regulatory Development and is working on a Model CCS Legal and Regulatory framework.

In 2005, the Regulatory Guiding Principals for Carbon Dioxide Capture and Geological Storage was established by the Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources of the Australian Federal Government. The frameworks outline liability responsibility to all parties involved whereby liability does not arise until the injury or damage occurs. Such frameworks display that not all liability costs will be faced by the public in relation to CCS.

Australian Coal Association Ralph Hillman said “Australia generates around 80% of its electricity from coal, and the coal industry directly and indirectly employs over 130,000 Australians and plays a major role in our national economy. With so much at stake, the deployment of CCS is crucial to our industry’s future and New South Wales is now firmly in the development picture.”

With planned CCS projects proceeding in Australia and worldwide, only time will tell whether the new scheme will be a success.

Green business now stands for good business, and Australia’s design and building industry is leading the trend worldwide. Dave Drayton reports.

ANZ Centre in Melbourne received a 6 star Green Star rating. Image: Charles Van Den Broek

As cars, tourism and even coffee went eco-friendly, it was inevitable that the building and design industry in Australia would eventually follow suit.

And while Australia cottoned on to the trend slightly later than Europe, it has by now well and truly caught up, according to the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA).

“Australia is definitely one of the world leaders. We have transitioned a lot faster than a lot of the other countries,” says Suzie Barnett, Executive Director of GBCA.

Around 11% of buildings in Sydney’s CBD are “green-star” rated, which means their environmental impact has been assessed based on management, indoor environment quality, energy, transport, water, materials, land use & ecology, emissions and innovation.

“[This percentage] is quite high given that this ‘green-star’ only came onto the market in 2003,” Barnett says.

However it seems the greatest catalyst for this change is not a moral or ethical decision but a business one, with companies that remain stubborn in their ways left behind.

“Buildings with a five or six green star rating are becoming fashionable to companies wanting to present a ‘clean green’ image to their customers,” says construction and property recruiter Julian Murray.

“Developers and construction companies as well as government agencies are now seeing green methods of construction and environmentally sustainable projects as a key selling tool at the point of sale.”

In an interview with the GBCA, Managing Director of Leighton Properties, Mark Gray, said it is the leadership of the property and construction industry that brought about such rapid change in “both the way we deliver and use buildings”.

“Green Star ratings have become integral to the design and construction of developments, from single buildings to whole precincts, which has been fostered through increased stakeholder and community awareness.”

Murray expects that this is only the beginning of the transformation.

“As base line consumer perception changes to favour organisations that are perceived to be green, business will invariably change to match the needs of their consumers.”

The GBCA, which has 830 registered members, was established in 2002. From a small organisation, it has rapidly grown into what many consider to be the foremost authority on the subject of green building and design in the country, alongside counterparts such as the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS), Green Biz Check and The Fifth Estate.

Be it a drive for dollars or genuinely caring for the environment, Barnett says what matters is that green building is no longer a niche market, it is being indoctrinated throughout the industry.

“It’s the whole industry, I can’t pinpoint any one company because it has actually become the norm rather than the exception.”

Barnett believes the shift towards green building is so strong that newer buildings that don’t adhere to green star ratings are doing themselves a severe disservice.

“They can build the building and it’s going to be obsolete before they even open their doors,” she says.

Murray expresses a similar opinion.

“Large infrastructure projects funded by government are now under intense scrutiny from the public in relation to their environmental impact and as a result, contractors are having to provide environmentally sustainable construction blueprints in order to win contracts.”

Barnett says the perceived cost differential, often seen as a significant deterrent to going green, is misguided.

The Economics and Commerce building at University of Melbourne has a 5 Green Star rating. Image: Christopher Eliot

Gray explains that the reduced cost of technologies is due to the increased adoption of sustainable practices, which “has produced improved cost and value outcome”.

The GBCA is banking on the increasingly green attitudes of industry heavyweights such as Stockland, Lend-Lease and Mirvac to lower prices of sustainable products and materials for smaller companies.

According to Barnett, the effects of this are already showing.

“Things like using low-VIC paint and e-zero laminate particle board have become pretty much standard practice,” she says.

Nicholas Bernhardt, the managing director of Green Biz Check, agrees.

“Green products and practices are now more widely available, accepted and expected,” he says.

Barnett believes that greening is becoming so mainstream that “the industry has now shifted to say ‘We’re not actually looking at sustainability as additional costs, that’s just what it costs us to build it”.

Government regulations are also influencing the green trend, albeit in a more forceful manner.

“If it’s not the demand that’s coming, it’s the regulation,” Barnett says.

Regulations such as the Local Environmental Policy (LEP) planning reform, and the imminent Building Efficiency Disclosure Bill encourage an environmental consciousness across the board.

“These new plans will also provide the framework for planned growth and development in each local area - enabling economic investment and protection of environmental assets,” says Barnett.

“Green-washing” has proven so popular that the GBCA now also caters to the education, health, retail, public, multi-unit residential and industrial sectors.

And to encourage building and design companies of all sizes to run more sustainably, the GBCA membership fees are set according to the size and worth of a company.

“We don’t have a criteria for membership. Our belief is people who are members of the Green Building Council are paying that fee because they want to be more educated and more switched on,” Barnett says.

Building on its success and looking to the future, the GBCA has taken up a new challenge: to make existing buildings as sustainable as their newly built counterparts.

“We’re looking at evolving that asset, at investing that capital now to get that asset to be greener in the future.”

But Barnett also argues green renovations could benefit from a little more help from the government.

“We’d like to see some focus from the government, whether it’s a cash incentive for a developer to do it, whether it’s a tax incentive…Things like that.”

Various incentives have already been established around the country, at different levels of government. Overall, they have had a positive effect, assisting major developers in making the transition to become environmentally friendly, and Barnett sees this as a real solution.

“Basically, our strategy was: if we can get the top tier developers demanding this it will actually mean economies of scale for everyone else,” she says.

But the market is suffering from a lack of environmental sustainability experts.

“The CSIRO believe we need 3.25 million people to be skilled up to actually deliver what we need to deliver in the market over the next five to ten years,” says Barnett.

“The sooner we can skill up the workforce to these ‘green-collar jobs’ the sooner we will be able to bring those costs down and also have the expertise in the market so it becomes a lot more accepted than it is now.”

Murray says he has noticed a “significant increase in the number of positions created with an environmental focus, but more importantly, these positions are becoming more and more senior within the construction sector”.

Asked for the ideal framework to help green building to continue to flourish, Barnett says the GBCA seeks “a balance between stringent regulation and government incentives”.

But Bernhardt from Green Biz Check says it is arguable how effective incentives and grants may be “without an overall business environmental sustainability policy on developing greener practices”.

While Australia may now be ahead of the pack when it comes to a greener future for the construction and design industry, a delicate balance where government regulations direct and guide this shift is required to ensure Australia’s ongoing focus, commitment and innovation in this field.

By Bella Papadopoulou Dobrowolska | Malolo Lailai Island, Fiji

Malolo Lailai Island is showing the rest of Fiji what can be done for the environment locally. Image: Bella Papadopoulou Dobrowolska

The island of Malolo Lailai is leading the green movement in Fiji with new recycling initiatives.

Every week plastic and glass are shipped off the island to mainland Fiji for recycling.

Food and scraps are the only waste material to remain on the Island, to be utilized for compost material. Additionally, paper is being put on top of farmland in order to keep the land moist and eventually mould down into the ground.

Property manager at Musket Grove Resort, Naveen Chand, says he is proud of the island’s green accomplishments.

“We have a very detailed recycling system here on the island.”

Despite the efforts on Malolo Lailai Island, the reality on many surrounding islands is far less eco-friendly as locals are either burning it or throwing it into the ocean.

“Here on Malolo Lailai it is forbidden to burn any garbage. Primarily because of the toxic chemicals that is inhaled through the smoke and secondly due to safety reasons as the land is dry and can light up easily, ” says Chand.

But the green action does not stop here, water is also being recycled.

“We have dug wholes into the ground and pump up water that is being used for the shower. After this, it goes back to the ground again and waters the flowers and the grass,” says Naveet Krishna, maintenance crew at Musket Cove.

The rainfall is gathered, filtered and used as drinking water along with the imported bottle water (Fiji Water) that is often preferred by the tourists.

Krishna says: “The rainwater is the best water for us to drink, but some tourists feel unsafe to try it.”

The problem is the water insufficiency, as climate changes have affected Fiji’s amount of rainfall.

“All the years it rained every second month, whereas now we only had seven millilitres of rainfall in the past seven months,” says Chaud.

The same applies for the groundwater that is brought up through bores. Each one of these bores used to provide 123,000 litres of water a day, but are now not giving half of that.

Four months ago, Musket Cove decided to expand their green plan and added a charge to their plastic bags in the supermarket and the shop in order to encourage people to bring their own eco-bag.

Michelle Singh works as a cashier in the supermarket and has seen the reactions to this.

“The tourists are always very positive about the eco-bags and encourage this, while the locals have had a slower adapting process but good over all. ”

Musket Cove on Malolo Lailai is a popular tourist spot and attracts many travellers. Joao Pedro Travi is a sailor travelling around the islands of Fiji. He is amazed with the environmentally friendly atmosphere that he has witnessed.

“I have never seen anything like this on any of the other islands. All I ever saw there, was bottles floating around the surface of the coasts. ”

Thessaloniki University student Bella Papadopoulou Dobrowolska is currently on a Global Environmental Journalism exchange at UTS.

By Julie Kofoed

Councils in Sydney say more funding needs to be given for bicycle infrastructure. Image: Tai_yi

Improvements in Sydney transport infrastructure mean more people are choosing to travel by bicycle. The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority NSW estimate that one per cent of all trips in Sydney are now made on bicycle.

While from an environmental point of view, this is an improvement, what this statistic does not show is that most of these trips are made in the small inner city. When it comes to bicycles, the vast suburbs of Sydney are being left behind.

According to the new NSW Bike Plan, Sydney will spend 158 million dollars on filling the missing links in major cycle ways between 2010 and 2020.

“There is a huge increase in the number of cyclists in the inner city where the infrastructure is getting better, but in the suburbs it seems like people are driving faster and the cyclists feel less welcomed,” says Elaena Gardner, president of the volunteer group BikeSydney.

“New riders are daunted. I think the cars in the inner city have got used to the cyclists as there are becoming more riders.”

One of the reasons why people in the outer councils do not have as many riders as the inner city has, might be because of the lack of cycle ways according to Liverpool Council.

“At present there is no continuous cycle connection between Liverpool and Sydney, it is only on-and-off road, so the cyclists have to share the general route with the cars where they do not have much protection,” says strategic and transport planner at Liverpool Council, James Semple.

Sutherland Council and Blacktown Council report the same problem.

“We have some fragmentation in our cycle ways network. It is tough somewhere if you want to ride into the inner city, because there is on-and-off cycle ways the whole way, which means that the cyclists have to share the road with the cars or the pedestrians,” says Ingo Koericke, senior environmental scientist in Sutherland Council.

Blacktown Council has made an extension in their cycle ways network during the last 10 years, but there is still only on-and-off cycle ways into the city.

According to the councils, money is the problem.

Steven Bryant, senior traffic management officer for Blacktown Council says, “We have been waiting for a completion of the network for a long time, but there is not enough funding for the building of cycle ways.”

Funding is uncertain and limited

To invest in infrastructure in Sydney the councils have to apply for funding.

The funding comes from different Governmental departments, for example Infrastructure Australia, which provides some funding for transport and other infrastructure. According to the several councils in Sydney, funding is strongly needed.

“As it is right now, the money for construction of cycle ways is limited, so we need more opportunities for funding. It is difficult because the need for cycle ways is competing with other kinds of needs,” says Semple.

He would like to see more planning of major commuter routes from the State Government and especially more funding for the infrastructure in the outer councils. Steven Bryant agrees.

“It seems like most of the money has been spent on the inner city.”

The NSW Government has spent nearly 300 million dollars over the past 10 years on cycle ways throughout Sydney and regional NSW, building an average of 200 kilometres of cycling facilities per year.

Vice president of the volunteer group Bicycle NSW, Richard Birdsey, would like to see more money spent on cycling, but says that there is a big pressure on the State budget.

“We have to be realistic and I think that a lot of things are already being done. Things are getting a lot better.”

Koericke echoes this sentiment saying, “It is improving, but compared to funding for roads, it is a minimum of money which is spent on cycle ways. And without money, it is hard to complete cycle ways.

“I would like to see more focus on cycling, because it needs a stronger push to make it sustainable… Unfortunately there is no certainty if funding, because it is politically driven and funding for cycling will only be possible if cycling considers to be worth it.”

Economic, environmental and healthy benefits of cycling

According to a report launched in May, made by the independent institute AECOM, there is an economic reason to invest in cycling. The study, which was commissioned by City of Sydney Council of a proposed Inner Sydney Regional Bike Network shows that Sydney can save millions of dollars by investing in cycling. 


According to this study, an investment in cycling would deliver at least 506 million dollars in net economic benefits over 30 years, and reduce Sydney’s traffic congestion by 4.3 million car trips a year.


The report also suggests that it will bring better health and environmental improvements such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions as well as improved air quality and lower noise pollution in Sydney. 



BikeSydney welcomes the AECOM-report.

“It is really good news. The report looks on the economic benefits for the first time, and we are excited about the result. It shows that it is worth spending money on better infrastructure for the cyclists. I hope the Government will look at the research,” says president of BikeSydney, Elaena Gardner.

“The Government is traditionally more focused on the economic benefits more than other kinds of benefits, so I hope this will give the Government a motivation to invest more money on infrastructure”.

Completion of cycle network

The report might be the starting gun for councils on the outskirts of Sydney.



“This report makes a very important difference for Sydney. To invest in infrastructure in Australia, councils have to apply for funding. And to do this, they need to prove that there is an economic benefit for the plans”, says Fiona Campbell, Transport Planner for City of Sydney (CoS) council. 



She explains that the CoS Council, which spends 76 million dollars a year on infrastructure, prepares the funding applications on behalf of all the areas in the CoS Council.

“The inner city does not need the money for the infrastructure, but we want to help the suburbs to get the same good infrastructure. With this report they have a very strong case,” says Campbell. 



According to Roads and Traffic Authority NSW, an average of 233 kilometres have been built each year in the State between 1999 and 2009. 430 kilometres of cycle ways had been built out of a possible 480 kilometres of major cycle ways that the NSW Bike Plan had promised would be in place by that year.

Matt Faber, acting sustainable transport manager for the Roads and Traffic Authority NSW says, “Where cycle ways had not been completed as promised, this was for reasons including changes to the timing of other transport projects of which the cycle ways were an integral component, delays to property access or acquisition, and overall changes to transport investment priorities.”

According to the new NSW Bike Plan, Sydney will spend 158 million dollars in specifically on major cycle ways missing links between 2010 and 2020.

“When developing cycle ways, the NSW Government will continue to focus on completing links in a high-quality network that connects Sydney’s major centres, while local councils will be mainly responsible for local routes that fill in the spaces between major cycle ways,” says Faber.

Julie Koefed is studying Journalism at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. She was on exchange at the UTS on a GEJI scholarship.

Beneath the natural wonder of Santorini’s cliff tops and lagoon, the villages are being covered in plastic bottles and waste as the Greek government fails to implement a central recycling scheme. Elise Dalley and Ben O’Halloran report from Santorini, Greece.

Discarded bottle on Perissa Beach, Santorini. Image: Elise Dalley

Public ignorance towards recycling and the need to drink bottled water for health reasons is placing an already distressed Greek economy at serious risk.

Santorini, famous for its spectacular caldera and cliff top villages, is fast becoming overrun with waste from tourism due to an inadequate waste management scheme for plastics and a community that is yet to recognise the importance of recycling.

Dimitris Sigalas, Environmental Advisor to the Mayor of Santorini, told Reportage that while the iconic Island strongly depends upon tourism as a key source of income, visitors are also contributing to serious environmental degradation of the island.

“Without tourism, it is very difficult to survive, but with tourism, we have double problems,” he said.

Sigalas said over 90,000 people visited the island in June during the peak holiday season, more than six times the number of permanent residents.

As Santorini does not have a fresh water source and is yet to offer clean tap water, restaurants, hotels, kiosks and local supermarkets sell hundreds of thousands of bottled water year round, especially during summer as temperatures peak above 40 degrees.

With large volumes of plastic waste and no recycling program in place, Sigalas believes the government must show urgency in a serious attempt to introduce and advocate plastic recycling across Greece.

“The problem belongs exactly, again, to the Greek government.

“It is a big problem for Santorini … because at the moment there is not a central system to recycle all the rubbish in Greece,” Sigalas said.

Most of Santorini is protected for its archaeological importance due to its caldera, or basin which was formed from an volcanic explosion.

This protection is causing great concern for the local council who are fast running out of adequate underground disposal sites for rubbish.

“We are in a very bad situation because of our bad economy, but if the question is about recycling, by the law, we have to start now.

“We cannot go back,” Sigalas said.

Thousands of plastic water bottles are sold as the island has no fresh water source. Image: Elise Dalley

In an attempt to convert Europe into a recycling society who seeks to avoid waste, the European Commission, operating under the European Union, introduced the Thematic Strategy on Waste Prevention and Recycling in 2005.

Key elements of this strategy, including a recognition of the immediate need to recycle in order to cut down on a generation of waste, have been largely ignored by the Greek government.

Sigalas said the government needs to coordinate a strict policy review to allow strategies to filter down into local government levels and bring Greece in line with the rest of Europe.

He told Reportage that while the council on the Island is ready to act, they are looking to Athens for an official policy decision as to when and where a plastic recycling plant can be built.

“Although we are ready, with the papers and the plans, we have not the area.

“Maybe by the end of this year we will have an answer from the government and they will tell us where is the right area to start,” he said.

It is this ignorance and neglect for environmental protection that highlights the old habits of the Greek people that Sigalas said must change.

“It is difficult to change their behaviour, their way of thinking.

“We can earn from tourism and I don’t mean only money, but a way of thinking, a way of life,” he said.

He believes that if the local people can manage to change their way of thinking, then the tourists will follow on.

“It is very important to us…we have to look after ourselves here. If we solve this problem exactly for the 13 000 local people, after will be easier to work in the summer.”

Effie Kotula, a summer tour guide for Kamari Tours on Santorini, agrees that a culture change is needed to better deal with waste on the Island.

“In Greece, we have another culture and mentality [to the rest of Europe], so leaving bottles on the beach is not pollution.

“We have many tourists in summer and we consume many products, so of course it would be better to recycle,” she said.

Dimitris Sigalas believes tourists will help keep the island clean if the residents do the same. Image: Elise Dalley

Vassilis Lignos, hotel and restaurant owner at the famous black pebbled Perissa Beach, believes that residents have already started to change their way of thinking about recycling and respecting the value of their local environment.

However, he also agrees with Sigalas that it is the government who must now demonstrate their willingness to change before any progress will be made.

“People are interested to do this.

“The Greek people are starting to press, but the Mayors’ offices are too slow,” he said.

Born on the Island and now raising his own two children there, Lignos fears the playground of his early days will be soon be ruined by waste because poor government structure is preventing the force of local pressure from being felt by decision makers in Athens.

“We go to the village mayor, who goes to the Santorini mayor, to the Cyclades mayor, to the government; there are too many steps.”

In order to bring about a policy change within the government and a cultural change within the community, both Sigalas and the younger generation in Greece believe education of locals and tourists is the key.

“We have to teach the new generation not to make the same mistakes like my generation.

“If the tourists, when they come here, know the problem and know exactly how it works here, they will look after the island more,” Sigalas said.

Maria Sazlara, 15 year old Greek school student, said while she may recognise the lack of plastic recycling as a problem, most Greeks do not because of a lack of public advertising about its benefits.

“I believe that the Greeks haven’t actually realised what is happening to the planet.

“They find it difficult to get used to the idea of recycling and think there is no point,” she said.

Maria Gkougkoulia, university student from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, said that she too understands the issues but finds it hard to recycle due to the lack of infrastructure provided by the government.

“There are not many recycling bins.

“Of course I don’t like to throw out rubbish, I have ecological sensibility, but this issue is really big and our system has a different way of progressing to other places,” she said.

Anthi Karahrisafi, also a student in Thessaloniki, agrees that recycling must be addressed as a priority political issue in order to start educating the community.

“They [the people] are not informed, the politicians are not actually interested and they don’t spend their money to advertise recycling,” she said.

Not alone in their beliefs, the European Commission also outlines education as a key strategy to improving waste management and recycling across Europe and despite their 2008 Sustainable Future is in our Hands report demanding “words be put into action”, Greece is still considerably behind.

Sigalas, a resident of the Island for 50 years, said this is just the beginning of what will be a long battle to protect the island from losing the postcard perfect image he is fiercely proud of.

“Of course I worry, but I have to change it, I have to fight against this,” he said.

Josh Kenworthy | Melbourne, Australia

A typical scene of a commuters' drive home. Image: Josh Kenworthy

It’s six AM when 18-year-old carpenter’s apprentice, Charlie Curtis, rolls out of bed to get ready for work. After downing a few pieces of toast he goes outside and starts-up his white, 1992 four-door Holden Rodeo. Leaving at 6:15am, the trip from Northcote to Tarneit in the outer Western suburbs should take about 40 minutes along the Calder Freeway and Western Ring Road, getting him to work just before it starts at seven AM. He’s on time.

Coming home is a different story. Setting off at four-thirty PM, Curtis slings his saw-trestles into the back and loads his burly six-foot-three frame into the cab. As he enters Western Ring Road he sees exactly what he expects – Trucks and cars disappearing into the horizon. Curtis’ fuel is paid for by his boss, very few others in the bumper to bumper traffic would be so fortunate. With his iPod to keep him company he spends the next hour and 15 minutes crawling through the dusk and fumes. Stop start, stop start, all the way home.

“I leave work around four-thirty and get home around quarter to six. And that’s pretty much standstill all the way,” says Curtis.

Traffic congestion currently costs Melbourne $3 billion a year and this is set to increase as the population and economy grow. Recent projections by The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BTRE) suggest traffic congestion will cost Australia $20 billion a year by 2020 and $6.1 billion in Melbourne alone.

A shift in thinking by the federal government has been signaled by the appointment of Australia’s first ever population minister, Tony Burke, and the announcement by the federal Minister for Infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, of a national urban policy to be released later this year. These decisions have been made in preparation for Australia’s population reaching 36 million in the next 40 years.

At a state level, the Victorian government recently introduced Smart Roads: a road hierarchy system where certain modes of transport are given priority on certain routes depending on the time of day. While public transport experts generally praise it as a step in the right direction, some say it won’t actually solve the problem.

“Don’t get me wrong, this is not going to stop conflict in this city. But we either have a government that doesn’t do anything and just lets chaos occur or we have one that tries and balances the needs as best you can, including making hard choices,” says, Chair of Public Transport at Monash University, Professor Graham Currie. “The truth is it’s not going to solve congestion and in fact I might tell you that there is no such thing as managing congestion [to] make it go away.”

What to do – How About Another Tax?

A solution advocated by some Australian transport experts is a congestion charge or road pricing scheme. The idea recently gained some traction in Australia when it appeared in the Henry Review of taxation, although the federal government’s move to ignore it, at least for the time being, may be indicative of its unpopularity amongst the public; even more rides on it in an election year.

“I think we’re overtaxed as it is to be honest,” said an accountant at Flinders Street Station who commutes to the CBD from Waverly by train.

“I think it’s the most terrible idea I’ve heard to be brutal about it,” said another commuter from Alamein who works as a project manager for a construction company, who also prefers to remain anonymous.

These people don’t even drive to work.

But the Alamein commuter adds that he hadn’t really heard of the charge until now and does not know much about it. “…yeah everybody understands the argument, but no, I bought a car and should be able to come into the city… Where are they putting the taxes? What roads? What toll ways? We’ve already got tollways. So is there a tax again on your tollways?”

This is precisely the problem. While public resistance to a new tax is always rife – think the GST in the late 1990s – those in favour of it say that acceptance would depend on explaining its details and benefits. According to Professor John Stanley of Sydney University, it would take a minimum of five years of public consultation and education before it could ever begin to be implemented. “[We’ve] got to start the conversation now… I think it’s the only way we can reduce congestion costs. I don’t think there’s any other way,” he says.

The experts in support of a charge generally favour the Dutch approach, where a sophisticated GPS-based charging scheme would allow cars to be fitted with a device similar to the ‘E-tag’ currently used in Melbourne. The GPS would track exactly where, when and what type of driving occurred in order to more accurately charge drivers for their economic, social and environmental impacts made by a particular trip. It would also distinguish between a truck, a petrol-guzzling V6 family car or a more environmentally friendly hybrid.

Director of the University of Sydney’s Institute Transport and Logistics Studies, Professor David Hensher, says that the key in introducing a congestion charge to the public “is where to put it and how to frame it… I normally call it a congestion charge, it’s an emotive word, the tax.” He also says that the “revenue disbursement policy,” in other words where the money raised is going to be spent, is “a sign of acceptability.”

Pushing people out of their cars and onto public transport is a key element of the thinking behind a road pricing system. This could have knock-on effects in terms of public health given the extra walking associated with public transport use, as well as lead to greater social interaction and less greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the charge would create a revenue source that could be dedicated to further improvements in train networks, buses, trams and roads.

The Push to Public Transport – Can the System Cope?

The lights are green but the cars aren’t moving. The sound of honking horns and car-fumes fill the air. This is Punt Road at peak-hour where cars emerging from the shadows of the MCG and turning right from Brunton Avenue try to merge with the Punt Road traffic, still blocking the intersection. A collage of cars and trucks at various angles edge and beep at one another until the intersection finally clears.

Above the Punt Road din at Richmond railway station, another form of congestion is visible. The peak hour trains for the Lilydale, Belgrave and Glen Waverley lines roll into platform nine. Each is about ten minutes late and overflowing with passengers packed in tight like sardines, so much so on one Upper Ferntree Gully service that a man trying to board gives up with a helpless shrug and waits for the next train.

A central criticism of a congestion charge is that Melbourne’s existing train networks are already strained and would buckle like railway tracks in the summer under increased patronage.

“Congestion charging is yet another fundamentalist economic dogma,” says Dr Paul Mees, a transport expert from RMIT and long time advocate of improving Melbourne’s public transport system. “What congestion charging does do is it rations road space to the wealthy.”

Dr Mees does not believe that revenue from a congestion charge is required in order to fix Melbourne’s ailing train network. He says that it is “currently running at half its designed capacity in the busiest part of peak hour and that the inefficiency is due to “a whole series of stupendously incompetent things that grew up over the years when patronage was so low that they didn’t have to use their capacity efficiently.”

“These things are now being used as excuses for not fixing, not changing the status quo,” says Dr Mees. “These things” mainly relate to timetabling and other logistics such as the functioning of the City Loop. Compounding Melbourne’s train problems, trams are being slowed as congestion levels rise and the outer suburbs are still inadequately serviced by buses – the main, if not only, public mode in outer suburbs.

Even if revenue from a congestion charge was allocated to improving public transport, there would be a delay before people started reaping the benefits. It seems unfair to slug those who are often less wealthy and have no choice but to drive. “I think that’s a fair criticism,” concedes Professor Currie, “but part of my rationale here is to take the money generated to plug those gaps and provide more service. So that’s my thinking on that. I don’t think any of those criticisms should stop us trying to do something about this problem.”

In the orange glow of the famous Flinders Street Station facade against a night sky, time-lapse photography shows the hustle and bustle of trams, cars and people. “With more people using our trains than ever before, we’re changing the way we get around,” says the man’s upbeat voice-over in the most recent television ad for the Victorian Transport Plan (VTP).

In December 2008 the Victorian Government released the VTP which pledged $38 billion over five years to improving the Victorian transport system. Less than two years into the plan there are still questions about how the money is being spent. But it’s not all doom and gloom.

“The government is doing more on this than anybody has ever done in the history of Australia and they’ve achieved funding levels, particularly federal funding levels, which no one has ever achieved in the history of funding in Australia,” says Professor Currie. The “point is, it’s just not enough.” Since 2004, he says, “the government has increased buses in the outer suburbs by about 37 per cent. They put about 1.2 billion dollars into buses. There has been investment in trams, in particular low floor trams and so forth and a bit in priority [for them].”

But throwing money at projects can be misleading, and while a lot more funding will be needed, experts such as Dr Mees and Professor Currie believe Victoria has to become smarter about how existing funds are spent. The 38 new trains promised by the VPT sounds good, one would think. Using the Victorian government’s own forecasts for increased train patronage, Professor Currie predicts that the trains which the government uses as proof of its commitment to public transport will only reduce peak-overcrowding in the first couple of years from 40 to 39 per cent. After that, overcrowding will increase by 2014 to about 44 per cent.

Some experts believe the major projects outlined in the 2008 Eddington Report such as the Regional Rail Link and the metro between Caulfield and Footscray will be significant improvements to the public transport system. But with no funds nor planning committed to the Melbourne-Caulfield half of the metro, there is no guarantee that a change in government would not see it scrapped.

According to Professor Currie, government funding for road related projects still exceeds funding for public transport by $1.5 billion, which shows that roads still occupy the high ground when it come to Victoria’s urban policy. With the introduction of Smart Roads, talk of congestion charging and more money than ever before being invested in public transport, perhaps priorities are beginning to shift.

Josh Kenworthy is a student currently at Monash University in Melbourne.

By Josh Kenworthy | Melbourne editor

Hazelwood Power station in Victoria. Image: Jenny Jagerhorn

The Victorian government’s plan to shut down Hazelwood Power Station, outlined in its Climate Change White Paper, has been welcomed by unions in the area.

The Gippsland Trades and Labour Council (GTLC) Secretary/Treasurer, John Parker said he was pleased with the white paper because it gave the industry enough notice to begin shifting to new industries.

“We’ve been saying to the government, ‘we want to know the truth and we want to know your best estimate of what’s going to happen’.”

Parker said, “The employer’s association have been saying for quite a while, behind the scenes, that by 2020 with a carbon trading scheme two of the power stations will probably be gone. And what we’ve said [to the government] is that we need… to be able to do that transition now.”

He also described the closure as a “brave call” by state government to give the early notice which is in stark contrast to the thousands of people left unemployed during the privatisations of the Kennett era.

GTLC Assistant Secretary, Steve Dodd, said it is now important that the government “consult the community and the unions about setting up new jobs for the people to run into.”

According to Parker, the average age of Hazelwood workers is 55 so it is expected that retirement will help with phasing out of Hazelwood while the rest of Gippsland’s skilled work force, mostly working in the power industry, will need to transfer to new industries like solar, construction, wind or dairy.

The white paper, released on Monday, outlines plans to shut down one quarter of Hazelwood Power Station by 2014 and to reduce carbon emissions by 20 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.

Environment Victoria (EV) said the emissions target showed strong leadership.

“Victoria’s new target is a strong leadership move that is head and shoulders above any other state or national emissions reduction target in Australia. It is in stark contrast to the weak targets and lack of policy from both the Federal ALP and Coalition,” EV chief executive, Kelly O’Shanassy said.

“While the science tells us we need to go further than a 20 percent reduction in emissions by 2020, the Premier is building a bridge between what we are currently doing about climate change in Australia and what we need to be doing,” she said.

Josh Kenworthy is a student currently at Monash University in Melbourne.

Related articles

Hundreds protest over Rudd’s backflip
Climate protesters planning new protests
The grimy valley struggles on