Bernie

NO system is ever perfect, however your attempt to cast aspersions on a reasonable practices in handling toxic waste is a very poor attempt to side track the debate.

Fortunately there are many of the 6 billion people on this planet who can and do aspire towards sustainable practices. I remain ever optimistic in spite of people who fear change so much, they prefer "business as usual".

Bernie there is even action you can take yourself:]

Top-10-E-waste-Facts:

1. Australians discard more than 10,000 tonnes of used batteries every year
2. 75 per cent of the 3 million computers bought in Australia every year will end up in landfill
3. Electronic waste is responsible for 70 per cent of the toxics chemicals such as lead, cadmium and mercury found in landfill
4. Business accounts for 50 per cent of annual computer sales in Australia
5. More than 7 million mobile phones are sold in Australia every year
6. The average life of a mobile phone is two years
7. Less than 5 per cent of mobile phones are recycled
8. Electronic waste is one of the top five priority items under extended producer responsibility
9. E-waste is being sent to landfill at three times the rate of general waste
10. Manufacturing of a standard desktop uses 1.8 tonnes of materials, including at least 240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of chemicals and 1.500 litres of water (Source: True green at work: 100 ways to make the environment your business)

9-Tips-for-reducing-business e-waste:

1. Buy good quality, repairable office equipment
2. Print double-sided
3. Buy equipment for producers that undertake to collect and recycle at the end of life
4. Donate your mobile phone to Clean Up Australia
5. Join an industry group; learn what works from one another
6. Switch from printed publications to interactive-electronic formats
7. Buy five-star white goods for your office
8. Use rechargeable batteries
9. Donate old office equipment to schools, charities/organisations that refurbish or reuse them

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/aid;52

That's very interesting data you have provided Fractelle.

And we have not yet touched on the hazardous waste industry where governments continue to permit this mob to establish hazardous waste processing plants in close proximity to residential areas.

These self-regulated plants handle some of the most hazardous wastes known to man - dioxins, biological, clinical and pharmaceutical wastes, radioactive fly-ash, perchlorates, pesticides, solvents, chromium, cyanide, mercury, copper, hydrochloric, sulphuric and nitric acids, contaminated soils etc. etc.

In WA, a competent committee was established by former Premier Geoff Gallop, to find proper and ethical methods in the management of hazardous waste. The committee comprised of scientists, union reps, community and shire reps, haz waste reps and so on.

After almost three years of dedicated research the committee's recommendations to cabinet, if approved and legislated, would have seen an efficient, legislated and safe industry treating these wastes 3-6 kilometres from any community. The hazardous waste industry would have been compelled to wear the additional transport costs and the construction of new facilities.

Alas, to the amazement of all, environment minister, Mark McGowan, sacked the committee without explanation.

The multi-national hazardous waste industry is extremely influential and what better strategies to employ than Julian Grill (ex politician, ex WA Inc and business partner to Brian Burke) as a lobbyist to manipulate their mouthpieces in our houses of parliament? Grill is currently the subject of an enquiry by the Crime and Corruption Committee.

In the meantime, community outrage continues and the hazardous waste industry is happy in their work!

Dickie, I must be getting old but I can't remember the names of the co-chairs of the waste management committee you mention in your post. One was from the Chamber of Commerce but the other was chair of ACE - Alliance for a Clean Environment or something like that. A friend heard him talk to a group of students at Murdoch University some years back and he unashamedly told them that their protests against the pre-Gallop Liberal government were orchestrated to deliver maximum media coverage in the lead-up to a state election. So, while I'm not able to question your motives, there's no doubt that this guys motives were political and that his protestations about waste management were largely contrived.
I'm grateful to Fractelle for his or her lists of suggested actions, but the problem is that all of these eminently desirable actions aren't being implemented by the bulk of our Australian community. Less than 10% of older houses have ceiling insulation and less than 20% of all houses have solar hot water systems.
Dickie, there must be tens of thousands of mining operations around the world and the fact that 10 or 20 of them are causing or have caused problems doesn't cause me to paint them all with the same brush. Their actions may be unacceptable but I don't condemn an entire industry just on the basis of a few bad examples.
The bottom line is that we have the technology but not the political will to solve almost all of our waste problems, including disposal of radioactive waste.

Bernie Masters

Mary Askey (Chamber of Commerce) and Lee Bell were Co-chairs of the Core Consultative Committee on Hazardous Waste.

Bell's expert criticisms have been directed at both major parties.

Richard Court was Premier of WA from '93 to 2001. During the Liberal Party's reign, a time-bomb was ticking.

On 15/02/2001, it blew up. The Bellevue hazardous waste plant exploded - the largest chemical fire in Australia's history - exploding drums of unknown substances dropped from the skies over the unsuspecting community.

In 2000, your parliamentary colleague, Cheryl Edwards, proudly opened a hazardous waste plant in Kalgoorlie - 500 metres from a restaurant and a fuel depot.

Around 2001/2, residents were becoming ill from being force-fed toxic emissions at the Brookdale hazardous waste plant - located 400 metres from a primary school. In fact, resident, Lee Bell's son had such a high reading of lead they were forced to abandon the family home.

Such was the community outrage that the Labor government dumped the hazardous waste at Total Waste Management in Kalgoorlie where the toxic emissions continued to choke the life from residents. As a result, a protest march of over 400 Goldfields' citizens occurred - to no avail.

In the matter of the Core Consultative Committee's majority consensus on the management of hazardous waste, the lobbying efforts of Julian Grill and a scathing attack on the CCC, by the Chamber of Commerce to Cabinet, sealed its fate.

However, the corrupt Labor Party did not win government until 10 February 2001, therefore, you as a former Liberal MP, in the Court government, must also accept responsibility for the poisoning of WA.

"The bottom line is that we have the technology but not the political will to solve almost all of our waste problems, including disposal of radioactive waste."

Waste problems will not disappear by political will alone Bernie Masters but from the industry's will to develop a culture of altruism and ethical practice and a higher regard for its victims rather than the status quo - corrupt management (and corrupt bureaucrats) and a maniacal zest for maximum profits!

dickie, I was a member of the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the Bellevue fire and I visited the Forrestfield treatment plant a couple of times so I know a bit about these issues. The high lead reading you mention wasn't due to anything the treatment plant was doing - lead wasn't being processed - so Paddy Cullen and his friends were simply beating up an issue to win votes, not to protect the environment. There were no reports of any health problems as a result of the Kalgoorlie waste treatment plant.
You'll have to do better than these examples to convince me that 'poisoning of WA' was anything more than a figment of some environmentalists' imagination.

Bernie Masters

I apologise for attributing the high lead levels to Brookdale. My memory over several years, since reading the reports, failed me. The lead levels were in fact a result of yet another disastrous blunder in the management of hazardous waste in Bellevue – the Omex waste oil site. Your then Liberal Health Minister, Peter Foss described Lee Bell as “an absolute bullduster” despite the fact that taxpayers footed a bill of some $6.9 million to clean up this disgraceful site (See Oztoxic – Page 2:)

http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:hKr49DaY2fQJ:www.oztoxics.org/cmwg/library/documents_1/env%2520justice%2520in%2520Aust.pdf+omex+disaster+bellevue+clean-up+costs&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au&lr=lang_en

As for the lead levels in Brookdale, let's see how the Department of Environment squirmed their way out of that:

http://www.dec.wa.gov.au/component/option,com_docman/Itemid,/gid,1812/task,doc_details/index2.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=1812&Itemid=99999999

And why should we accept any findings from these crooks when I have, through Freedom of Information, an in-house email distributed by then senior bureaucrat, Phillip Hines over community concerns with Brookdale. It was subsequently published in the West or Sunday Times and went something like this:

“Oh dioxin – oops there goes my breast milk. I feel another cancer coming on. There’s another dioxin!”

We are agreed on one thing – that Paddy Cullen’s appraisal of Brookdale was a bit of a beat-up, however, do you at least know what chemicals Brookdale were treating?

“There were no reports of any health problems as a result of the Kalgoorlie waste treatment plant.”

No Bernie Masters. That’s because none have been performed. In fact hardly any resident new the waste plant existed prior to the dumping of Brookdale’s waste. In addition, the people of the Goldfields have been gagged since the odours have been reduced – a result of the plant owners utilising yet another chemical to mask the odours from their evaporation ponds.

If you understood environmental toxicology you would realise that masking odours does not mitigate the emissions of hazardous chemicals over the community. Chemicals which are odourless, invisible and silent!

As a result of the Bellevue chemical fire, a large underground hazardous plume is now heading for the Helena River which also feeds into the Swan River:

contd....