Waste to energy, not more landfill
- Investigate a Tasmanian waste-to-energy plant on the Amager Bakke model
- Recover metals and reuse ash in construction
- Crack down on illegal dumping on highways and back roads
- Use levy money on solutions, not another round of cuts to tip access
Tasmania is still called the Green State and still has a growing problem with illegal dumping. The landfill levy is $70.56 a tonne, which is meant to help deal with things like illegal dumping, but is yet to be seen.
Hundreds of thousands of tonnes go in the ground, so why not look at waste to energy? As Copenhagen has shown, leftover waste can turn into power and heat which could power Boyer since Hydro and Aurora won’t, and it solves a serious waste issue for Tasmania. Let’s investigate possible viable options.
We must be brave enough to consider smarter environmental solutions — not just more landfill levies.
When councils cut tip vouchers to save a line in the budget, dumping moves to the roadside. I have filmed illegal dumping on the Lyell Highway between Granton and New Norfolk. If we make it expensive to do the right thing and easy to dump in a culvert, people will dump.
A real waste plan is power, heat, metals recovered, landholders who manage their own waste reimbursed, and a state that actually spends the levy on the problem it taxes.