Waste not, want not

Commenting on the story: Councils to raise rates and stink over Budget bin tax

While there is a legitimate argument to be made about how much of the Solid Waste Levy should be returned to Councils to help them improve their waste and recycling services, increasing the levy is ultimately a sensible move.

As a society, it makes sense to tax the things we don’t like, and subsidise the things we do.  Yet when it comes to the environment, we tend to do the opposite.

In this case, there is still a financial advantage in sending far too many of the world’s precious resources direct to landfill, rather than recapturing and recycling them.  

Last year’s State of the Environment report found that, despite our state’s leadership in reducing waste through the hugely popular container deposit scheme, bans on plastic bags and other initiatives, the amount of waste we produce is still going up. 

In fact, it’s going up a lot.  

The average amount of waste generated by South Australians increased from 2,000 kgs of waste each in 2003-04 to 3,000 kgs in 2016-17 – a rise of 42%.

If increasing the Solid Waste Levy diverts more of this waste away from landfill, that can only be a good thing. – Craig Wilkins

Drilling down data

Commenting on the story: Time for SA MPs to back Bight oil drilling ban

Senator Hansen-Young is very short of any facts she has written in her article.

She omits many pertinent facts and plucks fictitious numbers out of the air.

For example petroleum drilling and production has been ongoing for more than 60 years in the Gippsland Basin just east of SA, and furthermore today it was announced that NOPSEMA (the regulator) has approved the drilling of another exploration some 70 km offshore Victoria in 2300 metres water depth.

There have been some 104,000 km of seismic recorded in the GAB and 12 exploration wells drilled in the GAB.

Equinor, formerly called Statoil has decades of successful drilling and production history offshore in the North Sea and Arctic seas.

Australia needs new sources of local oil and gas and the governments, both Federal and State have an obligation to develop the nation’s natural resources for the benefit of all Australians. – Andrew J Andrejewskis

I don’t think we’ll get a consensus of support from our opposition leader and some independents on a ban on drilling in the Great Australian Bight.

Sarah Hanson Young thinks her opinion is all that counts. – Mike Lesiw 

Want to comment?

Send us an email, making it clear which story you’re commenting on and including your full name (required for publication) and phone number (only for verification purposes). Please put “Reader views” in the subject.

We’ll publish the best comments in a regular “Reader Views” post. Your comments can be brief, or we can accept up to 350 words, or thereabouts.

InDaily has changed the way we receive comments. Go here for an explanation.