April 25 2023
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Waste to energy a serious consideration by Andy Bryenton
A special notice of motion at this week’s Kaipara District Council meeting will put forward a proposition to replace the Dome Valley landfill with a cleaner solution.
Nurses address healthcare crisis
Dargaville nurses and midwives added their voice to a region-wide protest …
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Town hall, cinema locked down Dargaville Town Hall and the Anzac Theatre are closed …
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Positive result for future cropping
A seven-tonne squash crop grown on a Maunganui Bluff test farm …
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A brief mention at last month’s energy operations produce fewer greenhouse emissions, Kaipara District Council meeting by Deputy Mayor Jonathan release fewer dioxins, and that Larsen to Mayor Craig Jepson one tonne of refuse is equal to has evolved into an instruction half a tonne of coal in terms of to staff to explore options for generating electricity. Rather than a waste-to-energy plant, of the disincentivising recycling, these kind successfully operated in systems have the opposite effect. many European nations under Wales, with four large waste-totheir own very strict emissions energy plants, has the highest standards and guidelines. recycling rate in the world, at “We can’t, in all honesty, more than 65 per cent. object to the Dome Valley To take an estimated 600 landfill without an alternative,” refuse trucks a week off the said Mayor Jepson. roads, the mayor opined that the The notice instructs staff Kaipara region’s under-utilised to ‘investigate options for the rail network could be reactivated establishment of a waste-toor improved to transport waste, energy plant in conjunction which would be reduced to sowith Auckland Council (via called ‘plasma-treated fly ash’ Mayor Brown’s office), and by the plant. This ash is useful Whangārei District Council in the concrete business. Other (via Mayor Cocurullo’s office), byproducts include food-grade Northland Inc, Te Uri o Hau and Since the opening of the last landfill in New Zealand, 150 million CO², once produced at Marsden industry operators, including, Point but can no longer be tonnes of waste have gone into the ground; Kaipara’s mayor says it’s but not limited to, South Island made there. time to stop Resource Recovery Ltd (SIRRL).’ A New Zea l a n d - b a s e d Mayor Jepson has a long association his election to civic office, working for a company, South Island Resource Recovery with the technology used to turn non- month in Nice, France, at a plant which Limited, has already investigated the recyclable waste into electricity, all but processes 350,000 tonnes annually. possibility of replacing landfills with vaporising it in the process. He was part To give a sense of scale, the combined waste-to-energy systems and has of a group that attempted to instigate a waste for Northland and Auckland may embarked upon a project to build a facility not be equal to that incinerated by the near Christchurch. similar project in Meremere in 1997. “I want to bring the Northland councils Nice facility. Supporters of changing the way we The extensive use of waste-to-energy deal with refuse call waste to energy a and Auckland together to discuss the technology. It has advanced a long way systems in Europe has led to a track ‘disruptive technology’ and warn that the record of peer-reviewed papers on corporate interests vested in the current since the 1990s,” Mr Jepson said. He has kept up to date with this evolving their effectiveness. These have shown landfill model may oppose attempts to green solution to waste in the time before that, compared to landfill, waste-to- adopt a cleaner solution.
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