Councillor Chris Harris

We are urging voters to increase The Greens representation on the City of Sydney Council to ensure that the City takes an active role in promoting Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) in development and renovation within the City’s boundaries.

We will find a property that will become the City’s sustainable house. The property should be readily accessible by public transport and it will have one or two car share spots out the front. The house will be renovated using low energy non-toxic materials and paints sourced within Australia. The Greens would look to involve the architecture, planning and environmental studies faculties of our local universities to design, plan and direct the project.

Water tanks will be installed to make the property self sufficient and waste water and sewage will be recycled. Power will be supplied using photovoltaic cells and a small wind turbine or we could also install tri-generation in the street and power the whole street. Energy efficient appliances and lighting will be installed and excess power will be sold back to the grid. Water efficient taps and fittings will be used throughout the property

The property will have a productive garden producing food and fruit bearing shade tress should be planted in the street. Any necessary paving should be done in pale colours to ensure heat is reflected and future upgrades to the street should use pale coloured material

Once completed the City will use this facility for tours, seminars and workshops to educate architects, builders and residents on the very latest ESD developments. This will be a great way of involving the community in active participation to reduce emissions and the impacts of climate change by promoting ideas that can be readily and economically incorporated into projects straight away.

It is important that the ESD initiatives promoted by the sustainable house should be affordable and accessible to the ordinary person. The City should be dismantling the myth that ESD is expensive and fostering the ethic that ESD is the only way to go.

To accompany this initiative the City will prepare a handy “what can be done to improve the ESD of your property” which will be sent to all individuals lodging a development application – there are currently over 3000 DA’s lodged with the City each year

Unfortunately the planning system is too cumbersome and too much a hostage to special interests to drive change with the urgency that is required. The City’s ESD DCP process will be bogged down for years and ultimately the DCP, no matter how good it is, could be rejected my the Minister for Planning who is constantly lobbied by developers and the Property Council.

The City of Sydney is in a position to act quickly to drive change and the Greens think that it should do just that with a highly visible sustainable house and an active program of community engagement.

As a side benefit the City might even be able to create some affordable accommodation for a manager of the facility by incorporating living quarters into the project.

City of Sydney Waste performance needs a shake up

Today the Greens announced their initiative to turn the City’s woeful waste performance around. Currently the City of Sydney sends 71% of its waste out of the City  to be dumped in landfill or a disused mine shaft in someone else’s backyard.

Greens Cr Chris Harris said: “This waste ‘management’ practice is totally unsustainable and requires our urgent attention. The Greens are seeking increased representation on council so that this waste policy can be changed to a short term target of recycling/reprocessing 80% of household waste by 2013 and zero waste to landfill by 2020 This will exceed the NSW government ‘waste to recovery’ target of 66% by 2014.

“There is really no excuse to allow the current situation to persist. There is proven technology that is now available to achieve the 80% short term target as soon as a suitable facility can be built.  For example there is an Alternative Waste Technology Facility located at Eastern Creek that has been recycling 80% of waste delivered to it for the past four years. There is no reason to stop the City investing in this type of technology to make our waste management something that we can be proud of.

“One option that The Greens consider is feasible is for the City of Sydney to work with surrounding councils such as Leichhardt, Marrickville, Woollahra and Waverley Councils to identify a suitable industrial site and develop a facility that processes the waste from all or some of those local government areas. This would provide sufficient waste to make a plant economic. In fact the operation can be quite profitable as a result of the sale of metal, glass, plastic & other materials recovered from waste plus the energy generation potential

“The result will be a dramatic reduction in transport kilometres traveled to haul our rubbish, a massive increase in recovery of precious resources, the ability to generate energy from our waste and a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Greens will also seek to introduce and reinvigorate micro waste policies to compliment the larger waste initiative. These  include:

1.   Introduce the ‘second hand Saturday’ pioneered by the Harris Centre at Ultimo into all parts of the City of Sydney twice each year. Council will assist in resourcing local groups to organize this by providing environmental grants. Where no local initiative exists Council staff will conduct the event. This allows the reuse of unwanted possessions that we all have
2.   Develop a plastic bag reduction strategy designed to reduce demand and reduce supply. This will be an ongoing strategy that targets residents and merchants in the City of Sydney
3.   Develop a butt littering strategy with both incentives and penalties to eliminate butt littering on the City’s streets. The strategy launched by the Lord Mayor has been a failure and a well thought out and ongoing strategy that targets smokers needs to be developed
4.  The development of a white goods recycling initiative which will have a big impact in a council area like Sydney where there is a significant transient population
5.  Comprehensive strategy to encourage widespread take up of composting in both detached housing and apartments.
6.  Review of current recycling practices in older apartment blocks and initiatives to improve performance

Election day for councils across NSW.

Details for the City of Sydney can be found here.