[Oz-envirolink] Myth busting

[hugh spencer]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/lets-clear-the-air/2007/04/02/11753661587
87.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

April 3, 2007

When it comes to the environment it's often difficult to sort fact from
fiction. James Woodford
busts a few of the more prevalent fabrications.


"Water from a rainwater tank is not fit to drink"

If your gutters are full of bird droppings, your roof is covered in peeling
lead paint and your water tank has a dead possum in it, then you would
drink from it at your peril. Water is only as clean as its catchment and
where it is stored. But tank water can be superb if you follow a few simple
precautions and take care with maintenance.

The cleanest roof still has muck and dust on it, especially if it hasn't
rained for a while. For this reason if you are planning to drink water from
a tank it is important to install a "first flush" device to divert the
initial dirty flows away from the tank so they do not end up in your water
storage. Another precaution is to install a water filter.

NSW Health's position is that rainwater is drinkable: "Providing the
rainwater is clear, has little taste or smell and is from a well-maintained
water catchment system it is probably safe and unlikely to cause illness
for most users."

The department does caution that "the use of rainwater tanks for drinking
purposes is not recommended where a reticulated potable water supply is
available".

That may be so, but many people swear that rainwater makes a cup of tea to
die for.

"I can't go solar because I'm already connected to the electricity grid"

It is true that if your house is already connected to the grid there is
little or no economic incentive to go stand-alone solar.

"Stand-alone" means being completely independent of an electricity utility
and having a bank of batteries to supply your power at night and during
cloudy periods.

What does make sense, though, is installing solar panels that send power
directly back into the powerlines. This is called grid feeding and is a
considerably cheaper way to obtain a benefit because you require neither
batteries nor an inverter to convert solar power to 240 volts.

The panels can offset a proportion of your energy use or, if you are
serious about it, generate so much power they earn enough credits from your
power company that you don't receive a bill.

Another common myth is that stand-alone solar homes are dimly lit, with
insufficient electricity to run power-hungry appliances such as vacuum
cleaners and washing machines without turning on a generator. In fact, new
solar technology is very robust and can run even big power tools.

"Recycling is a waste of time"

It is one of the single most enduring myths of environmental guilt
diversion therapy that, when householders turn their backs, recycling is
dumped into landfill.

We live in an astonishingly wasteful society. WSN Environmental Services,
formerly Waste Services NSW, says 6,343,079 tonnes of "material" ended up
in landfill in 2002-03.

"Every year Australians use around 3.5 million tonnes of paper and
cardboard, enough to fill 160,000 large semitrailers. Less than half of
this is collected for recycling," says the state-owned corporation.

The story that recycling is simply dumped is false, false, false, says a
spokesman. "In NSW in 2003-04 it was estimated that approximately 603,540
tonnes of recyclable paper, cardboard and containers and 262,873 tonnes of
garden organics were collected through kerbside recycling, making a total
of 866,413 tonnes."

Whatever is collected is used, the spokesman says. All that is discarded is
the 10 per cent of material that should not have been put into recycling in
the first place.

The real scandal is the number of things that should be recycled that are
tossed in the rubbish. "There's a considerably large amount of recycling
that still goes into the garbage bin."

Recycled material is so valuable that waste services are sifting through
the garbage stream to find it.

Every council has different rules for how it wants its recycling presented
so the golden rule is to check and follow the guidelines in your area.

"I refuse to drink recycled water"

Tough. You already do. Not only is there the cliched water cycle you learnt
about at school but by the time you put a cup under a tap in Sydney the
water has already been used by an entire 16,000-square-kilometre catchment.
Where do you think many towns in the Southern Highlands send their treated
sewage and grey water? The answer is the Hawkesbury-Nepean, the vast river
system that flows into Warragamba Dam. Also, there are cows, kangaroos and
wombats in our catchment and none has a cork in its bottom.

A testament to the fact that our water is used is that water authorities
have to be constantly on guard against faecal-born pathogens such as
cryptosporidium. Sydney's catchment is a patchwork of towns, farms,
national parks and roads. Clean water's two best friends are dilution and
good, healthy native vegetation that filters water better than any
multibillion-dollar treatment plant.

"Conservation is something that should happen only in national parks"

Many people believe that conservation is something that happens somewhere
else. After all, isn't that what national parks are for? The truth is that
if we rely on conservation reserves alone to save the nation's biodiversity
then plants and animals are doomed. You can't outsource being an
environmentalist. Many national parks are islands in a sea of human
activity, separated from each other by swathes of suburbia, farmland, roads
and other developments.

It is no longer enough to think the creation of national parks is all that
needs to be done. National parks make up less than 10 per cent of the state
and, in many instances, are as much about recreation as they are about
conservation. About 90 per cent of the state is outside the reserve system.

We need to bring conservation into our lives and make our homes, farms and
industrial sites as friendly to wildlife as possible. The State Government
has announced a program to find links across private land that will allow
national parks throughout eastern Australia to be joined by wildlife and
conservation corridors.

"Calling a product organic means it is organic. Right?"


Wrong. In Australia there is no national standard for organic labelling,
which means someone can call their product organic even if it is not. The
only way to be sure that what you are buying is organic is to check that it
is certified so.

"Organic-certified produce" means the food was grown, harvested, stored and
transported without the use of synthetic chemicals, irradiation or
fumigants. The Australian Organic Food Directory says certification is the
only way to guarantee a product is truly organic. While exported organic
produce must meet the National Standard for Organic and Biodynamic Produce,
there is no national regulation to control the labelling of organic food
and produce sold in Australia. As a consumer you should:

Check for the Organic Retailers' and Growers' Association of Australia
(ORGAA) notice, if you are buying from an organic retailer.

Choose foods labelled with the seal of one of the Australian certifiers for
organic food.

Check packaging for the grower's name and certification number.

Be critical of food that is labelled "natural", "organic", or
"chemical/spray-free" without certification.

"Most environmental damage was done by our colonising forebears"

The stereotypical environmental vandal is the crusty, rednecked logger.
They are becoming a rare breed, made redundant by bulldozers and chainsaws.
Yes, they did chop down trees, but the reality is that many led extremely
frugal lives. When something broke they fixed it. They used every scrap
that came into their households. Many did not own a motor vehicle or buy
food from a supermarket. They did not have computers, MP3 players or any
other of the countless gadgets the average city greenie has today.

Cars, appliances and gadgets have vast quantities of embodied energy, which
is the energy that has gone into producing them. Our society stiff-arms
environmental degradation out of sight. Most of the time, when Mr Logger
made a mess he did it within walking distance. His life resulted in only a
fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by anyone who owns a car.

If you drive for 50 years you will produce carbon dioxide equivalent to
that stored in around 1000 big, mature trees.

"Our economy was built on the sheep's back"

It still has to be said in whispers when in polite company, but there are
many ecologists who argue that the No. 1 feral pest in Australia is the
sheep.

In a recent scientific paper published in the journal Rangelands, Dr Daniel
Lunney, a senior researcher with the Department of Environment and
Conservation, wrote: "The sequence of occupation and land use in the
Western Division and the timing of the loss of native mammal species allows
the conclusion to be drawn that it was sheep, and the way the land was
managed for the export wool industry, that drove so many of the mammal
species to extinction. The impact of ever-increasing millions of sheep on
all frontages, through all the refuges, and across all the landscape by the
mid-1880s is the primary cause of the greatest period of mammal extinction
in Australia in modern times."

Lunney says 24 mammal species - predominantly the medium-sized,
ground-dwelling mammals with a dependence on grass or herbs and seeds -
disappeared from the landscape of the Western Division of NSW within 60
years of white settlement in 1841.

"The conclusions point to an extinction process that can be largely
attributed to the impact of sheep, an impact that was exacerbated in the
scarce and fragile refuges of the flat landscape in times of intense and
frequent drought.

"The history of settlement around Menindee from 1841 can be read as a
devastating critique of the failure to realise that the west could not
sustain a pattern of land use imposed on it from another world," Lunney
wrote.

"You need lots of space to grow food"

Many gardeners have a story about the single, miracle tomato plant that
produces enough fruit to supply a family for an entire summer, or the peach
tree that turns honest children into thieves.

One of the biggest environmental problems the world faces is that people
living in modern societies rely on others to supply their food. Only a
couple of generations ago it was rare for a Sydney garden not to have a
small vegetable patch where, at the very least, tomatoes, lettuces and
pumpkins were grown.

Now we all seem to suffer from vegie patch amnesia. It is amazing how small
an area is required to produce enough food to contribute significantly to a
household's table. By doing so you are less reliant on carbon-dioxide
belching semitrailers to deliver produce from across the continent. It's
called your ecological footprint and every citizen's goal should be to make
theirs as small as possible.

When you grow it yourself you also know what's in it. Even a few pots on an
apartment balcony or a box on a window sill can produce a surprisingly
large amount. One of the great pleasures of life is giving someone
something you have grown.

Once you have a good vegie patch there's no going back.

The journey has begun

Welcome to Eco, the Herald's new weekly section all about green issues.
Each Tuesday we will examine environmental topics that affect you and your
world. From recycling to water saving and carbon trading to solar power,
we'll help you pick your way through the mass of information and
misinformation in this vital debate. We would also like to know how you
think we're doing.

Comments, tips or suggestions on what you would like to see covered can be
emailed to eco at smh.com.au.

Nick Galvin Eco editor





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