This project will attempt to identify the volumes and types of glass entering the Darwin region and the NT. It will investigate glass management systems in use and document a range of waste glass management options such as trailer mounted medium sized glass crushing plants suitable for community/small municipal use. One system will be used to trial point source in-house glass recovery as a demonstration of options available to the hospitality industry in the Territory.

The project will work closely with industry and government agency partners to investigate local end-uses such as: the development of crushed glass products suitable for abrasive grit or reflective paints on roads, coloured glass landscape pebbles, speciality bench tops, crushed glass in walking trail construction, glass "sand' for asphalt and similar options including trial of one of more.

EnvironmeNT Grants Program

Improvement to Organic Waste Management in the Hospitality Industry

This project seeks to trial and promote a range of organic waste management systems such as biobin, bokashi or vertical compost units suitable for use in hotels/resorts and other hospitality areas. The diversion of organic wastes (e.g. food wastes, soiled cardboard and paper) from general waste collection systems allows for the capture and recycling of valuable nutrients as soil additives. Demonstration systems will be trialled at venues such as Charles Darwin University or Skycity and “open days” staged to encourage industry to investigate these options and grow the resource recovery industry in the territory.

This project will establish a cash for cans scheme in Alice Springs which will operate until 200 000 cans have been returned at a rate of 5c per can or after twelve months of operation. It aims to raise awareness of aluminium cans as a resource, encourage can recycling and reduce the amount of can litter. Aluminium cans in the litter stream have increased significantly following changes to liquor licensing and there is widespread concern in the community that the problem is not being resourced effectively and a strong correlation has been established between community perceptions of violent anti-social behaviour and the town being dirty.

A pilot can refund scheme aims to create an immediate reduction in the amount of can litter entering the litter stream through providing an incentive for responsible can disposal. A monthly evaluation of the refund scheme will be conducted to assess the volume of waste returned in conjunction with information from litter collection staff to assess whether the scheme has had any impact on the cleanliness of the town.

The Climate Action Project will build on the achievements of current Central Australian environmental projects and organisations, particularly the highly successful “Climate Action Group’s Community Action Campaign” currently funded through an 2006-07 EnvironmeNT Grant. This project will: improve the energy efficiency of businesses and high energy users in Alice Springs and provide environmental education and capacity building regarding adaptation to climate change in desert Australia.

The benefits of reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gasses and dollars spent on energy bills will be demonstrated to businesses through an energy efficiency workshop conducted with the assistance of a professional auditor. A significant rebate will be available to businesses for energy audits conducted by the auditor and assistance given to implement innovative energy efficient projects identified through the audit.

This project will also provide environmental education and capacity building regarding adaptation strategies to climate change by the development of school resources, a community educational campaign through the media, public lectures and a forum "Responding to Climate Change in Alice Springs".

This project will allow Desert Knowledge Australia COOLmob to continue delivering energy efficiency and greenhouse gas mitigation information services and activities to the Alice Springs community when existing funding expires in July. It will undertake an additional 50 Home Energy Audits and will target residents that most need targeted energy efficiency advice audience such as high use customers recommended by Power & Water and will work with welfare agencies to access low-income residents, with a particular focus on indigenous housing in Alice Springs.

CSAT will work with the NRETA Water Conservation Officer and Power and Water to raise the awareness of Alice Springs residents about water conservation issues and increase the use of water efficient products and processes in gardens. Two or three gardens of well-known residents employing typical irrigation systems and high water will be audited and strategies to reduce water use identified. Using in-kind donations from local businesses gardens they will be modified over twelve months with the goal of reducing water use by 30% without changing the amenity of the garden. Improvements will be made to irrigation regimes, plant types, mulch etc to aid in reducing garden water use. At least one garden will include a greywater system and reuse of storm/rainwater. A desert zone garden will be planted to highlight the water efficiency, beauty and biodiversity value of employing local species.

Every 3 months, local garden experts will provide interactive, hands-on workshops and tours at Open Days in the gardens to highlight seasonal changes to irrigation regimes and garden maintenance and, to promote other water conservation schemes and local businesses/ people who can assist. A photo archive and take-home flyers demonstrating the changes and products used in the garden and cost savings will be on display. A garden knowledge competition will be run at each Open Day with questions relating to the new knowledge attendees should have learnt throughout the day with water saving devices as prizes.

This project is a partnership between the Central Australian Football League (CAFL), Department of the Chief Minister and Russ Driver & Co. It aims to establish an aluminium can refund scheme offering a 5c refund for aluminium cans at three CAFL matches during the 2007 season; the town vs country match (13/7) and the semi and preliminary finals (26/8 and 2/3).

The success of the project will be measured by the reduction in post-match litter levels at Traeger Park as reported by the clean up crew following matches where the refund is available in comparison to other matches and the ratio of refunds to cans sold.

The Chamber will conduct a pilot project in Darwin to improve the understanding of waste management issues within the Hospitality and Building and Construction businesses sectors and provide greater access to information and resources. Generic best practice Waste Minimization Plans will be developed and a Waste Management Advisor (WMA) employed to conduct Waste Management audits and provide advice on managing the issues identified. The WMA will also help identify opportunities for recycling within their operations and facilitate and assist individual businesses in the hospitality sector to implement changes (i.e. as pilots to test the processes in the generic Waste Minimization Plans).

In delivering this project, the Chamber will work closely with other industry associations, Territory Government agencies and the Re-thinking Waste Advisory Group (RWAG) to seek out and bring together individuals and organisations currently working in the area of waste management, including research and legislation. A series of free business seminars will be conducted. Following the success of the pilot project, the Chamber would propose to extend the project scope to cover the remainder of the Territory in the selected industry groups as a first phase, followed by involving other industry sectors in subsequent phases.

This grant is to run an Ecospecifier seminar for the first time in Darwin. This National Seminar Program delivers seminars designed for practical sustainability and are an advanced practitioner course that will provide detailed information suitable for direct use in projects and to guide product, materials and technology selection for building design, specification and construction.

The course is suitable for architects, designers, facilities managers, interior architects, engineers, builders, project managers, Government, specifiers, developers, manufacturers, suppliers and property owners. This course is very important for equipping practitioners with the necessary knowledge and tools to build more sustainably in the Top End. This in turn is crucial for the development of sustainable building practices since buildings can have a significant impact on the environment during the materials selection, building process and over their lifespan.

The course, usually run over 4 days, would be condensed for the Darwin seminar to make it more cost effective. This course is crucial to creating sustainability as a norm in building practises in the Top End. Without this grant, it is highly unlikely that this seminar will be conducted in the NT.

COOLmob and local production company Cutting Edge will produce four new 15 or 30 second community service announcements (CSAs) for airing on local television that provide community education about how households can reduce electricity usage, greenhouse gases emissions and save on power (and save money while they are at it). The CSAs will be a dynamic, fun and positive way to deliver COOLmob’s message of sustainable living to a broad audience using animation and the mascot character ‘Enviro Girl’.

The themes will be important areas of sustainable living: 1. Air conditioning - using timers to reduce running time 2. Air conditioning - increasing the thermostat to increase efficiency 3. Hot water - reduce running time and prevent wasted energy 4. Fridges - reduce numbers and increase efficiency.

COOLmob will develop their website into a ‘one stop shop’ with extensive resources on how to live sustainably in the Top End. It will be both user friendly and comprehensive and would provide the ideal site where people new to the Top End can find exactly what they need to ensure they have a sustainable lifestyle in their new home. The website will host a database of local businesses who supply environmentally friendly goods and services such as energy efficient products (e.g. low energy lights), water conservation (eg low flow taps), renewable energy (eg solar hot water), and organic food.

The businesses will be encouraged to provide discounts to Cool Households (it is free to become a Cool Household). COOLmob auditors will also draft factsheets on: Energy efficiency, Water conservation, Water reuse, Waste minimisation, Recycling, Food gardening, Transport efficiency, Carbon offsets and Renewable energy.

Coomalie Council will engage an environmental consultant to conduct an analysis of the waste disposed of at the Batchelor Landfill. This analysis will be used to develop a strategy to reduce the amount of waste going into the landfill. Community education and awareness workshops will be held to inform residents of the strategies for waste reduction. This will compliment the recycling of plastic, glass and aluminium cans already in place in Batchelor and will lead to more effective and environmentally safe use of the waste disposal facility.

An Expo recognising World Environment Day 2008 will be held at a central Darwin location involving: Displays - Each group to set up displays to promote, inform, inspire and educate. Stalls - Food and other merchandise for sale. Workshops/Talks - Locals with expertise on specific topics to present informative talks and workshops and conduct product demonstrations (e.g. water and energy conservation).

WED Forum - A forum on a particular crucial issue or combination of issues will be held (e.g. Community responses to climate change and invasive species). A ‘celebrity speaker’ will be sought to feature in this forum. Performance/Films - Engage local musicians to perform throughout the day. Screenings of environment-oriented short films throughout the day. Children's Activities - Environmentally based activities for children. In addition, we anticipate holding a fundraiser dinner on the Saturday prior to the Expo, incorporating a key note speaker, for example, this year's keynote speaker at the Expo will be Professor Ian Lowe.

The project partners (ECNT and WWF Australia) will organise and host the inaugural Northern Territory Tropical Rivers Conservation Forum. The Forum, to be held in late 2007, will attract a wide range of participants from research institutions, land managers, conservation practitioners, government, industry scientists and the wider community who have an interest in the management and conservation of Australia’s tropical rivers, especially in the Top End. The symposium will provide an opportunity to promote the management of NT rivers, such as the Daly River and encourage further research into NT rivers that is required for us to understand and manage water in the NT.

The Girraween Landcare Group is providing an environmental service to the community by conducting monthly water monitoring at three sites within Girraween Lagoon for 14 months. This water monitoring project is collecting temporal baseline data to enable the detection of any future impact to water quality in the lagoon. Conducting community water quality monitoring to detect the effects of urban development on the quality of nearby waterbodies is something that has been achieved infrequently in the landscape of the Northern Territory.

Over the next decade, it is expected that residential development of the surrounding landscape will occur, and it is thought that subsequently, the water quality of the lagoon may be affected. It is possible that this indicative monitoring may in fact detect environmental/water quality changes over time. This funding will help meet ongoing costs for at least 12 months, such as replacing the reagents and consumable equipment (eg gloves, sample bottles, filters and syringes) necessary to conduct the water monitoring program.

The TTT Forum is a capacity building exercise bringing together people from remote indigenous communities and providing opportunities to network, learn new skills and showcase successful projects and share good ideas, achievements and problem solving initiatives. Presentations include training and education on a range of issues such as environmental health initiatives, sustainable living, stores nutrition policies litter, recycling, landfill management through workshops, speakers and agency presenters. The Forum facilitates the regional exchange of information and shares good news stories promoting the development of new enterprises.

This project will be focusing on recycling and disposal behaviour in schools. The Re-thinking Waste-in-Schools Challenge will employ an innovative and fun ‘inter-school challenge approach’ to make recycling and litter abatement programs in schools more effective and interesting. Initially it will be trialled through pilots within the Sustainable Schools Program before being rolled out to the wider school community in 2008.

Participating schools will compete to earn points against a list of criteria (i.e. the targeted behaviours). Students will choose the activities they wish to tackle from a weighted list identifying the points available for undertaking a range of activities such as paper recycling/reuse, aluminium can recycling, organics recycling (e.g. sustainable chook pens, compost bins, Bokashi and worm farms), or activities that relate to litter management (e.g. adopt a park/highway/creek, clean-ups at school etc.).

The points will be weighted to promote the more difficult or less attractive behaviours. Pilot Schools will also be required to create fun presentations (e.g. street theatre or song/comedy/dance routine), poems or works of art on this theme. A ‘Sustainability Street’ style gala event will be held at the end of the program to present awards and share presentations. The wider school public will be invited to attend and share the pilot school project outcomes as an inspiration to participate in 2008.

The Re-think Challenge is a targeted community education program focussing on identified hotspots and localities where issues such as littering or high contamination levels and poor participation rates in the kerbside recycling program are of major concern. The ‘Neighbourhood/ Community Re-think Challenge Program’ proposes to employ a community-based social marketing approach to address these issues. This approach involves: identifying barriers to specific behaviours, designing a strategy that utilizes behaviour change tools, piloting the strategy with a small segment of a community, and finally, evaluating the impact of the program once it has been implemented across a community.

A detailed project plan will be drawn up by the Working Group. The Working Group will identify the key behaviours to be targeted (e.g. contamination caused by inappropriate disposal, not choosing to recycle in urban centres and recycling aluminium cans or littering in remote communities) and identify the barriers e.g. lack of incentive, knowledge or limited confidence that kerbside collections are in fact diverted from landfill (in urban centres) or no recycling services available (remote/regional communities). Strategies to address the barriers will be identified (e.g. individuals signing-up to the program, clean up days in an adopted park, public place recycling bins, etc.). One of the major behavioural change tools to be employed will be a competition promoted between the neighbourhoods to obtain points and ‘win’ the Re-think Challenge.

The scoring system will be based on promoting the targeted behaviours. Other tools will include statements of public commitment (e.g. program stickers on recycling bins, posted lists of program supporters etc) and incentives (e.g. random prize draws for individuals recycling correctly, sausage sizzle in park after clean up).

Community building/urban renewal processes will also be fostered to promote ownership and behavioural change. Kerbside recycling performance in the pilot ‘Neighbourhoods’ will be monitored throughout the project and used as one of the motivational tools by tracking in a public display, played off against a competing neighbourhood. In this first year, delivery will be restricted to a number of pilots in hotspot areas on a number of different levels (e.g. as the urban ‘neighbourhood’, regional centre and remote community levels). Pilot locations in Darwin and Palmerston will be identified by the Darwin and Palmerston City Councils, who are currently investigating kerbside contamination levels within each suburb to identify localities and issues to allow more targeted use of educational resources. This study will provide the baseline data for the project. Locations in remote areas and regional centres will be determined by the Community Re-thinking Waste Working Group.

The project will seek to build strong partnerships between existing familiar programs, such as KABC NT’s ‘Territory Tidy Towns’, the ‘Re-thinking Waste-in-Schools Challenge’ and the ‘NT Sustainable Schools Program’. It will also seek to integrate with other initiatives including the PSF/KABC NT’s ‘Pick of the Litter Project’ and other relevant EnvironmeNT Grant projects.

The Territory Tidy Towns Program has a history as a high profile social development program with a focus on environmental management, waste reduction and litter abatement. In 2007, a review of the program was conducted due to ongoing difficulty in attracting adequate funding. The program in 2007 will be adopting the recommendations of the Review and establishing a new more rigorous approach requiring higher levels of performance by participants.

Lajamanu Council will work with the Centre for Appropriate Technology to establish a local container deposit system that will help manage the significant litter issues in the community by providing a cash incentive to community members to return beverage containers to collection points. The aluminium cans and plastic bottles collected would be crushed and baled and then backloaded to resource recovery agents in either Katherine and/or Alice Springs.

Infrastructure: Three types of infrastructure will be established for the scheme: wool bales, long term storage cages and a can/plastic baler.

Wool bales will be supplied free of charge from MT Bins in Katherine. Storage cages and crusher will need to be purchased and freighted to the community. The can crusher designers, Lintec in Darwin, will provide training for the can crusher. Community education: A graphic designer from CAT will work with the local team from Lajamanu to develop locally appropriate community awareness programs. Achieving sustainability will require awareness programs with stakeholders (e.g. resident’s school children), development of signage and development of culturally appropriate messages detailing the scheme. These resources will be available to other communities within the NT who are interested in the scheme, via the CAT website.

Mentoring and training: 2 local Indigenous Council staff members have been identified to undertake leading roles in the development of the scheme with direct supervision from the Housing Manager and mentoring and support from CAT and other stakeholders. One a local ground collection/scheme co-ordinator will collect information for evaluation of the scheme, co-ordinating stakeholders, ensuring agreements with outside stakeholders are maintained (including Pandion Haulage). The other position will focus on developing locally appropriate messages for the community, running community awareness sessions with stakeholder groups (school, etc) and developing methods to understand community willingness in the scheme. This part of the process is particularly important to sustainability of the container scheme and future waste management initiatives in the community and is one of the first initiatives in the NT that has mentored local community members to take the lead on a waste management project.

On-going research and evaluation: The project team is committed to developing a scheme that is locally appropriate, sustainable and achieves on-going reductions in litter content at the community. Three monthly assessments will monitor people’s perception of scheme, willingness to be involved, amount of containers be returned versus sales, administrative load of store, maintenance and effectiveness of infrastructure and overall project evaluation.

LGANT seeks funding assistance to work with the EPA Program, LGH&S and the Re-thinking Waste Advisory Group on a project that will establish a more informative and useful set of Standards to be adopted as a requirement for waste management practices in the smaller category of remote communities. The NT needs to develop standards which are aimed at remote, poorly resourced communities. These standards can take into account limited revenue, poor resources, lower skill levels, and the NT’s geographical and social differences. The Standards would identify a process of incremental improvement through regular community waste audits with Community waste management plans developed based on the issues identified.

The audit process will assess and report useful data on a range of issues such as landfill composition & management practices, litter management services and infrastructure, rubbish removal services and recycling/diversion opportunities. Community waste management plans (updated with each audit) would establish a reporting regime on a range of criteria to help policy development and investment strategies. Such as: litter monitoring, resources used on litter/recycling, no of dead car bodies in communities, materials diverted from landfill/recycled.

An investigation into the feasibility of establishing a local plastic remanufacturing industry in the Territory. Currently, only 2 types of plastic are recycled. This process will allow all household plastics and materials from shopping centres and hospitals, oil drums, plastic agricultural wrap, foam, furniture materials; polystyrene, polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC hose... plastic in all its forms could be diverted from landfill and reused.

The proposed process currently in use overseas, involves granulating the mixed plastics turning it into an agglomerate, then, capitalising on the unique qualities of plastics to change when heated, pumping or pressure filling it into a mould. Material coming from the machine is pliable and easy to mould into any required shape such as outdoor furniture, tables, park benches and decking, electric fence posts, bollards and road furniture, pallets, oyster bed poles, manhole covers & surrounds. These products are not susceptible to white ants, insects, salt, water, barnacles and are ideal in marine, tropical or wet environments. They are ideal underground or in earth where they outlast wood many times over. Products are likely to compete with hardwood, concrete or metal - where they bring the benefits of plastic at a very cost effective price and can be recycled using this process, closing the loop.

A significant initial capital investment is needed to purchase the manufacturing equipment and good data needs to be collected to support an investment strategy. In the long term the process is commercially viable, but in the short term, too marginal to fund privately. The grant would help get the project started.