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Latrobe Moves To Milestone 4 In Greenhouse AbatementLatrobe City Has Recently Been Awarded ‘Milestone 4’ In The Cities For Climate Protection Program. Latrobe City Has Been A Participant In This International Program Run By The International Council For Local Environmental Initiatives For Some Years. By Latrobe City Council - 24th June 2005 - Back to News The program aims to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of local councils and communities and is broken into five milestones to be achieved. As part of the program, councils are required to set corporate and community greenhouse gas reduction targets and strive to meet these.
Latrobe City’s Chief Executive Officer, Paul Buckley, said corporate actions undertaken by Council to reach Milestone 4 have included introducing programs of paper reuse, recycling and composting in council offices, extensive use of energy savers on copiers, fax machines, printers and computer screens; and conversion to LCD computer screens as part of a standard information technology upgrade.
"Latrobe City set itself a corporate reduction target of 25% or 3,280 tonnes of CO2 equivalent based on its 1998 levels (13,122 tonnes of CO2 equivalent), to be reached by 2010. To achieve Milestone 4, Latrobe needed to demonstrate abatement of 5% of the corporate reduction target which equates to 162 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, and I’m pleased to say this was accomplished," Mr Buckley explained.
"However, this is just the tip of the iceberg in achieving our 2010 reduction targets.
"Recently, an energy audit of six council owned and community used buildings was undertaken. Energy saving recommendations from the audit are now being implemented which will take us further along the path to reducing CO2 equivalent.
"Actions taken include purchasing covers for spas, push button timers on saunas at the leisure centres, improved light switch locations, motion sensors on lights, improved insulation of hot water pipes, fine tuning of air conditioning times, and adjustment of heated swimming pool temperatures," Mr Buckley added.
Latrobe City Mayor, Cr Bruce Lougheed said Latrobe City also had a community reduction target of 20% to be reached by 2010.
"In 1998, the community at large emitted 2,381,568 tonnes CO2 equivalent (not including the power generators). The reduction target for the community is 59,539 tonnes CO2 equivalent by 2010," Cr Lougheed said.
"This may seem an extremely difficult challenge to meet, but we are already making inroads. The introduction of the three-bin recycling and waste collection service in July 2004 has resulted in approximately 9,000 tonnes of green waste being processed into mulch and diverted from landfill. Over 8,000 tonnes of other materials (plastics, cans etc.) have been recycled.
"The diversion of organic waste from landfill had resulted in a 16,500 tonne reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the first year," Cr Lougheed said.
"If council can pat itself on the back for achieving the corporate reductions, I think the community needs to be congratulated for the reductions in CO2 equivalent through better recycling," Cr Lougheed said.
Cr Lougheed said additional ways of achieving reductions were being examined and implemented "In the near future, Latrobe City will be promoting and involved with community programs such as ‘Sustainable Schools’ and ‘Sustainability Street’ which will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the community even further," Cr Lougheed added.
Source: www.gippsland.com Published by: news@gippsland.com
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