Are you ready for this? After 40 years, they’re back. ABBA Voyage: the new journey begins. Remember that crazy wet Sydney Showground live concert, March 3rd, 1977? What’s your favourite ABBA hit? Fernando. Dancing Queen. Take A Chance on Me. The Name of The Game. The Winner Takes It All.
Australia proudly took home Gold from Tokyo 2021. So too, our local Council is acclaimed for environmental prowess. Taking a Bronze in 2019 for its renewable electricity goal by 2030. Awarded Silver in 2021, as proud Partner of the NSW Government Sustainability Advantage Program. Council trumpets that it’s “committed to becoming plastic free”. Sorry, Council’s plastic sports field program spreads 20-million-equivalent plastic bags across our playing fields. The strategy, rendered since 2017, neglects the environment.
On July 27th, 2021, Council voted to replace the old plastic carpet at Cromer Park Field 1 with new plastic. It dictated the recycling of the old into different plastic, but in the Netherlands. There will be no turf Bang-a-Boomerang.
Maritime shipping the old plastic carpet across 22,000kilometres of ocean will generate 4,900 kilograms of CO2 emissions, 110 kgs Nitrogen Oxide, 70 kgs Sulphur Dioxide, and burn 64,000 megajoules of fossil fuel. If Council grew 240 mature trees in 2022, it might just manage to capture the carbon emissions
of this polluting act.
In 2021, shipping ex-Port Botany bound for Rotterdam soared from $2,000 to an historic $7,000 per container. Rolled-up old plastic carpet will fit ten 40ft shipping containers. So, we sought the thoughts of two turf recyclers in the Netherlands. One told us there is “no logic” shipping the old carpet. A “bad solution”, where costs outweigh any perceived recycling benefit. Another said they could accept old carpet from Australia but shipping it “belied environmental sense”.
Council also voted to infill the new replacement plastic turf with natural cork. Importing cork from Europe, burning more fossil fuel shipping to Cromer. Pardon the pun, the cork pokes full of holes – from a human health risk assessment and environmental perspective – the continued use of end-of-life recycled black tyre crumb presently infilling Council’s six other plastic playing fields.
Cork is an experiment, with different bounce to the football. Three times more expensive. Less dense, more prone to floating during heavy rain. Perversely, regular irrigation of cork is required as it ages. Brittle in our hot sunny clime. A manifestly combustible plastic turf de relleno. Incompatibility of chemical and physical properties of UV stabilizers mixed with fire-retardants might put at-risk this entire outdoor plastic structure.
Our Council forthwith must publish a chain-of-custody for the expected lifecycle of this new plastic turf. All materials must be cradle-to-cradle certified or 100% closed-loop recyclable, at no extra cost to ratepayers.
Historians debate whether Napoleon in 1815 willingly lost at Waterloo, to ensure his inclusion in this 1974 Eurovision-winning ABBA hit. Perchance he foresaw two Nordic goddesses fronting it. His Mamma Mia moment! Thereafter biding his final days on remote Saint Helena, deep in the south Atlantic, he had no regrets. Unlike our Council’s plastic strategy. Oh, yeah. It will meet destiny. The history book on the shelf is always repeating. So, when you’re near, can’t you hear, their S.O.S.
Do vote on December 4th, 2021.
1 Comment
Thanks Greg for the info on cork infill.