Bodden Town landfill not new choice

cayCompass
Patrick Brendel | patrick.brendel@cfp.ky

A group of citizens organised in opposition to the proposed Bodden Town district landfill want to know why their area was picked for the new solid waste facility. Specifically, the Dart Group-owned site is between Bodden Town and Breakers, near two quarries and the Midland Acres subdivision.

“How was Midland Acres chosen as the site for a new dump, and where is the assessment of the consequences of the dump on the people of our district?” said Vincent Frederick, spokesman for the Coalition to Keep Bodden Town Dump Free.

The coalition also questions what happened to the waste-to-energy proposal to clean up the George Town Landfill while creating electricity. Bodden Town MLA Mark Scotland said previous strategies to address the landfill were simply not affordable.

“The dump is the most serious environmental issue facing our country today. Solutions have eluded successive governments primarily because of the cost,” he said.

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The New Story of Stuff: Can We Consume Less?

Yale Environment 360

November 28, 2011

Will rich societies start consuming less? Could wealth go green? Might parsimony become the new luxury? Heresy, surely, you would say. But it might just be possible.

Take Britain. A new study finds that the country that invented the industrial revolution two centuries ago reached “peak stuff” between 2001 and 2003. In the past decade, Britain has been consuming less water, building materials, paper, food (especially meat), cars, textiles, fertilizers and much else. Travel is down; so is energy production. The country produces less waste, too.

This analysis is not the product of data juggling by a free-market think tank. The author of the study is Chris Goodall, a fully-paid-up environmental activist and parliamentary candidate for Britain’s Green Party, but also a stat guzzler who once worked for McKinsey & Company. His books include How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.

The stats hold true even when you allow for the ecological footprint from the manufacture of imported goods. And, while the decline in resource use in Britain has accelerated since the economic crisis in 2008, the trend started long before the banking crisis. There was a decline in overall materials use of 4 percent between 2000 and 2007. So it cannot be attributed entirely to recession, and can be expected to survive economic recovery. Read the whole story here.

DoE celebrates gold medal beer

Caymanian Compass

December 21, 2011

The Cayman Islands Brewery’s latest addition to their lineup, White Tip Lager, recently was crowned the best lager at the Caribbean Rum and Beer Festival in Barbados.  

This is the second year running that the brewery takes the crown, as CayLight won the title in 2010. This year, it had to settle for second place behind White Tip. Ironshore Bock also took silver in the category for strong beers.

“With three international judges blind tasting 30 beers, that is quite impressive for us,” said James Mansfield of Cayman Islands Brewery. “Next time that we go to the brewers’ convention it will be interesting to see what they think of us now, as we are still only 4 1/2 years old, compared to other breweries like Banks Barbados, which is 45 years old.”

A unique aspect of White Tip Lager is that a percentage of the sales goes to the Department of Environment’s shark conservation programmes.

 

“The actual link-up with the Department of Environment was unique, and we will be cutting the first cheque in January,” Mr. Mansfield said. Read the whole story here.