Ecologically Sustainable Sydney

Report on the Question of erecting additional garbage destuctors in the city of sydney.

Sir,
The question of the ultimate disposal of house garbage is one which has been receiving a great deal of attention Sydney for several years. In round transit may be stated that three methods of dealing with this class of material are open for consideration.

They are:-
1.barging out to sea
2.Tipping on vacant ground
3. Destruction by fire.

Of these methods, the first one has been recommended from time to time and experimented on occassion. It is a method for the effectual performance of which Sydney is especially well situated. The proximity the City to deep waters of the Pacific Ocean, and the eistence...but household garbage is light and will float back on shore and due to southerly current to beaches outh of the heads now largels used as pleasure and health resorts. impossibility of using barges in heavy weather.

The second mode of garbage disposal referred to is one which is time honoured, not only in sydney and its suburbs, but also in all parts of the civilised world. the simplest and most primitive method of disposing of refuse of all kinds is that of tipping or depositing it on the soil.; and in small and isolated communities where the nature of soil is not unfitteted for its reception owing to the inherent quantities, and the method is well carried out in all its deails, there is no question that this procedure is one that has many good points to recommend it. pollution of the soil is caused either where dwelling may be erected in future or on open ground in the immediate neighbourhood of dwellings. pollution of the ai occurs. Nuisances are complained of and inevitable detioration of the health of residents takes place. There is probably no subject on which sanitary experts are more agreed than that of the undesirability of allowing garbage tips to exist near large centres of population.

One of the chief arguments, if not the only imporatn one in favour of the continued existence of garbage tips is that of economy, but this argument is really a falacious one in as much as if a tip's managed as it ought to be in the intersts ofo the public health, the expenses which must be incurred in its management are very considerable. Tipping garbage en masse is amost objectionalble proceeding. it causes compression of the lower layers, delays the resolution of putrescible materials into their coponent parts, and results in a slow process of decayervants of the council to, which lasts for years.

The length of time which the process of resolution may occupy under these conditions was well shown by some excavations which took place last year in some of the council's old garbage deposits at moore park, which I was fortunate enough to witness. Solid bans of refuse many feet high were cut into. The most recent of these deposits was said by old servants of the council tobe at least 7 years old. on opening it up, most offensive odours were evolved, and the garbage, beyond the facot of compression was found to be very little altered in its general composition. Som which had been buried 10 years was better but still offensiv, while a deposit 15 years old was without offence and appeard to have been converted into humus..the only way....

Another important matter to be considering this connection is the question of carting garbage through miles of thickly populated streets in conveying it to a distant tip. even the improved garbage carts now used by the council are not entirely successful in preventing the emanation of offensive odours from the putrefying garbage which they often contain, not the rpesence of clouds of flies which attend such vehicled. and the comlaints of the nusiance caused by the passage of thes carts on their way to the moor park tip have been frequent enough from the inhabitants of the streets traversed by them.

...

Finally comes under consideration the method of destroying garbage by fire, a method which is not only holding its own in the large cities of the world, but is fast gaining ground and displacing those processes to which I have already referred..........

We have now had time to accumulate some little local evidence in Sydney as to the absence of nuisance from the working of a well managed destructor. The city dstructor [at moore park] itself should perhaps hardly be quoted here as it is further removed from closely populated districts than woudl necessarily be the case with any destructor that could be installed in any other part of the city, but in the Annandale-Leichhardt destructor we have an installaiton placed in the centre of a rather closely populated district, which has been working daily for 8 months, and has during that timedestroyed all the garbage of the two boroughs which it serves. I am in a position to be able to assure the COuncilthat no complaint of any kind has been received by ethe of the two municpal councils of leichhardt and annandale ast any nusiances caused by the destructor. Further I ahve cused careful house-to-house enquireis tobe made at every house wiht a radious of 15 chains of that installation wiht a general result that complaints against the destructor were found to be few in number and vague in nature....At 129 houses the reply was that no nuisance had ever been experience.d In the remaining 39, complains of a more or less vague nature were put forward of occassiounal nusiance during wet weather, or in certain conditions of wind, but with four or five exceptions these complaints were not advanced with bitterness, nor had the subject of complaint been so serious or continued as to result in any case in the preferment of a formal complaint ot the local authority, or to he Board of Health