The Our Fresh Water 2017 report released today confirms the direction of the Government’s reforms for improving the management of fresh water, Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith says.

“This is the first comprehensive and independent report on the state of New Zealand’s fresh water and arises from the Government’s Environmental Reporting Act that came into effect last year. The issues identified in respect of nutrients, E. coli, sediment and fresh water ecology are not new and are being addressed as part of the Government’s fresh water improvement programme. The value of the report is in providing a robust, independent baseline so future progress can be independently verified every three years.

“The report highlights that New Zealand’s fresh water challenges vary significantly across the country and that the problems have arisen due to agricultural and urban development over many decades. The overall picture is that pollution from nitrates is increasing, from phosphates is decreasing, from E. coli is stable and that water clarity had been deteriorating but has improved over the past decade.

“It confirms New Zealand’s most significant fresh water quality challenge is diffuse nitrate pollution. The problem is worst in urban environments but the negative effects impact on a greater number of rivers and lakes in rural, pastoral environments. The first caps on nitrates were set in 2011 in Taupo and now 18 catchments have limits, as the Government’s National Policy Statement on Fresh Water is implemented. This progress will need to continue if these long-term negative trends on nitrates are to be reversed.

“This report is also a strong endorsement of the Government’s direction in improving the swimmability of our rivers and lakes. It confirms the validity of the recently announced grading system, levels of risks of the swimmability categories and that the current level of swimmability of our rivers at 65-70 per cent. The Government’s plan to improve 1000km of river and lake margins per year to achieve 90 per cent by 2040 is ambitious but achievable, with initiatives like national regulations excluding stock from waterways.

“The Government’s programme of work includes tighter regulation of nutrients, new provisions for protecting water ecology and the development of good management practice for farmers and other water users, as well as a record $450 million investment in fresh water quality initiatives. Our programme is about openly reporting the problems and a practical plan of initiatives which will improve water management.

“This report gives improved information but not a complete picture of New Zealand’s water management. Our new national regulations on water metering that took full effect last 1 November will ensure the next report provides far more comprehensive information on water use. The other area where more data is required is in respect of sediments. Fresh water is one of New Zealand’s most valuable resources, and this three-yearly independent stocktake will become a critical reporting document for ensuring positive progress.”

|  A Beehive release  ||  April 27,  2017   |||

In developed countries, it's easy for most people to not give garbage disposal much thought: it's hauled to the curb, and a truck carries it away out of sight and out of mind. But isolated communities often lack that infrastructure, meaning it's harder to either truck out the trash or process it on-site. The Trashpresso is designed to lighten the load a little, as a semi-portable, solar-powered plant that turns trash into tiles.

The system was created by Miniwiz, the design company behind other creative recycling initiatives like Polli-Bricks, made from discarded plastic, and Nike's concept store in Shanghai, China, which is built entirely out of materials derived from bottles, cans and DVDs.

This latest venture is what Miniwiz calls a "mobile up-cycling plant." The Trashpresso fits inside a 40-ft (12-m) container that can be trucked around to remote locations that need some cleaning up. Once unpacked on-site, the system can wash, shred, melt and mold plastic and fabric waste into tiles, which Miniwiz says are suitable for indoor and outdoor flooring, or further refinement. The equivalent of five plastic bottles goes into each tile, and the Trashpresso can produce about 108 sq ft (10 m2) of them every 40 minutes.

To be deployed far from the grid, the Trashpresso needs to be self-sufficient, and to that end the system runs entirely on solar power. Even the water that it uses to wash the garbage is recycled back through the system, in an effort to reduce its footprint.

"Until now, industrial grade recycling was limited to plants," says Arthur Huang, co-founder and CEO of Miniwiz. "The Trashpresso overcomes the distance and energy barriers by showing that recycling is possible everywhere. Not only does it serve to transform trash on-site, it also serves as an educational tool in isolated communities."

The Trashpresso's first gig will be to clean up the glacier region of NianBao Yuze, which sits on the Tibetan Plateau and feeds into the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers. Miniwiz says that the area is seeing increased tourism and, as a result, increased litter. The company will deploy the system in July to show off its capabilities.

|  A Miniwiz release  ||  April 24, 2017   |||

Graffiti littering never ceases to be a problem with managers of buildings and public spaces constantly on the look-out for cost effective solutions.  Solar Gard who are specialists in this field  offer a variety of graffiti protection solutions to suit a wide range of applications:

GraffitigardActs As a Sacrificial BarrierGraffitigard protective film is a durable, optically clear and removable product that acts as a sacrificial barrier between vandals and the surfaces they deface. It is easily applied to interior and exterior glass windows and mirrors, as well as other non-porous surfaces like stainless steel and marble.Protects from: paint, key scratches, marking and even acid-etching.Download Graffitigard flyer here

GraffitiTidyProtects Surfaces, Allowing Speedy and Efficient Clean-UpGraffitiTidy is a durable, clear film with a non-stick outer surface suitable for applying to smooth surfaces to protect against graffiti damage from marker pen and spray paint. Once pen and paint graffiti littering has been applied, clean-up is where GraffitiTidy saves valuable time, expense and effort with easy graffiti removal.Download GraffitiTidy flyer here

Metal ShieldA metal-finish film renewing defaced metal surfacesMetal Shield is a grain-finish stainless-steel look film which provides a perfect 'veneer' to renew damaged stainless steel surfaces - or to give other flat surfaces a sleek stainless steel look. No need to repair prior scratched surfaces, Metal Shield can be installed over scratches bringing the surface back to as-new.

Mirror ShieldA mirror-finish film renewing defaced mirror surfacesMirror Shield is a reflective full mirror film which can effectively renew defaced mirrored surfaces - or upgrade other flat surfaces to have a mirror finish.No need to repair prior scratched mirrors, Mirror Shield can be installed over scratched glass to bring the surface back to as-new.Download Metal and Mirror Shield flyer here

For more information please contact ross EathorneThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Ph: 09 441 0040

The Prime Minister's chief scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman, has highlighted harsh realities about the state of New Zealand's fresh water in a new report released today.

The report urges politicians to address freshwater issues, which he says are clearly linked to intensive farming and urbanisation.

It found clear evidence the freshwater estate was under pressure in terms of both water quality and quantity. There was a link between farming and declining water quality in pastoral areas, and contamination of urban waterways by expanding cities.

Professor Sir Peter Gluckman says farming intensification has contributed to water quality issues.

You can read the full report here  |  April 12, 2017   |||

/INS. Walki has developed a new fibre-based soil mulching solution that is completely biodegradable. This organic mulch type, which is used for weed control and to optimise soil conditions and crop yield, is the first of its kind on the market.

Walki, a leading global producer of technical laminates and protective packaging materials, has developed the first-ever organic mulching solution that is based on natural biodegradable fibres instead of plastic. Mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of an area of soil. It is designed to conserve moisture, improve the fertility and health of the soil and control weed growth. Soil mulching also reduces the need for pesticides, fertilisers and irrigation.

Traditionally, soil mulching materials have been made from plastic, and, most typically, from polyethylene film. While effective, plastic mulch is not biodegradable and eventually becomes waste material that has to be removed from the field and dumped or recycled at a high cost.

It is estimated that more than a million tonnes of plastic films are used for mulching every year around the world. In addition to having to be collected from the fields, the mulch often leaves behind plastic residues, which pollute the soil and reduce its future growth potential. Yields from polluted soil are typically up to 20 per cent lower than those from non-polluted soil.

“Walki’s Agripap solution is the only organic mulch type on the market that is made from paper instead of plastic. It is entirely biodegradable, does not contribute to plastic pollution and, instead, simply dissolves into the soil. It also reduces the need for the chemicals used to control weed growth,” says Walki’s Vice President Technical Products, Sales & Marketing, Arno Wolff.

Walki®Agripap is made from kraft paper that is coated with a biodegradable coating layer, which slows down the degradation of the paper. Without the coating, the paper would degrade in the soil within a few weeks.

Walki’s new organic mulching solution has been the subject of extensive field-testing in Finland. The tests, which were carried out in 2016 by independent research institute Luke Piikkiö, compared the performance of different biodegradable mulches for growing iceberg lettuce and seedling onions. The tests demonstrated that Walki’s Agripap was easy to lay on the fields and delivered excellent weed control. The results in terms of yield and durability were also good.

“Having seen the kind of environmental impact that plastic film can have on the soil, Walki has understood that there is a need for a more sustainable mulching solution. Walki®Agripap is the perfect alternative for the farmers who care about our environment,” says Peter Martin, Technical Service & Development Director, Industrial Packaging.

Following the successful testing and approval of Agripap in Finland and Sweden, the next step will be to complete testing in Europe’s main mulching markets: Spain, France and Italy. Farmers and equipment manufacturers wishing to participate in testing Walki’s new organic mulching solution are encouraged to get in touch with Arno Wolff.

|  An NS release  ||   April 06, 2017   |||

Water may cover the majority of the planet's surface, but thanks to a huge helping of salt, it's hard to tap into as a source of drinking water. Once again, graphene could come to the rescue. Researchers at the University of Manchester have developed a graphene-oxide membrane with a scalable, uniform pore size that can filter out even the smallest salts, without affecting the flow of water too much.

Desalination plants already use a variety of techniques to produce safe drinking water, including shocking the salt and water into separating, using salt-attracting membranes, or harnessing the power of ocean waves to purify water and pump it back to shore. Graphene has already lent a hand before, too, acting like a big sponge that sits on the water's surface, drawing water up through it and cleaning it in the process.

The wonder material has also been put to work as a water filtering membrane that performed well at removing some particles, organic molecules and salts, but according to the Manchester researchers, it couldn't catch the smallest common salt ions. That's thanks to the fact that these membranes tend to swell up when submerged in water, which messes with the spacing between the graphene-oxide layers and lets the salt molecules slip through with the water.

The Manchester researchers claim they've found a way to limit how much the membranes swell in water, by physically confining the material. That allows them to precisely tune the size of the pores, and keep out the unwanted salts, particles and molecules by simply making them smaller than the diameter of the common salt ions. The team reports that 97 percent of sodium chloride ions are rejected by the membrane, while still allowing water to flow through fairly freely.

Scalability is one of the big factors in how viable the method is, and the researchers believe that their graphene-oxide membrane could comfortably scale both up and down. Upwards, and the method could help improve the efficiency of desalination plants. Scaling down, the filters themselves could be used as inexpensive water purifiers for developing countries with limited access to clean water or large-scale desalination plants.

"Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology," says Professor Rahul Nair, co-author of the study. "This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sieve sizes."

Longer term, the team points out that the basic idea of tuning the pore sizes to filter out specific ions could be applied to different membranes, for different purposes.

"The developed membranes are not only useful for desalination, but the atomic scale tunability of the pore size also opens new opportunity to fabricate membranes with on-demand filtration capable of filtering out ions according to their sizes," says Jijo Abraham, co-lead author of the study.

|  The research was published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. \  April 5, 2017   |||

The New Zealand distributor of Solar Gard windowfilm  is pleased to announce that Solar Gard is now a member of the New Zealand Green Building Council

Globally Solar Gard Window Film and its parent company Saint-Gobain manufacture products that are friendly to the environment and have a high level of sustainability.

In 2014, Solar Gard achieved an EPD (Environmental Product Declaration) certification from UL Environment, encompassing 41 architectural window film products. The EPD is based on a life cycle analysis of the cradle-to-grave impacts of Solar Gard’s products and fulfils the requirements of an ISO-compliant product category rule.

“The decision to become a member of the NZGBC builds on these global strategies and is a logical move in regard to the NZ market. It gives us the opportunity to put the various products and benefits in front of decision makers in a way that gives them confidence that Solar Gard window film can be a solution to a problem for them while also making them aware of the environmental benefits that the product brings” says Mr Ross Eathorne Director of Specialty Window Films, the New Zealand distributor of Solar Gard window films.

Further information can be obtained from the links below and by contacting Eathorne.

http://www.solargard.com/au/energy-efficiency-and-sustainability/

https://www.nzgbc.org.nz/

|  A Solar Gard release  ||  March 31, 2017   |||

The Government has welcomed today’s release of the OECD 2017 Environment Performance Review, saying it highlights New Zealand’s green credentials and the strong progress we have made over the past decade, as well as the challenges we need to address, Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith says.

“This report highlights that New Zealand fares well in terms on environmental quality of life. We have good air quality, an exceptionally high proportion of renewable electricity, easy access to pristine wilderness and an advanced and comprehensive natural resource management system,” Dr Smith says.

“This report shows how far we have come over the past decade. We introduced environmental pricing on waste in 2009 and on greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. We have introduced new national policy statements in areas of freshwater management, urban development and coastal management, as well as national environment standards on air quality. We have also made important institutional changes with the creation of the Environmental Protection Authority, new laws regulating activities in New Zealand’s huge EEZ and the new Environment Reporting Act 2015.

“We also concur with the OECD assessment of New Zealand’s future environmental challenges of climate change, freshwater management, biodiversity, reducing the complexity of urban planning and transport funding reform. This report reinforces the importance of the significant work programmes the Government has under way in each of these areas.

“This environmental report card will help us sharpen our future direction and environmental aspirations, as well as learn from the experiences of other countries. I thank the OECD reviewers and the examining countries of Australia and the UK for their contribution to this thoughtful report.”

|  A Beehive release  |  March 21, 2017  ||

The first comprehensive OECD report on New Zealand’s environment in a decade calls for action on cows’ greenhouse gases and water pollution, better public transport and warmer housing, including cosier new-builds. It lands on the same day as another report outlining ways to cut emissions – by reducing cow numbers, reports Eloise Gibson.

It’s all about cows, although our cars and cities could also use a tidy-up, the OECD has concluded.

In their first comprehensive report on New Zealand’s environment in a decade, the OECD’s environmental review team called for agriculture to be brought into the Emissions Trading Scheme and said the Government needed a plan for meeting its greenhouse gas targets, while still earning more from exports.

Conveniently, the same day, London-based consultancy Vivid Economics published a plan commissioned by a cross-party group of MPs outlining how New Zealand could do its part to keep global warming under a 2°C increase.

Again, it was all about the cows. Even with ambitious improvements in renewable electricity generation and other sectors, Vivid concluded New Zealand will need to cut livestock numbers and plant more trees to be carbon neutral by the end of the century and meet the goals of the Paris climate accord. Cow herds would need to shrink even assuming impressive leaps in science and technology, like the fruition of Kiwi scientists’ efforts to design a vaccine making cows burp less greenhouse gas.

Both reports raise questions about how the Government’s goal of increasing exports can be reached without huge environmental costs, unless we also change how, and what, we farm.

And both reports question how New Zealand will meet its environmental goals if it keeps intensifying dairying.

“New Zealand’s growth model, largely based on exporting primary products, has started to show its environmental limits, with increased greenhouse gas emissions, diffuse freshwater pollution and threats to biodiversity. A long-term vision for the transition towards a low-carbon, greener economy is necessary,” says the OECD report.

“There are likely trade-offs between continued reliance on exporting primary products and environmental and climate change mitigation goals. New Zealand should build on its well-developed knowledge and innovation system for exporting higher value export products and decouple growth from natural resource use,” it adds.

Cars and cities feature, too. The OECD report includes advice for building more liveable homes and cities, less-polluting transport and cleaner waterways. Ramping up public transport investment instead of pouring money into roads, levelling taxes favouring diesel over petrol vehicles, doing more to encourage electric cars and better housing insulation are all on the “please do” list. And it’s not just mouldy old villas that are highlighted in the housing efficiency area. Even new houses are not being built to as high an energy-efficiency standard as they are in many other countries, meaning they may one day need retrofitting, says the report.

When it comes to cars: “Freight and people travel mostly by road; the car ownership rate is the highest in the OECD; and the fleet is relatively old and inefficient,” is its summary of New Zealand’s transport system.

The review team prefaces its comments by recognising New Zealand gets a lot of things right. We have a green reputation, our cities have plenty of green space, we are good global citizens and people have good access to clean air and pristine wilderness, it says.

The good, the bad and the going-to-get-worse

Cows feature heavily in two of the most critical parts of the OECD report – greenhouse gas emissions and waterways. On water quality, the review team notes some good progress by the government in bringing in a national policy on freshwater, and efforts by farmers and rule-makers to fence waterways and clean up Lake Taupo. But it says regional councils are implementing the national water policy slowly and patchily, saying they need more help from the government if they are going to clean up freshwater, faster.

Depressingly, the report points out there might a significant lag in the water-dirtying system, meaning pollution that has already left farms during the dairy boom is yet to reach waterways – and even with the best clean-up effort, water quality may get worse for a while.

Urban storm-water is a problem too, with the review labelling city runoff to waterways as a growing public health concern

Cows and other farm animals also cropped up as a major obstacle to meeting greenhouse gas targets. Leaving farming out of the Emissions Trading Scheme was listed as one of the main reasons why the ETS hasn’t been effective, along with a flood of cheap international credits and other measures that have kept the price of carbon too low to spur people to action.

The review recommended several ways to sharpen the ETS’ teeth, including bringing in animal burps, livestock manure and emissions from nitrogen fertiliser sooner rather than later.

“Given the significance of agricultural biological emissions, continuing to shield them from mitigation obligations would make meeting these objectives harder, place a disproportionate burden on other sectors and slow the pace of adjustment in the agriculture sector,” the report says.

Tidy timing

Another report, also out today, by London-based climate and economic consultants Vivid Economics, laid out some options for New Zealand to reach carbon neutrality in the second half of the century, all of them requiring shifts away from farming cows.

The report was commissioned by a cross-party group of MPs called GLOBE-NZ, a chapter of GLOBE-International, a global group of parliamentarians who are working on climate and environmental issues. The New Zealand chapter was formed a year and a half ago and includes MPs from every party, led by Green MP Kennedy Graham. It paid for the report using funding from charitable donors (including the Morgan Foundation), the British and U.S embassies and companies including Vector, Mercury Energy and Z Energy.

The Vivid report came up with various scenarios for New Zealand to become carbon neutral before 2100 and do its part to meet the Paris climate goal of keeping warming to a rise of 2°C, or, ideally, lower. It concludes we can be carbon neutral this century, but not without replacing some of our cows with trees.

First the authors look at a technologically optimistic scenario, where efforts to design fixes for farm and household greenhouse gases come to fruition by 2050. Such fixes would include New Zealand’s bid to design a vaccine to cut methane belching by sheep and cows, selective breeding of more climate-friendly animals and precision agriculture to curb nitrogen waste. Electric heating and use of electric vehicles for freight would also need to make a major leap. We would still need to have less livestock, including cows - about 20–35 per cent fewer animals than today – and more forestry, but there would be room for a diverse range of land uses, including horticulture and a substantial dairy industry.

If, on the other hand, the hoped-for techno-fixes do not pan out so impressively, New Zealand would need to plant 1.6 million hectares of plantation forests to reach carbon neutrality. Again, we would need to cut the dairy herd, though not as drastically, and sheep and beef cow numbers would also need to shrink. And we would still need technological breakthroughs, for example in farming and freight transport, albeit not as radical as in the first scenario. In a third scenario, we keep all our cows, expand forestry only a little bit and ramp up reliance on electric vehicles, renewable energy and other climate-friendly strategies. But this would see us achieve carbon neutrality well after 2100.

All of the paths involved moving towards 100 percent renewable electricity, with more electric vehicles, and shifting the economy to lower-emissions industries such as forestry and crops.

An important factor is what other countries do. As the report acknowledges, there is no point moving away from intensive dairying and meat production for climate reasons if people around the world do not change their diets towards less climate-intensive foods. If demand for milk and meat continues to soar, any drop-off in New Zealand’s production might be filled with products from more-polluting countries. The authors stress the report was designed to explore ideas and options – not dictate what New Zealand should do, regardless of other considerations.

"Distinct position"

Farming of all animals, but mainly cows, currently makes up about half New Zealand’s greenhouse emissions. Unlike other developed countries New Zealand doesn’t have the comparatively straightforward option of reforming its electricity generation to radically cut emissions, because most of our power is already renewable.

So far the major gains in farms’ greenhouse efficiency – here and globally - have come from raising productivity, thus shrinking the CO2 hoof-print per kilo of food produced. But raising the productivity and intensity of farming has placed added pressure on the environment, as the Vivid Economics and OECD reports highlight.

The Vivid authors say New Zealand is in a “distinctive” position among developed countries because of its high animal emissions. But they also say we are lucky not to have to contend with an entrenched reliance on coal power, like some countries.

|  A Newsroom release by Eloise Gibson is Newsroom's environment and science editor. She's written for the New Zealand Herald, Stuff.co.nz, The Listener, and BBC Future.com. Twitter: @eloise_gibson.  \  March 21, 2017  ||

Kids in river4Local Government New Zealand has launched a new piece of work to create a comprehensive framework that brings freshwater issues and water infrastructure into a coherent policy.

Local government is at the heart of water issues in New Zealand, from the provision of drinking water and storm and waste water services to implementing standards for freshwater quality.

LGNZ President Lawrence Yule says “Water 2050” will develop a framework for water that coherently integrates freshwater quality and quantity, standards, rights and allocation, land use, three waters infrastructure, cost and affordability, and funding while recognising that the allocation of iwi rights and interests in freshwater is a live issue for the Crown.

“From the perspective of local government there has been little connected discussion of how quality standards like those announced by the Government recently connect to infrastructure investment and, perhaps most importantly for communities, affordability,” Mr Yule says.

“Water infrastructure is owned by communities and is fiendishly expensive to construct or upgrade – the cost of upgrading New Zealand’s current water infrastructure will be in the billions. The quality of this infrastructure has a direct impact on the quality of our streams, lakes and rivers.

“So we need to ensure that when we set goals for how clean we want our freshwater resources to be, that we are also talking about the cost to our communities of doing this, the economic trade-offs that might need to be made, and how we pay for it. This is something that has been missing from the discussion so far.

“To achieve affordable and sustainable results we need to think about water in a holistic way and this will be the aim of Water 2050,” Mr Yule says.

The first major step in Water 2050 will be a Freshwater Symposium to be held in Wellington at the end of May.

The two day symposium will look at the strategic issues for freshwater management in New Zealand with a particular focus on water quality, quantity and funding and how we get the right outcomes for communities.

The symposium will include a key note speech from Austin-based David Maidment, a specialist in environment and water resources engineering from the Center for Research in Water Resources, at the University of Texas.

“This symposium will seek to address many of the major issues around freshwater for New Zealand, local government and its communities,” Mr Yule says.

“We need to start having a better quality conversation about water and we hope this event will lead to a broader dialogue about what we want for our water and how we get there.”

|  ALGNZ release  |  March 14, 2017  ||