Cyclists travelling to one of Central Australia’s popular tourist spots will now be pedalling on a path made from recycled printer cartridges.

The Northern Territory Government has spent $130,000 upgrading the Simpsons Gap bike path.

(Photo of Northern Territory Environment Minister, Karl Hampton, on the new path via ABC)

CSIRO scientists have launched an energy-saving handbook in which they say that householders can reduce their home and car energy use by as much as 50 per cent by making changes to daily activities.

The CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook is a practical guide to saving energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions around the home.

It is written by CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship’s Dr Peter Osman, Dr John Wright and Peta Ashworth..

The handbook offers information and advice on how to measure and reduce an individual’s carbon footprint in all aspects of modern living, including:

• simple energy-saving tricks around the house
• maximising a home’s potential for easy heating and cooling
• ways to save on shopping and transport
• making the most of gardens and
• tips for building and renovating homes.

Officials in Delhi have increased the penalty for the use, storage or sale of plastic bags to a maximum of five years jail.

The measure was introduced after a law banning all but the thinnest plastic bags was virtually ignored.

Under the new law, shopkeepers or customers using plastic bags can be fined 100,000 rupees ($3,000) or imprisoned for five years. Officials say that the law will be enforced lightly at first to give people time to adapt but that the penalty will ultimately be up to the courts.

The first country to ban plastic bags was Bangladesh which imposed its ban in 2002. In the same year, Ireland imposed a tax on plastic bags which has reduced consumption by 95%. Other countries, like Rwanda and Bhutan, have also managed to ban plastic bags but Australia has been unable to do so – despite statements in 2007 and early 2008 by the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, that phasing them out from the end of 2008 was "absolutely critical".

This John Clake Brian Dawe video sketch might explain the problem:

The CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship and the Smart Water Fund have announced that they have developed a practical, robust, sustainable method for testing whether greywater treatment technologies meet Australian standards.

Currently, there is no standard national testing method; states and territories each have their own legislation for greywater collection, treatment and use.

CSIRO Land and Water scientist, Melissa Toifl, says the protocol could be used to establish a national greywater treatment testing regime. “With this protocol we are anticipating a national approach in the way greywater treatment technologies are tested and regulated,” Ms Toifl says. “This would simplify the process for manufacturers with the aim of increasing consumer adoption rates of greywater technologies.”

Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, has opened Australia’s first automated e-waste recycling plant at Villawood, Sydney.

Australians produce and estimated 140,000 tonnes of e-waste, including computers, TVs and mobile phones, each year. The new plant is capable of recycling 20,000 tonnes of that waste per annum.

Currently Australians recycle only about 4% of their e-waste compared to 80% in Europe and some parts of America.

The first large-scale underground carbon storage facility in the Southern Hemisphere is being launched today by the Federal resources and Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson.

The project, near Warnambool in Southern Victoria will capture and compress 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into liquid form and inject it two kilometres underground in a depleted natural gas reservoir.

The plant will be operated by the CO2 Cooperative Research Centre. The Centre’s Chief Executive, Peter Cook, said "The project has a very important role in demonstrating the technical and environmental feasibility of geosequestration to Australia and the world and preparing the way for its widespread application." Dr Cook said that the current plant, although the fifth largest in the world, would always be a research facility and not used for very large-scale storage. Scientists from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada are working on the project.

Dr Cook said that he believed that large-scale underground storage of carbon dioxide would be available for widespread use within ten years. It would always be too expensive to capture the waste from older power stations but "you might do it with a 20-year-old plant", he said.

Fosters Tasmanian brewery, Cascade, has launched "Cascade Green" – a 100% carbon offset beer. Cascade claims that all aspects of the production and consumption of the beer are being offset.

The beer is supplied in the lightest weight, highest recycled content glass bottles available in Australia; the carton is made from 100% recycled cardboard and printed with biodegradable vegetable inks. After reducing the carbon footprint as much as possible, the remainder has been offset by purchasing certified carbon offsets from the Hobart Landfill Flare Facility.

The beer, which is also low carbohydrate, is classified as a "premium" beer and will sell for $17.99 for a six-pack.

Rival brewer, Lion Nathan’s, Barefoot Raider beer is also certified as carbon-neutral.

The CSIRO and Monash University have developed a chemical process that converts cheap, green waste into stable crude oil.

"We’ve been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world", said Dr Steven Loffler of CSIRO Forest Biosciences. The process makes it practical to produce the bio-crude from low-value waste, such as forest thinnings, crop residue and waste paper on site, rather than transport bulky waste to a central processing plant. The bio-crude can then taken to a refinery for further processing to produce high-value chemicals and bio-fuels.

The products being converted are renewable, greenhouse-gas neutral and are waste products and not food crops.