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)

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:

In Sydney last night, Allan Jones, Chief Development Officer of the London Climate Change Agency, described some of the initiatives which have made London a leader in reducing carbon emissions and dependence on coal and nuclear power stations.

The key to the strategy is the use of cogeneration and trigeneration power plants. These are small local electricity generators which capture the heat which is wasted in conventional power stations to provide heating and, in the case of trigeneration system, cooling, Recently, systems which also capture waste water have been developed. Most co- and tri-generation systems currently run on natural gas but London is increasingly using methane, produced from the city’s waste, to power the systems. Mr Jones believes that half of London’s electricity could be generated from waste.

Co- and tri-generation systems are best suited to supplying power for mixed communities of residential and commercial consumers which have their electricity peak requirements at different times. Restricting distribution to a local community also avoids the huge overheads in supplying power across a national grid and creates a system which is much less vulnerable to natural disasters or terrorist attack.

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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.