20 June 2007

Unsustainable noisy petrol - 'gardening' Manly style

There is a lot of circus and warm recommendations about 'sustainabiltiy' in Manly. The council itself is modelling via their actions that polluting petrol-gardening is ok. Putting in 'pansies' and other exotics that require petrol-powered watering is also ok. Apparently in charge of noise (annoys) management, it regularly bestowes a noisy hurricane of petrol-powered equipment 'when the council does the 'nature' strip'. It is hard to believe these machines have 'noise labels' and conform to the prescibed noise level of 80 dB(A). In other places the debris-blowers are already illegal.
Who controls and enforces this health endangering noise?
Who controls private providers when one wakes up on a Saturday in 'Timbertown'?
There is talk of 'tougher restrictions on neighbourhood noise' but are the 'managers of noise pollution' exempt?

When will council show the way and rip up the lawns of suburbia, plant self-sustaining native tufts of grass, that do not need, petrol, water, pesticides or high staff-intensity?
How does council ensure that pesticides on suburban lawns and constant beach turf transplants are not endangering life?
Where is the guarantee to toddlers/people that the lawns/turf are not saturated with poisons?
That their immune system will not be affected by 'mystery diseases'?

In many cities of the world people have taken sustainability seriously, they eliminate their carpets of conformity and put in sustainable plants that do not cost the Earth or inflict noise and toxic pollution onto the environment.
Visitors and tourists would also know that they are not in the Europe of the pansy or the Sth. Africa of exotica, but could see what unique flora Manly has to offer. Additionally it could become a quiet beach-resort and not another interchangable Anywhere-place.
More on lawns and pesticide
Images: Monoculture lawn of anywhere and local native grass tuft

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