National Party claim to have “A Greener, Smarter Future” as it sits on their policy platform as “A Greener, Smarter Future” but the citizens are always hearing nothing of transport other than more roads, roads, roads, so where is the greener smarter future policy there?

At least Labour has just released their new policy to regulate environmentally harmful plastic packaging, tyres, E-waste ect’.

“The Government is stepping up action to deal with environmentally harmful products – including plastic packaging, tyres and e-waste – before they become waste.

As part of the wider plan to reduce the amount of rubbish ending up in landfills, Associate Environment Minister, Eugenie Sage, today announced six products to be declared ‘priority products’ for the establishment of regulated product stewardship schemes under the Waste Minimisation Act. The products are:

• Plastic packaging
• Tyres
• Electrical and electronic products (e-waste)
• Agrichemicals and their containers
• Refrigerants
• Farm plastics.

Regulated product stewardship helps put the responsibility for waste and what happens to products at the end of their useful life on manufacturers, importers, retailers and users, rather than on communities, councils, neighbourhoods and nature,”

CEAC supports this initiative strongly; “The Government is stepping up action to deal with environmentally harmful products”

CEAC has previously highlighted the damage caused with overuse of tyres, especially those used on freight trucks as their emissions of tyre dust “micro-plastic pollution” is so high compared to small vehicles as one truck will cause 100 times more than a car for instance due to the laden weight on the multiple tyres each truck uses and the size of the tyres.

The road transport industry needs to finally acknowledge that their tyre dust emissions are a serious environmental issue as they are possibly unaware that each truck emits such high levels of emissions of harmful tyre dust into our environment already, as they continually fight to expand truck transport activities around NZ without regard for the damage they are causing.

Since Government’s recent data from (MBIE) of emissions inventory from road freight transport is not reducing but increasing, even their MBIE study ignores the tyre dust emissions as another part of their emissions inventory.

CEAC now advocate for rail with steel wheels especially if electric motivated as the best way to reduce our freight transport emissions and benefiting from reducing pollution ‘runoff’ from our roads into our waterways, lakes rives streams, aquifers, drinking water and poisoning us. So what’s not to like here as this is real greener smarter future, isn’t it?

CEAC has long been advocating to clean up our waterways being daily polluted by other environmental contaminants not currently recognised, such as “road runoff” of vehicle emissions and toxic tyre dust pollution entering our steams alongside our highways and city roads.

National Party has not even mentioned this looming issue yet.

CEAC response: Since Government’s recent data from (MBIE) of emissions inventory from road freight transport is not reducing but increasing, we now advocate for rail with steel wheels especially if electric motivated as the best way to reduce our freight transport emissions and benefiting from reducing pollution ‘runoff’ from our roads into our waterways, lakes rives streams, aquifers, drinking water and poisoning us. So what’s not to like here as this is real greener smarter future, isn’t it?

CEAC has long been advocating to clean up our waterways being daily polluted by other environmental contaminants not currently recognised, such as “road runoff” of vehicle emissions and toxic tyre dust pollution entering our steams alongside our highways and city roads.

National Party has not even mentioned this looming issue yet.

This has been documented in global scientific documents all over the world and was included in a 104 page report from the Ministry of Transport from as long back as 2002, and the report is entitled ‘Emissions factors for contaminants released from motor vehicles in NZ’.

here.

“In New Zealand, emissions of key constituents from motor vehicles to air can be assessed using the Vehicle Fleet Emission Model. The user output from a run of this model is currently provided in the form of the user model NZ-TER (refer MoT 1998, MoT 2000, MonCrieff & Irving 2001).”

Also found in this UK scientific report.

These documents are evidence of the ‘elephant in the room’, as on pages you can see the tyre dust deposits left on a road is washed down our road drains and into our waterways and drinking water and causes cancer to humans and animals alike.

CEAC has always strongly said that rail with steel wheels especially if electric motivated is the best way to reduce our freight transport emissions, finding ways to stop road runoff pollution washing off our roads into our waterways and entering our drinking water then poisoning us.

Takeout; This is just another ‘environmental impact issue’ that must be taken regard of in future planning of levy’s charged back to producers of tyres, suppliers and users as ‘we are all in this together’ to fight climate change and all emissions that will affect our future health wellbeing and the future of all our families, this is the real Greener, Smarter Future to use rail with steel wheels especially if electric motivated, National Party.

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