Poll: If we want to reduce speeding, what do you think actually changes driver behaviour? 🛻🚨🚓

The Team from Neighbourly.co.nz

In the Post's article on speeding penalties, the question is asked whether speeding fines are truly about road safety, or are they just a way to boost revenue for the Crown?

What do you think? Should speeding motorists receive speeding fines or demerit points?

If we want to reduce speeding, what do you think actually changes driver behaviour? 🛻🚨🚓

• The sting of a fine (Money talks!)
• The threat of demerit points (Nobody wants to lose their license!)

Vote View Results

• 37.5% The sting of a fine (Money talks!)
  37.5% Complete
• 62.5% The threat of demerit points (Nobody wants to lose their license!)
  62.5% Complete

667 votes

SLASH BESIDE THE TRACK UP TO TRIG

Paul from Levin

I question the wisdom and the morality of an industry which creates so much waste, waste which is also a cause of widespread and devastating damage. So, I searched the internet for potential uses of slash. It was easy to find.
I recommend a visit to nzbioforestry.co.nz. I quote from the website:

OUR SOLUTION:

NZ Bio Forestry proposes to develop a sustainable renewable forestry model that increases the economic value of the NZ- Aotearoa forestry sector, simply by integrating bio-technologies augmenting the forestry, wood manufacturing, and petrochemistry industries into one model.
Specifically, our strategy is to utilise the whole tree and convert the tree’s sugars into bioenergy, biomaterials, and biochemicals. This means using slash, off cuts, pruning, and wood waste to produce biofuel via bio pellets and biochemicals. It means optimising logs through the whole process….logging, manufacturing freighting, and refining process to serve the many Asia-Pacific markets with high-value products….not just exporting raw logs to one or two large dominant markets! (End of quote)

NZ Bio Forestry then contrasts the financial return from the present exports of raw logs with the potential return from utilising the WHOLE TREE.

In US dollars, the return from exporting logs is between $50 - $140 per log.

Using the whole tree including the slash and other waste for wood processing would return $200 - $800 per tree, and,

Using the bio-refinery process to convert the wood waste into fossil-free biochemicals would return $2,500 - $11,200 per tree.

I can’t help but conclude that our current focus on exporting logs is a pitiful failure of industry and government policy compared with the potential benefits of processing THE WHOLE TREE. And to complete the argument, this not just theory. In Scandinavia, SCA, which owns Europe’s largest private forest with 2.7 million hectares, has built a well-invested value chain that maximises the value of each individual tree and all of the forestry’s resources.

A SUMMARY OF POTENTIAL ADDITIONAL PRODUCTS:

Wood Pellets and Chips: Slash can be collected, dried, and processed into hog fuel or wood pellets for use in industrial boilers, as a replacement for coal, to generate heat and electricity.

Biofuel Production: Research is underway to convert forest residues into marine biofuel to help decarbonize the shipping sector.

Gasification: Advanced, small-scale, on-site processing plants can turn slash into renewable energy products like bio-oil, ethanol, and hydrogen.

Biochemicals: Specialized refineries can convert woody waste into sustainable alternatives to plastics, chemicals, and industrial products.

WAKE UP Aotearoa, New Zealand!!!

Some Choice News!

Kia pai from Sharing the Good Stuff

DOC is rolling out a new tool to help figure out what to tackle first when it comes to protecting our threatened species and the things putting them at risk.

Why does this matter? As Nikki Macdonald from The Post points out, we’re a country with around 4,400 threatened species. With limited time and funding, conservation has always meant making tough calls about what gets attention first.

For the first time, DOC has put real numbers around what it would take to do everything needed to properly safeguard our unique natural environment. The new BioInvest tool shows the scale of the challenge: 310,177 actions across 28,007 sites.

Now that we can see the full picture, it brings the big question into focus: how much do we, as Kiwis, truly value protecting nature — and what are we prepared to invest to make it happen?

We hope this brings a smile!