Is Albert Barbusci our overlord?

Are we who live in CBRM the Rip Van Winkles of our time, suddenly reading in our local newspaper that Albert Barbusci, and Sydney Harbour Investment Partners (SHIP),have entered: 

"... a joint venture partnership with QCI, LLC, a Michigan-based company that claims to have developed clean technologies to convert municipal solid waste, waste plastic and scrap tires into fuels and other useful products.

The project involves the construction of a waste plastic-to-fuel facility within the Novazone logistics park, which is adjacent to the Sydney port." 

Whoa. 

Now, I am a fan of the Rip Van Winkle tale - I remember as a child imagining how it would feel to sleep for twenty years and wake up to slowly discover a changed world. 

But maybe suddenly waking up to a new world order is not so cool after all. 

First, and this is a big, important question, how can the "developer behind the container port project in Sydney, N.S" make the decision to build a waste plastic-to-fuel facility in Sydney? 

I thought our Council would make a decision like this?

And if they are not, why did we elect a Council?

Oh, and here comes the surreal part of this - the waste plastic-to-fuel facility would not even need a port to exist. So, it could just be plonked down on the land bought for the port. 

Huh. 

I see that Councillor Steve Gillespie is fully behind this idea - and "anything that create jobs": Is he going to consult with the community about this idea that has come out of nowhere?

I would not know if Councillor Gillespie is using his Facebook page to keep people up to date as he blocked me because I asked a question about the misinformation he was sharing about the ill-fated - for logical reasons - Big Pond RV park.

I would like to ask Councillor Gillespie why he is fully behind this idea and if the health of the environment will be considered but it will be difficult to do this.

I will send him an email and I hope that others do as well. 

I am reading about waste plastic-to-fuel facilities and I read an article in National Geographic that is a good start: 

Zero-waste advocates worry that any approach to converting plastic waste into energy does nothing to reduce demand for new plastic products and even less to mitigate climate change. “To uplift these approaches is to distract from real solutions,” says Claire Arkin, a campaigner with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives—that is, solutions that allow people to use less plastic and reuse and recycle more."

As a community we need much more information about this hastily proposed waste plastic-to-fuel facility that comes from people who are supposed to bring a port to Sydney.

Stay tuned. And sleep with one eye open.