Clean, green, beer-making machine. Yeah right.
Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:40 am – Posted by Guest | 4 Comments
Irresistible to men since 1889. Actually for yonks. As far back as we’ve got records, we’ve got beer. And funnily enough, it was invented beside a river.
Which brings us to the owners who control the legendary Tui Brewery. The same owners who daily pollute your river. Yep, 120 years on and Tui is still pumping pollution into the Manawatu River system.
And that stinks.
Far from our shores, the corporate owners forcing Tui’s pollution into our river hail from Singapore, and are in turn controlled by the European powerhouse Heineken.
I like their beer. In fact, I hold nothing against brewers except where they maximise their profit by polluting our rivers year after year. Which is just what Tui aims to keep doing. This according to their application to Horizon’s Regional Council for a permit to keep polluting our river at the same rate until 2030.
Their aim to keep on polluting is indefensible. Clean tech brewing systems for healthy rivers are proven and profitable.
Progressive international brewers capture and use methane from waste; slashing power costs, reducing carbon emissions, and keeping rivers healthy by applying the spent waste exclusively to land. In contrast, Tui aims to punish our innocent rivers and surrounding communities with another 21 years of piped pollution and lost resources.
As for any capital cost to install the clean tech systems and create local jobs, now is no time to cry poor. Even amidst a sour economy, Tui’s owners sent over 40 million dollars to their offshore masters in 2008. That’s right, they pollute our rivers so they can transfer even more wealth out of New Zealand.
Unless council stands up for your right to clean rivers, we in the Manawatu are doomed for 21 more years to this foreign controlled corporation reaching directly through international borders and polluting our favourite swimming spots and fishing grounds.
This is patently unfair. It subverts national sovereignty, and corrupts our river and precious natural resources. But this isn’t an essay on foreign investment reform.
Tui’s proclivity for pollution raises some thought provoking questions. Why is it that we do not implement proven clean tech systems for our oldest manufacturing process? And more broadly, why are clean tech systems being ignored by putting maximum profit before people and planet?
It suggests that we need new priorities to complement the new clean tech. And that we need the guts as communities in New Zealand to stand up and demand fair deals for our rivers. The dark ages are gone, and its high time we demand healthy rivers as a norm in our modern and civilised society.
So back to the brewery, I say it’s high time the world’s oldest manufacturing process gets serious, cleans up its act, and implements a plan to stop polluting our rivers.
Great blog!
Where is this at in the resource consent process, what can we do?
Doesn’t Forest and Bird, or a closely allied organisation, already have a “race for the river” down the Manawatu. Could we turn this into a protest float past, and perhaps celebrate it with a more environmentally friendly New Zealand made boutique product?
A friend of mine helps organise this event, and I would be happy to help drum up some more numbers and the protest element if the organisers are keen!
Hi JamieS and others interested in helping to do something about the state of the Manawatu watershed (or their own local watershed) - contact forestbirdmanawatu@gmail.com and we’ll get onto doing some organising!
What’s the current status of the application by the Tui Brewery, in light of Monday’s “60 Minutes” documentary on TV3, which concluded by suggesting the Mangatainoka’s now clean and safe for swimming?
I admit a substantial degree of disappointment with that documentary, which did little (or nothing) more than point out the problem, and fell well short of what I’d expect from a program that prides itself on its investigative journalism.
So, it seems TV3 simply got it wrong. Tui’s resource consent renewal application is apparently still under consideration by horizons regional council:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/central-north-island/2769889/Tui-Brewery-seeks-river-discharge-permit