Green answer for Great Barrier Reef

A commercially-viable fertiliser claimed to be kinder to the Great Barrier Reef has been released.
Grow Green Technologies says the product can be used by Queensland farmers without causing run-off that pollutes and damages the reef.
The high-tech fertiliser system, developed by Grow Green at its Kalbar production facility west of Brisbane, avoids leaching by locking a combination of pro-biotic microbes and nutrients into a mineral structure that releases them only when plants are able to absorb them.
Grow Green CEO Greg Hughes said the fertiliser was a viable alternative for cattle and sugarcane farming, which have been targeted under the State Government's Reef Water Quality Protection Plan as the main sources of pollution in reef catchments.
"This is an exciting development and we're proud that as an Australian company we can offer an innovative solution to a problem that is threatening one of our greatest natural treasures," Mr Hughes said.
"This technology offers farmers a viable biological alternative to the widely used chemical fertilisers that are threatening the reef and degrading the fertility of farm soil."
Mr Hughes said that traditional fertilisers, even slow release varieties, simply saturated the root area of plants with nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium and that any nutrients that were not used leached or ran off into the water table.
In contrast, the Grow Green alternative, marketed under the brand names Profert and Soil Reviva, used a proprietary-owned process to lock a nutrient and microbial mix into a mineral structure that prevented leaching but allowed microbes to work with the plant roots to metabolise and deliver nutrients. Nutrients not required at that time remained locked within the mineral structure and remained available for future use.
"The State Government has accorded a high priority to protecting the reef from fertiliser run-off and has set ambitious reduction targets.
"Conventional chemical fertiliser applications can often result in more than 50 per cent run-off. We can help reduce this significantly. As a Queensland-based manufacturer, we are ready to play our part and help meet the challenge the Government has set to save our reef," Mr Hughes said.
The State Government's Reef Water Quality Protection Plan aims to reverse the decline in water quality entering the Reef by 2013.
Traditional fertilisers damage the reef by encouraging the growth of phytoplankton, which decreases light for coral to grow, encourages filter-feeding organisms which compete for space with corals and also encourages the growth of algae over coral.
The phytoplankton also sustains the crown of thorns starfish larvae until it is large enough to attack coral, while excessive phosphorus run-off weakens the coral skeleton.
Grow Green is an Australian-owned fertiliser company which has spent 20 years researching and developing biologically-active fertilisers.
The company is committed to developing green products at a reasonable price.