Spanish-owned Waste Recycling Group (WRG) is expected to submit plans for a household waste incinerator at Sutton Courtenay to the Vale of White Horse District Council during the week commencing 21 July 2008. Oxfordshire County Council is in the process of procuring a contract for an incinerator capable of burning at least 300,000 tonnes of waste each year. A decision is due early next year as to which company will win the £100 – £200m contract, with WRG short-listed alongside Viridor.

The Sutton Courtenay application for a facility includes plans for an incinerator bottom ash recycling plant, air pollution control residue landfill and visitor and office accommodation. Interested parties can view the proposals at a public display on Thursday and Friday (24 and 25 July), from 2pm until 8pm, at Sutton Courtenay Village Hall, in Hobbyhorse Lane [Source: Abingdon Herald, Tue. 15 July 2008].

The Oxford facility is just one of the projects receiving funding through the European Investment Bank [Source]. The EIB was recently criticised in the CEE Bankwatch Fuelling the Fire report on how the European Investment Bank is financing the incineration industry for promoting incinerators over recycling initiatives.

According to EU waste policy, the EIB should support efforts to reduce, recycle and compost waste. However, this analysis shows that instead, in the 2000-2006 period, the majority of the EIB’s waste investments (68%) supported incineration, a waste management method fraught with environmental and economic deficiencies…

…out of 33 waste projects approved by the EIB between 2000-2006, 22 include incineration. Only two projects appear to have involved sorting waste for recycling and one involved composting. One, in Cornwall, England, includes landfill.

…where the private sector is involved in waste management service provision, there is a heavy concentration involving rather few companies such as Veolia and Suez (SITA), and some companies have benefited from several EIB loans in the waste sector.