UKWIN’s write up of the Audit Commission (AC) report is excellent, especially regarding the AC potentially conducting democratic audit of waste management. Many stakeholders feel stonewalled by official EFW spin and unsubstantiated and wafer thin safe health claims in 4 page HPA references.

The AC report gives confused messages, some positive on data, variability in projections justifying burners, some without deeper thought. People could quote the report in different ways to suit.

No mention of AMBT, Autoclaving specifically, zero waste resource recovery parks or future alternatives, proven in the UK, or galloping in. Also there is no real Anaerobic Digestion prescriptive thrust in the report to collect food waste (mirroring the National Waste Strategy, 2007 on the issue) to tackle head on the % of biodegradable waste that is the nub of the landfill LfT, LATS drivers. If we all had a kitchen caddy, collecting it separately, investing locally in proven AD facilities would we have so much of a dilemma, or would the we have the problem half licked in no time?? Perhaps £1bn of £2bn should be spent solely on AD facilities and universal weekly doorstep collections of kitchen caddies

The residual would have substantially less tonnage, would have less food contaminating content and what was left cleaner, less, simpler to deal with whether recovery to reuse or recycling, conversion to syngas/energy or treated and landfill sequested. We might even require a revised Audit Commission report in no time called “Disposal, A Dying Doctrine”