Burying bad news?
Today is Friday, a good day, we are told, for burying bad news. Well, we might need some landfill space, because there is sadly no shortage of ‘bad news’ to report…

A gasification plant in Scunthorpe has been granted planning permission despite the heroic efforts of local campaigners.

Evidence emerges that incineration is depressing recycling rates in the UK – including Hampshire, Southampton, and Portsmouth.

Staffordshire County Council Planning committee vote to approve a 300,000 tonne incinerator, despite falling levels of waste. There are already 5 municipal waste incinerators across the West Midlands at Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Stoke on Trent and Wolverhampton, and only this week it was revealed that Wolverhampton City Council is 30,000 tonnes short of its contractual obligations to supply its incinerator.

Bedfordshire County Council, who were planning to build a 200,000 tpa “energy from waste power station” at Rookery Pit near Stewartby were ‘outflanked’ by Covanta Energy who announced it will apply directly to the Government (DBERR) for permission to build a 600,000-tonne plant, with little local consultation. See Shock move to treble size of energy-from-waste plant.

Rubbish-burning incinerator for Barnstaple? According to a North Devon Journal article, a 50,000 tpa incinerator is part of a Council masterpaln for Barnstaple town centre. “The £39.3 million energy-from-waste project in Seven Brethren would burn more than 90% of the household rubbish in North Devon and Torridge, and use the energy to supply heat and electricity to nearby buildings, including a new North Devon College and Tesco supermarket.” The proposal will be debated by North Devon Council on Tuesday, November 11.

And the good news is:
All over the UK people are sharing information and expertise, working together towards the embracing of more sustainable waste management methods.

Latest official audited figures show a 2.2% fall in waste arising in England. DEFRA’s audited waste tonnages for England 2007/8 means that the national average waste MSW growth in England is negative for the last 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 years. The average annual change in municipal waste over the five years to 2007/08 was a decrease of 0.6 per cent. You need to take the full 7 years’ changes to get a positive waste growth and that is only 1.76% over 7 years or 0.25% per year. The most remarkable number is the kg of household waste per head. It is down below 500Kg for the first time since 1998/9 i.e. it is at a 10 year low.
You can download all the spreadsheets from
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/wastats/bulletin08.htm
Regional totals are at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/wastats/archive/mwb200708.xls
Full tables by council are at:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/wastats/archive/mwb200708a.xls
Defra’s press release can be found at:
http://nds.coi.gov.uk/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=383415&NewsAreaID=2

Friends of the Earth’s senior resource use campaigner Michael Warhurst said:

These figures provide further evidence that new incinerators are not needed – local authorities are already diverting waste from landfill by boosting recycling and composting. Proposals for dozens of new polluting and expensive incinerators have been justified on the grounds that we will continue to produce more and more waste, but these figures show that total waste is decreasing. Recycling resources is a win-win for the environment and councils’ budgets. Recycling targets must be increased and plans to build new incinerators that will divert finite and valuable resources away from recycling must be scrapped.

In a related story, East Lindsey district council has revealed that moving to alternate weekly collections and helping elderly residents to recycle have been pivotal in helping to elevate it to the top of the recycling league table. See: The secrets behind East Lindsey’s recycling success.

A new NAIL2 Blog Spot has been set up to keep people informed about current waste management issues in Norfolk, in particular, proposals concerning incineration schemes. Visit the site – http://nail2.blogspot.com – and click on some of their excellent links for videos, websites, reports, maps and more!

Veolia got their sums wrong. Serious mathematical errors have embarrassed Veolia, undermining their application for a waste incinerator in Sherwood Forest. When these mistakes are corrected, Veolia’s own Carbon Analysis report, produced by consultants RPS, shows that incineration is about the worst of a range of options in terms of climate change, and not the best as Veolia claimed. In an independent report commissioned by the local campaign group People Against Incineration (PAIN), Public Interest Consultant Alan Watson writes:

[Veolia’s analysis] contains some basic errors that are so serious that it cannot be relied upon to support the applicant’s case…When Table 4 is checked on a spreadsheet it can be seen that whilst the results for the incinerator are correct, ALL the comparative MBT results include serious errors”.

When the errors have been corrected the report shows that over a 25-year period,the additional climate change damage that would be caused by the incinerator would be more than £57 million. PAIN is calling on Veolia and Nottinghamshire County Council to withdraw their application and engage with the community to develop mutually acceptable sustainable waste management solutions that place greater emphasis on reducing, reusing and recycling discarded material. See the Mansfield Chad newspaper article entitled Incinerator impact worse than feared .

In other waste news…

Bradford Council, working with Calderdale Council, announced that eight companies have been shortlisted to move to the next stage in a 25-year £400 million Waste PFI contract. These are: Biffa; Covanta & Kelda; Earth Tech/Skanksa/Meridiam; John Laing/Unitied Utilities/Costain; Shanks; SITA UK; Veolia; and Waste Recycling Group
See Waste firms shortlisted for £400m scheme and Bradford narrows down bids for 25-year PFI deal.

Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham councils are consulting on a Joint Strategic Waste Development Plan Document. Originally, the scope of The Plan was restricted to identifying suitable sites for large scale waste treatment facilities. However, as a result of the consultation comments, the scope has been widened to include both a wider range of waste types and also policies for smaller facilities.
Page 34 of the Site Assessment Report (D1) document (which translates to page 47 of the .pdf file) lists potential waste facility sites, ranked in order of recommended preference -
Number 1 is Barnsley’s Thurnscoe Business Park
Number 2 is also in Barnsley – Claycliffe Industrial Estate
Number 3 goes to Rotherham’s Corus Steelworks, Parkgate

See Tables 5.4 and 5.5

As the Doncaster Free Press Waste site consultation article reports:

Regional waste management bosses have identified 13 sites in Doncaster that could potentially host a giant incinerator…Sites at Wheatley Hall Road, Redhouse Interchange and Carcroft Industrial Estate, as well as quarries at Armthorpe, Warmsworth and Cadeby have all been shortlisted as possible locations for state-of-the-art waste treatment and recovery facilities. Sandall Stones Road in Kirk Sandall, Planet Road at Carcroft Common, Capitol Park, Hungerhill Business Park in Edenthorpe, Bootham Lane Landfill and two sites at Hatfield Power Park make up the list currently being considered by local authority officers.

The Joint Strategic Waste Development Plan Documents are available from Rotherham and Doncaster . The public consultation will run until Friday, December 12.

Defra is set to hold a meeting on Monday (November 10) with the Environment Agency to discuss what guidance it can offer to councils and waste management firms following the sudden turbulence in the market for recovered materials, and the temptation to store waste materials in the hope that market prices will rise. See Monday meeting to address falling material values.

Writing from Sheffield, veteran campaigner Jeff rice raises some questions about Veolia’s misleading claims. Questions over recycling figures opens with:

There are currently ad posters up around Sheffield, from Sheffield City Council and Veolia, stating ‘thanks to everyone, over 70% of waste is recycled at our Household Waste Recycling Centres.’ My question is, are these posters designed to make the general public think that we are recycling 70% of household waste in Sheffield, thus making the council look greener than it actually is?
Read more

Gloucestershire’s waste incinerator debate rolled on at a heated meeting in Quedgeley on Thursday night. According to Gloucestershire Media:

Over 100 residents gathered to ask questions about the possibility of an incinerator being built in the county to dispose of the 200,000 tonnes of waste that is currently sent to landfill every year. A panel made up of county MPs, councillors and experts gave their views about the future of rubbish disposal with some strong differences in opinion. David Drew, Labour MP for Stroud, and Parmjit Dhanda, Labour MP for Gloucester said they are strongly against any plans for a rubbish burning incinerator which they believe is the favoured option. Many residents said they were also strongly against a plant being built at Javelin Park near Haresfield, which is one of the possible sites outlined by the county council.

The council says no decision has been made even on whether an incinerator is the preferred option.

And finally, it is not just Barak Obama who is setting America alight. The Boston Globe reports that an explosion ignited an incinerator in Maine.

Explosion sets fire to Maine incinerator
November 5, 2008

Firefighters say an explosion at a trash-to-energy incinerator in Biddeford blew panels off the building and started a fire. Officials say the explosion at the Maine Energy Recovery Co. plant Tuesday afternoon was likely caused by a propane tank or some other pressurized object going through a trash shredder. The blast blew two sets of panels off the building and ignited a small fire that was quickly brought under control. One worker suffered minor injuries. Explosions occur periodically at the plant when propane tanks are mixed in with other waste.

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