Today [Friday 6th February 2009] the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) stands accused of uncritically towing the incineration industry line as the result of a Radio 4 broadcast.
Radio 4 aired the ‘Burn baby burn‘, presented by Simon Cox, on Thursday evening.
The subtext that ran through the programme was that recyclable material is already being incinerated. This important environmental and legal issue was not investigated. Instead, old incineration industry myths were uncritically broadcast in an unbalanced manner – not least the suggestion that ambient air is somehow worse than that emerging from an incinerator chimney stack.
Public Interest Consultant Alan Watson wrote to the BBC’s Simon Cox, pointing out some of their inaccuracies:
Firstly you made the surprising claim whilst interviewing Michael Warhurst of Friends of the Earth, that Canadian research showed the dioxin levels in emissions from incinerators were lower than the concentrations in ambient air.
The emission limit for modern incinerators is 0.1 ng TEQ/m3 (or 100 pg TEQ/m3) [1]. Most municipal waste incinerators operate close to the limit – and some occasionally exceed it. Yet the highest documented values for ambient air concentration of dioxins in the world are from Guiyu and Guangdong in China. These are around open burning of electronic waste [2] – and those levels are 0.909-48.9 pg TEQ/m3 respectively which is less than 1% to 50% of the incinerator emission standard.
Those sample were collected in extremely polluted environments. Normal levels would be expected to be around 100 fg TEQ/m3 or less (0.1% of emission standards for modern incinerators). Mari [3], for example, reported 27.3 and 10.9 fg TEQ /m3 at urban/industrial (near an incinerator) and the background sites in Spain.
I have occasionally heard supporters, and operators, of incinerators make similar claims for dioxins and other pollutants but, when challenged, they have invariably accepted that they “got their units wrong”. I hope that the BBC has not made a similar error and would therefore be grateful if you could advise of the source upon which you rely to support your claim.
Secondly you said that Denmark recycles far more than we do and presented Denmark as a positive example of a country that had successfully adopted incineration. I wonder why you did not mention, however, that Denmark was one of the few countries that objected to a 50% recycling rate in the recent revisions of the Waste Framework Directive because they are so committed to incineration that they can’t raise their recycling levels to meet the targets that we are now adopting in the UK?
Was it because this long term constraint proves the point that you were trying to undermine – i.e that incineration competes against, and undermines, recycling?
If you were aware of this and didn’t report it what does it say about your credibility as a reporter? And if you were not aware of it then shouldn’t you have done your homework more thoroughly before broadcasting the programme?
Thank you for your attention to this. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely
Alan Watson[1] European Commission (2000). “DIRECTIVE 2000/76/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 4 December 2000 on the incineration of waste.” Official Journal of the European Communities L 332.
[2] Li, H., L. Yu, et al. (2007). “Severe PCDD/F and PBDD/F pollution in air around an electronic waste dismantling area in China.” Environ Sci Technol 41(16): 5641-6.
[3] Mari, M., M. Schuhmacher, et al. (2008). “Air concentrations of PCDD/Fs, PCBs and PCNs using active and passive air samplers.” Chemosphere 70(9, February 2008): 1637-1643.
BBC Radio Current Affairs’ Jennifer Clarke, Senior Multiplatform Producer, says:
I am happy to forward anything people have to say about the episode to Simon Cox. Send your comments to: jennifer.clarke@bbc.co.uk
The show was not all bad, and the BBC have another opportunity to redeem themselves on Monday when they air the next episode of a different Radio 4 series: Costing the Earth.
Recycling does not work without localised and regionalised reprocessing. The fact is Government has relied on back filling to the Far East and has invested little in the reprocessing industry. WRAP would not even talk about the plastic recycling problem for years and have only recently got on board. Deal with plastics and waste to energy becomes un economic. The failure to engage with our lack of a reprocessing industry has forced us to consider waste to energy plants even though this will impact on health and climate change issues. I lay the blame squarely on the Government who left policy and planning decisions to local councils and they were seduced by PFI, have now pay through the nose later, expensive incineration options. I do endorse the thoughts of Peter Jones ex Biffa London Waste Guru that all decisions need to be examined on a carbon footprint format. This should make some pyrolysis anaerobic digestion and in vessel composting options very favourable. As an individual with environmental concerns I would advise that all solutions be sought at point of concern or within a county distance. The cost benefit of small scale plant that can be scaled up to large scale modular has been the approach I have been trying to promote for the past decade. The concept is as good now as it was when I raised the issues with Wiltshire County Council
David Levy
Chair The Air That We Breathe Group
Executive UK WIN
dr levy, westbury wiltshire
Shlomo
I find myself in total agreement with the above comments of David Levy on endorsing the thoughts and decentralised, regionalisation and low carbon footprint direction of London Waste/London Mayor’s representative; over the current PFI incinerator shambles. Small scale (50,000Tpa), modular scaleability aimed at gas (biogas/syngas) production; including anaerobic digestion/IVC of “wet organics” /food waste and ATTs (including ultimate proven/bankable arrivals of latest gasplasma/plasmagas modules on the scheme).
Knee-jerk reactions (aired via the BBC, Daily Telegraph or Daily Mail) to either the Landfill Directive or transient pressure on parts of the recycling sector (low quality mixed plastics/mixed paper) bring uninformed or burner sponsored cries incineration, incineration, incineration; when the local recycling,composting and smaller gas from waste “alternatives” are the better and easier solutions to implement in time, capacity and carbon benefits. Thus the media are generally behind the times with the current thoughts and solutions, assuming we are still in year 2000.
It is interesting to note Defra announced this week it had over calculated its 2020 waste figures by 715,000Tonnes; 10 x US Nimtz class carriers worth/38x HMS Ark Royals worth, presumably the resultant EfW/CHP incinerator end capacity (25%) required by Defra/government. This should naturally impact on the scale and number of incinerator proposals UK wide. Apparently not! Defra sidesteps the issue saying WDA officer led procurement extends into commercial and industrial waste sectors to “make up” the capacity for treatment facilities (underwriting existing white elephant burner plans/OBCs).
Rob Whittle
Vice Chair
NAIL2
Norwich
Norfolk
Your investigation aired this evening was a clone of the blinkered ‘investigation’ of waste by local and national government in the UK. Perhaps no coincidence that your conclusions were the same as theirs.
I like to imagine what would be possible if they or you spent a second half-hour thinking what could happen with waste besides landfill and incineration. Europe’s 50 to 60% recycling is not so impressive when you consider how it got stuck at that level by long-term incineration contracts. If the UK can avoid copying their error then we have the opportunity to prevent close to 100% of all waste. Vastly more jobs, vastly greater energy savings, vast flows of cheap resources for industry, vast flows of biogas for heating and cooking, and vast opportunities for putting communities ahead of private profit.
Incineration is a 30 year lock-in. Ian Christie says it will take 10-20 years for alternatives to come on stream (assuming there’s any money left after paying for incineration). In reality the solutions for waste require at most 5 years to arrange since all that’s needed is to include the cost of preventing waste in product prices. This would be simple to do and could take care of the waste problem called climate change at the same time. Creating rather than destroying resources wouldn’t be a bad basis for economic recovery either!
I did the keynote talk at the recent National Waste Summit in Ireland and know what’s possible. So if you are interested in going beyond the sort of investigation that would be commissioned by government and the disposal industry then please get in touch.
James Greyson, Sustainability Analyst
BlindSpot, PO Box 140, LEWES, BN7 9DS UK
Revealing opportunities for global recovery: http://www.blindspot.org.uk
National Waste Summit slides, “zero disposal”: http://www.sbpconferences.com/presentations/Waste2008.asp
I do not know a huge amount about waste recycling, incineration, carbon footprints and the like – I am still learning. I was however deeply disappointed by the programme, as it seemed to be so partial and definitely on the side of incineration. From the literature in the public domain (excluding the newspapers , who have their own agenda) it seems to me that incineration is wasteful, outmoded and costly and that alternatives are, frankly, better. Indeed the national grid appears to be asking for gas to be produced from waste, rather than the miserly amounts of energy currently produced from incineration. Let’s have an updated proper programme now on all alternatives, that does not rely extensively on anecdote or eulogise by now old-fashioned incineration.
It is great to see the momentum against incineration (EfW) gathering strength. The BBC have been pro incinerator for ages and it was no surprise when they eventually came “clean” on this unwanted technology.
They should, in the interest of balance, give the popular campaigns equal exposure. Dr van Steenis deserves more widespread coverage for his excellent work on morbidity, especially for the voiceless young.
Radio 4’s broadcast on recycling issues focussed on the Coventry Incinerator which burns 365 days per year. Recycling rate is a low 20% but they aim to raise this and pull in more waste from nearby towns.
There was absolutely no mention of the waste by-products of the process – bottom ash, toxic fly ash, nor discussion of air quality and morbidity, downwind. Again the BBC showed only some positive aspects of incineration when all aspects should be covered.
Costing the Earth’s BURN, BABY, BURN? programme, broadcast on Monday evening 9th February 2009
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/costingtheearth.shtml
Another week and another radio programme on waste and recycling.
When comparing the first and second of the recent BBC Burn Baby Burn(?) programmes, this one is clearly better – but it does not amount to a ‘redemption’.
This one was more focused on the ‘burning question’: Is it worth recycling? The myth of a ‘recycling crash’ is challenged. Presenter Miriam O’Reilly gave Coventry Council a grilling on the monster that needed feeding.
Keith was interviewed by the researcher early on so, and they got his name and title wrong. Once again Keith was cut short (and they got his name wrong).
The Coventry Councillor will have upset people in the city by saying they did not provide recycling services earlier as the public was not ready! The real reason would appear to be that Coventry’s incinerator had a prior claim to recylates.
The programme did include an item on the Coventry Burner, and an interview with the Nuneaton recycling officers about their better recycling system. They also talked to Veolia about markets for recycling, and a Minister was asked why they have no recycling targets past 2020.
The whole thing is on the BBC I -player.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/costingtheearth
Shlomo,
The mention of raising recycling rate in an incinerator town, Coventry, is probably to counter the impression that incineration automatically leads to reduced, or even abandoned, recycling. The logical conclusion of that argument is increasing distances, due to a larger catchment area, for optimum waste delivery volume. Another factor would then be fewer incinerators needed, with the prospect of underuse as recycling increases to its maximum. Where underuse occurs there would be pressure to reduce recycling against the positive upward trend, to fulfill contracts.
BBC forced to defend against accusations of pro-incineration bias
visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/feedback.shtml