23rd January 2008

Gloucestershire Joint Municipal Waste Strategy must be:

- Clearly based on the 3 Rs and the principle of always choosing the local cycle option where available;
- Incorporate clear strategies and challenging targets for Reducing the total waste produced;
- Incorporate clear strategies and targets for increasing Recycling to at least 70% by 2015;
- Based on a declining quantity of residual waste, achieving significantly less than 100,000 MT pa by 2015;
- Use small decentralised processing which maximise energy recapture and that minimise waste miles, can be decommissioned as waste quantities fall and replaced as technologies improve to deal with the residual;

Our Waste Policy is simple, and consists of maximising the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, followed by safe elimination of the residual waste.

We believe that waste management must both tick all the boxes of long-term sustainability and provide good economic and social returns to the local community. Materials should flow in local, closed loops as they do in nature. We want to see ownership and control of the process stay with the local community. It is they who should benefit and not the shareholders of waste contractors.

Working with others, we will:

Campaign and Educate for Waste Reduction.  Action on reducing plastic bags has been a successful start, and our next action will be to work for a reduction of unnecessary and wasteful packaging of goods in our local shops. We all need to ask ourselves questions about the benefits we get from yet more “stuff”. Do we really need it?

Educate and Stimulate Waste Re-use. If something breaks down, can it be repaired? If you don’t need it and it still works, could someone else benefit rather than you throwing it away? We support Stroud Freecycle, woodbanks and other initiatives to encourage re-use.

Strive to get the best local Economic and Social Benefit from Recycling. We want to see more materials collected from doorsteps, and we want to see better separation, for example of kitchen waste. But we also want more of the recyclable material to be treated within the local economy, providing local jobs and local income. Currently some of our recyclables go as far as China, and some of our green garden waste goes straight to the tip. Composting can take place at all levels, in our gardens, in our local communities, and by the Council. We will support closing the materials loops by recycling more things and finding uses for the recycled materials. One must balance the other, and it must be done as locally as possible.

Best Environmental, Social and Economic Value from Residual Waste. We will still end up with a residue after the 3Rs - perhaps 20-30% of domestic rubbish. It will be bits of metal, cardboard, paper, plastic wrap and packaging, plus residual food waste, etc. We conclude, with some reluctance, that the best way at present to keep this from landfill is modern heat treatment that will yield process heat and electricity. We believe that the plant involved should be of a size that can be matched to local heat uses, particularly industrial, so that all outputs are utilised. To minimise transport issues, it should be located close to where the waste arises. We envisage a number of decentralised facilities, probably co-located with industrial partners on local trading estates.

We oppose one large incinerator as:
- inflexible, not being able to incrementally reduce capacity or upgrade technology, such as turning waste into valuable industrial gas, a process as yet in its infancy;
- long-term contracts to feed it tend to deter an emphasis on the 3Rs;
- increased waste miles and bulking sites across the country will cost more as fuel prices rise;
- will make one contractor too powerful.