28th January 2008

Nearly 70 people crammed into Star Anise cafe to participate in a lively question and answer session about Gloucestershire County Council's future waste plans, and whether they plan to build an incinerator at Javelin Park, Stonehouse.

Photo: Courtesy of Matt Archibald: Martin Whiteside, Stan Waddington and Adrian Jones 

 County Councillor Stan Waddington, cabinet member for the environment, stressed no decision had yet been taken about building an incinerator at Stonehouse, but acknowledged the County were trying to acquire land that could make this a possibility. 

Waste advisor Ade Jones explained the various newer technologies that could be used at a relatively small scale to convert energy to waste.  This would enable a more flexible approach, with small distributed waste treatment facilities needing less 'waste miles', that could be upgraded as technology develops and phased out as waste quantity is reduced.

A strong theme of the evening was  to make real progress on reducing total waste produced and then recycling more - thereby reducing the  total amount left and meaning that smaller facilities will be required.  There is scope for many more local initiatives such as home and community composting.

Janet Bailey said "If we compost more, recycle more and throw away less - then the problem is much smaller than we think it is".

District Councillor Martin Whiteside, who chaired the event said "It seems like the County Council cabinet member responsible for waste is listening   We know we can throw away less if there is real leadership on this from all the Councils; tonight we have heard that what is left can be dealt with more environmentally, using a number of medium scale technologies in distributed locations.  Given this opportunity, it would seem crazy for the County Council to press ahead with a single, large scale mass incinerator'.