22nd May 2009

In a letter to the Stroud News and Journal Greens argue it is time for Stroud District Council to withdraw from the Joint Municipal Waste Strategy and provide our own solutions.

Photo: Chris Harmer 

Madam,

As there has obviously been some misunderstanding recently concerning the Stroud Green Party’s views on waste, please allow me to re-affirm our position. We absolutely oppose a single large incinerator as the solution for Gloucestershire’s residual waste wherever it might be located.

We are not being negative or emotional about this: we would point out that other authorities who once favoured incineration have changed their minds in recent years, for example Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire and Lancashire. On face value, a big incinerator is a simple and attractive solution: “job done” for 30 years plus. At Milton Keynes, incineration was the best scoring option in their outline business case (OBC), and yet they rejected it as “unsuitable on a socio-economic basis”.

The reality is that the underlying case for incineration is flawed by uncertainty and inflexibility in the longer term. Gloucestershire County Council’s modelling predicts that waste arisings will rise at 1.6% per annum until 2040. But looking elsewhere, with 3% per annum waste growth in 2001, Lancashire made it their policy to reduce this to 1%. They actually reduced total waste by 3.7% in 2005/6. Again, what costings over time have GCC built in for transporting waste from the extremities of the county in the uncertain context of peak oil?

Madam, a single incinerator would contract us, the people of Gloucestershire, to feed it with 175,000 tonnes of waste per annum until 2040. I submit that the world will be a very different place by 2040, and the incinerator could be a huge white elephant around our necks. We need much more flexible solutions.
Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) ranked highest in technical performance in Gloucestershire’s OBC and is the technology being built by Lancashire and chosen by Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire.

Greens, Labour and Lib-Dems are united in their opposition to an incinerator. Chas Fellows, the Conservative leader of SDC, has said “treating waste close to where it is produced is a more sustainable solution than transporting it many miles to a single incinerator”. How do we get the County Council to listen? It is time for SDC to withdraw from the Joint Municipal Waste Strategy with the County and provide our own solutions.

Chris Harmer, Waste researcher for Stroud District Green Party.