NOBODY wants a huge mass-burn incinerator scarring the island’s east coast.

For that matter, no one wants a micro-incinerator either. A quick glance at the sort of beast capable of burning even 22,000 tonnes of municipal waste is enough to know you don’t want it at the bottom of your garden.

But the time for easy solutions is past. All the big holes are filled or accounted for. And, as anyone who has stood downwind of Mont Cuet on a hot July afternoon will testify, burying our rubbish to rot underground was never a great solution.

It is understandable, therefore, that when presented with a list of unpalatable options, people want to vote for the least threatening. All the better if that is the substantially cheaper solution.

‘Anything but the giant burner’ was the overwhelming vote at the presentation of the Rational Alternative’s plans on Tuesday evening.

If representative of the island, such a vote should reduce the Public Services Department’s plans to ashes. There would then follow a radical shift in the next six months towards the micro-incineration plans of a firm such as Envikraft.

It would be essential in such circumstances to be certain that the Danish firm could deliver the goods.

Unfortunately, that is far from clear.

That is partly the fault of PSD’s tender document, which insisted that the plant must be capable of dealing with 70,000 tonnes of waste. Envikraft did not consider that within its remit and did not submit a tender.

Without a tender, information locally about the firm and its capabilities is sketchy, to say the least.

What is clear from documentation supplied is that a micro-incinerator for municipal waste in Guernsey would mean going some way out of Envikraft’s comfort zone of crematoria and hospital incinerators installed in Continental Europe.

It is difficult for islanders to know just how significant is the difference in dealing with municipal and hospital waste.

But if the optimists are right, and PSD’s waste figures are far too high, deputies must decide whether to put their trust in a solution that is as much radical as rational.