The cost of waste disposal could treble
Saturday 25th June 2011, 2:29PM BST.
THE cost of dealing with Guernsey’s waste could treble under plans being discussed by Public Services.
It has outlined four preferred scenarios which all have much higher levels of recycling than currently achieved, including dealing with food waste.
But indicative costs discussed during consultation with representatives of local groups are much higher than the current £4m. a year.
The most popular scenario with two workshops held this week was recycling at up to 70%, food waste collections with in-vessel composting, kerbside and a ‘micro incinerator’, which might have to deal with 20,000 tonnes of remaining waste.
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Disposing of our waste does costs, it is a fact that we all have to face up too.
I don’t belive that the use of an incinerator was popular.
More like PSD put incineration into three of the four options so there was little choice but not to like an option which included one.
This does not mean at all that incineration is supported.
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I can burn my own waste in my garden, why do they keep coming up with an incinerator when nobody wants one? These people are idiots.
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I don’t know what you’re all worried about.
Here in Jersey, we have a super huge incinerator which hasn’t got enough rubbish to burn economically.
If you’re crafty, you could SELL us your rubbish so we can run our new toy efficiently, then you won’t have to introduce GST.
Negociate with Condor to do the transporting provided they give Guernsey residents reduced fares and you win all round.
Alderney: keep alert for similar opportunities.
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Here in Jersey we have a huge incinerator which cannot run without more rubbish than we can generate.
If you’re crafty you could contract us to BUY your rubbish to keep it going.
I’m sure our States members would jump at the chance so that they could put a favourable spin on it to appear farsighted angels of the greenest kind.
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…. and with it not burning at full pelt it will not be getting hot enough up the chimney so will be releasing more toxins into the atmosphere for us all to breave.
So to minimise the ill health in Jersey the monster has to be fed :| bit of a catch 22 situation.
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Of the 4 options in the last workshop, 2 did involve sending off island, the most obvious destination being Jersey. Somehow, they had put a price of £10m – £12m per annum on both options, but of course no figures to show how on earth they came to those inflated numbers.
One of those 2 options was to put the residual waste through an MBT to convert the waste to RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel) which then is much easier to get rid of because it is more homogenous than ordinary waste. In this form, I would certainly think that we could ‘sell’ it to Jersey. I don’t know who it is that is doing the negotiating with Jersey, (if anyone is) but I am not filled with confidence if they are coming up with such sky high costs.
It is also worth remembering that we already have 2 incinerators on Guernsey that are also both under utilised- the one at the hospital, I gather is only turned on 5 times a week and would burn much more efficiently if it was kept going all the time. The other one is the animal carcass one and that can’t be going all the time either.
However, despite all this, at the workshop (to put us off these options) they repeatedly stressed how difficult it would be to find markets for RDF and we would be at the mercy of others holding us to ransom with the price they would charge us to take it. All complete b*****ks if you ask me! I am afraid they clearly wanted ‘Option A’ ( an on-island incinerator) to be chosen in the workshop. It appears that they are still too keen to put in an order for our very own incinerator so that we don’t need to continually drive down our residual waste tonnages.
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Rosie – thanks for the update.
If the 10 to 12 million you mention are not costed properly then those figures should be discounted.
You’ve highlighted the fundemental flaw in pretty much everything PSD does.
No project decision in the “real” world is made without proper and detailed cost breakdowns. How can any logical decision be made when accurate costs are not available?
I’m afraid that you and everyone else has wasted their time as we’re going to end up with a great big bonfire.
It might be time to get angry again.
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When this is presented to the Assembly I really hope that the ‘old boys club’ attitude is not too prevalent and that someone (anyone please!) asks some really awkward questions about costs and the capability of our in house negotiators
This could even be one of those times where employing an outside professional negotiator could save us some money
Rosie! Did you really use the word ‘b*****ks’?
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Haha at Rosie saying Bo***cks!
You are damn right it is time to get angry again! There are a large number of angry workshop participants and they are not going to go away.
There is a very long list of flaws and inconsistencies that have emerged from the workshop and these will be publicised.
It is worth noting that even for the ‘top’ scenario (on-island incineration) 40% of workshop participants said it was unacceptable – and this is when it was described as a waste park with micro incinerator, rather than the truth, a 25,000 tonne mass-burn incinerator. More bo***cks-talk.
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The 2 Jersey options performed less well in the workshop vote primarily because the cost was deemed too great, so you are quite right Guilthead… without the figures there to back up their claim, the votes against these options are quite frankly, without any value.
Option A that was being pushed, has what they describe as a ‘micro-incinerator’ which sounds quite cosy and cute until you drill down to the detail. Although not advertised in the option description, the ‘micro’ size they are considering is the not so micro 25,000 tonnes. Considering that Suez, at its lowest level, could ‘apparently’ run at 28,000 tonnes, 25,000 is not enough of a drop, and will give us zero incentive to drive our waste down or increase our recycling beyond the 70%.
And that’s another thing……. the description of ‘Up to 70%’ Recycling’ is open to interpretation. It should be…. ‘Minimum 70% Recycling Excluding Green Waste’…. then we would be talking!
Ray: Moi?? Surely not!!!
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Goodness PSD pulls it off another incinerator! aren’t we lucky that all the pro deputies and those in PSD who have been working so hard on our behalf have come up with another mass burn at great expense and for the poor residents of St Sampsons more pollution unless the wind is in the north and then StP will get a blast of particulates and dont tell me that it is all in safe limits cos the limits are being driven down by the EU regularly.
The workshops were a farce where we were all treated as if in primary school. you must not ask questions because teacher does not have the answers or wont give them to you.
Apologies to all Islanders in advance for the end ‘solution’ I was under the impression initially that we were to help with devising an overall strategy. Silly me for being so naive!
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Rosie – its all spin isn’t it?
It’s really depressing to think that PSD are effectively taking us all for idiots.
To include green waste in recycling figures is a nonsense. Actually “green waste” is a misnomer – we should really call it “compostable material” and remove from the recycling figures.
As you’ve said all along the strategy should be…reduce, recycle and composte everything we can. The residue would be (in relative terms) negligable and we could either send to Jersey or find another means of disposal without a great big bonfire.
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Gilthead.
We have been told that the consultation result will simply ‘guide’ the WDA (Waste Disposal Authority) when drawing up the waste strategy. So one needs to ask… Who is on the WDA? Worryingly, a few that were (are??) very pro Suez and who I gather are still smarting at their loss.
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The trouble with our immature representative democracy is it lacks the direct democracy element of other places, the Guernsey public is crying out for the ability to rein in it’s errant representatives. Look it up on wiki.
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