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Mark R

What a massive own goal by the environmental lobby! I whole heartedly agree with the ambition to recycle 70% of our waste which as far as I’m aware was something we were aiming towards anyway with our year on year recycling increases but to export our excess waste completely defeats the object.Not only is our waste being exported which increases the carbon footprint per ton of waste in itself but we’re exporting it to be…..incinerated!

It is a classic case of NIMBYism but to export a problem is not solving it but simply moving it, most likely to our sister isle but for how long? It has been suggested to me that the Jersey incinerator is expected to reach capacity with their own waste alone in the not to distant future and we will be back to square one. Quite apart from that to think that we will be totally unaffected by incineration because we have are all of 20 miles away is delusional at best.

We should be looking into long term, effective and as environmentally friendly ways as possible of dealing with our own waste here in Guernsey not shifting the problem onto someone else (even if it is only Jersey). The small number of noisy lobbyists against incineration here should ask themselves what exactly they have achieved?

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3

rosie

Mark R,
The environmental lobby’s favoured solution was for a zero waste strategy that would have landfilled the inert residual waste on island having rigourously applied all levels of the waste hierarchy, much as was described in Paul Connett’s talk. It was one of the options in the final workshop, but unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t even going to be considered. I have a DVD of his talk if you are interested.

So the 2 horses that remained were heat treatment, either off island or on island. i.e. either one incinerator in the Channel Islands or two. Incineration is not good but if our residual waste is going to be burnt somewhere, then it is better in my opinion that it is done in a way that incentivises us to reduce that element of our waste, so that collectively, the Channel Islands are burning less. Ideally, if we really work at it and are committed to making the changes, we could aim to reduce our residual exports to as near to zero as possible within 10 years.

The alternative to export would have been to have our own incinerator and then we would have had no reason to reduce our residual waste, (& the burning of) below the minimum required for that incinerator. That combined with what Jersey needs to burn to make their plant operate efficiently and repay its capital costs, would have resulted in overall, much more burning. Jersey would not benefit from that any more than we would.

In my opinion, the most important element of a waste strategy is that it is designed to give a real incentive to reduce the amount of waste generated. Because as you rightly point out, export is not ideal, we must work hard to eliminate that element of our waste as quickly as possible.

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5

Guern abroad

My aim is the hope that it will drive waste down by increasing waste prevention.
Recyling whilst good is expensive too, just because you can recycle it does not mean we should not question whether the product or packaging in the first place was right.
I am very much encouraged that PSD have seriously tabled the concept of exporting that element of waste to Jersey. One of the big conerns with incineration is having to feed the moster, and this is exactly what Jersey is having to consider. This is totally against waste minimisation and why I am against a seperate plant in Guernsey.

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