Meeting documents

Statement to Cabinet on 9^th January 2008 on Mass Burn Incineration Proposals by West of England Partnership - from Councillor Roger Symonds

The proposition by the Partnership to move to a mass burn incineration plant to deal with the residual waste from the four unitary authorities of the old Avon Area is short-sighted, unsustainable and unnecessary.

In three of the four unitaries recycling rates are well above 40% and rising. To move to a system where 200,000 tonnes of residual waste will be needed every year over the next 25 years to feed the incinerator will mean that the focus will move from the top of the waste hierarchy to the bottom.

Bath and North East Somerset Council has built up the support of more than 70% of its residents to regularly recycle; it has based its waste strategy on Zero Waste; the previous administration had plans to introduce kerbside collections of `kitchen waste' and move to `same day' collections by April 2008, which would have pushed recycling rates up to well over 60%. It is a betrayal of local residents to go to mass burn incineration.

B&NES will have, if these further moves towards Zero Waste are implemented, only 40,000 tonnes of residual waste to process, so an anaerobic digestion process, already available in the area, is much more appropriate for this council. Our options are to `go it alone' or to partner with Somerset County Council, where recycling rates are over 50 % and LATs will not be paid (if at all) until 2017. Either of these options will be much more sustainable than mass burn incineration.

B&NES is to invest £585,000 over the next four years in preparing for the incinerator. This will mean very little finance if any, will be available to reduce our waste and implement the changes outlined above. Therefore, it is likely that reduction and recycling rates will no longer progress by the anticipated amounts, residual waste will grow, and money will be sucked into an environmentally damaging PFI scheme that will be out of date before it is in operation.

Twelve years ago Avon County Council was abolished because it was too big, unpopular and centralist. If this scheme goes ahead it will be a giant step to remove accountability from the four unitary authorities and return it to an indirectly elected, officer dominated body that will take waste management in a direction that was rejected ten years ago. The proposal to invest in mass burn pays scant regard to the strategies and policies of the four unitaries and will be a disastrous move for local residents in B&NES by making our reduction, recycling and Zero Waste strategy irrelevant.