24 March 2010
Greens in Norfolk are gearing up for a new fight against plans to burn refuse at an incinerator in King’s Lynn.
Conservative controlled Norfolk County Council today (Wednesday March 24th) announced a shortlist of two contractors to provide a new waste plant at Saddlebow on the edge of King’s Lynn. Both consortiums plan to build an incinerator and burn waste until 2040. The selection of a preferred bidder for the King’s Lynn waste plant is still about six months away. It is likely that another six months will elapse before the contract is closed.
Michael de Whalley, Green Party General Election candidate for North-West Norfolk, has campaigned against having an incinerator at Saddlebow ever since he discovered it was a possibility. Today he said:
“This incinerator will stop Norfolk’s recycling in its tracks. The County is setting itself a 55% recycling target where it could be going for over 80% with a Zero-waste policy. With the incinerator in place until 2040, and needing continual waste to burn, where will be the incentive to improve recycling? We have always called for Reuse and Recycling Parks, and smaller scale anaerobic digestion systems, that will create many jobs in the local economy, and be better for the environment.”
The Green Party has always favoured establishing Reuse and Recycling Parks which create local employment and where a larger proportion of waste material can be recovered rather than destroyed. Whilst the County Council claims a “technology neutral” stance on waste disposal, this decision confirms that the Conservative administration would prefer to burn rather than recycle and reclaim..
The use of an incinerator, which has to be fed with a specific amount of waste to make it viable, will not just reduce the incentive to recycle, but it will make it financially impossible. The Council plans a recycling target of 55%, only slightly above the present target of 43%. Greens say that over the 30 year horizon of the project this target should be much more ambitious, aiming to reach over 80%.
The incinerator will mean such targets are never reached, and incinerators ultimately waste resources since they burn material, such as plastics, which could be recycled, then new resources are used to remake what need not have been destroyed.
The Council emphasises the job creation possibilities offered by the project. But job creation is not exclusive to the incinerator plan. Indeed, Greens believe that other technologies, notably reuse, reclamation and smaller scale anerobic digestion, would offer much greater employment opportunities.
Even though controls on flue gases from modern incinerators are more effective than they used to be, the Green Party is also concerned there will be public disquiet about the possibility of accidental pollution. In 2006, Greens played a leading role in the campaign by local people which led to the abandonment of a County Council proposal for a similar incinerator at Costessey, on the edge of Norwich.
The Greens recognise that the disposal of residual waste (that which cannot be reused or recycled) is becoming more difficult. Space currently approved for landfill will soon run out, according to the Environment Agency. Ultimately, the Greens believe, only adopting zero-waste policies that reduce the total amount of waste we produce, coupled with ambitious recycling targets can provide the environmentally friendly waste-management solution we need.
