MacRubbish

Over on planet EddieMac, the councillor believes that rubbish incinerators produce "absolutely no emissions". That's quite a claim. The Hebburn councillor and cabinet member for U Turns And Sucking Up To Tesco must have missed the bits in the council's own reports that clearly say that incinerators produce shit loads of nasty stuff.

Watt for watt, incinerators produce about three times more CO2 than a gas-fired power station, spew nasty cancer causing dioxins in airborne particulates over the surrounding area and leaves a waste slag at the end of the process that's so toxic that its got to go to specialist landfill sites.

Minor pollution is monitored by local authorities, but major pollution emissions is within the remit of the Environment Agency. Domestic waste incinerators have to operate under the Integrated Pollution and Prevent Control (IPPC) system, which is evaluated and monitored by the Environment Agency. That means the EA certainly thinks that incinerators have a major emissions problem and they should keep an eye on them.

You would have thought a cabinet member would be clued up enough to know about that before talking shite.

If his reported statement is true, Eddie and Labour seriously suck donkey balls on this issue, and clearly shouldn't be let anywhere near anything as dangerous as a decision, never mind an unquestioning and pliant print media. He's a liability.

Let's hope he makes another u-turn.

News from Sunderland

From South Tyneside Friends of the Earth, and with the kind permission of Dan Alliband of BAN Waste, a report on another council revolt, but this time in Sunderland - and how the opposition left the meeting in disgust at the Labour council's undemocratic ploy to keep the Waste Strategy secret:

"About 30 people were on the public gallery at Sunderland Civic on Wednesday evening of 30th January when the council proposed to eject public and press to allow councillors to look at the ‘Business Case’ for the Joint Waste Management Partnership."

Note - despite several Freedom of Information requests, the Business Case has been withheld from the public.

"Sunderland council's argument was based on the argument that it was in the public’s interest as council tax payers to not disclose budget figures for whatever they were planning, because the private bidders would then know what to bid up to. The independents and conservatives put up a case against this to support ‘freedom of information’ and that it was not in the public’s interest for the discussion to be private. Why should people be denied access to all other information about the plans (e.g. locations and treatments etc).

"There was a vote – and 22 voted against the public being ejected, and 47 voted for, at this point the 22 councillors walked out (the council make up is 57 LAB, 1 LIB, 4 Independents and 13 TORY – so this I think this included all independents & Tories and possibly the Lib, and odd Lab back-bencher!?).

"While the Labour councillors jibed how undemocratic it was that the Tories not wanting to discuss the item while they voted so solidly against Freedom of Information was laughable!

"The mayor adjourned the meeting for 5 minutes while the public were asked to leave, but a handful stayed, including FOE members, and the police were called. The mayor and his labour chums returned to the chamber and declared that the agenda item would have to be deferred to next month.

"The remaining members of the public then left by a side exit to avoid the police who had seemingly arrived at the main reception!"

Fire on waste mountain

Last year Councillor Michael Clare, Lead Member Environment, Housing and Transport on South Tyneside Council, declared that no waste incinerator would be built in South Tyneside.

In today's Sunderland Echo, we have a bit of a revelation:

"Secret documents seen by the Echo reveal officials are looking into burning the city's rubbish, along with Gateshead's and South Tyneside's, to create energy in the way power stations generate electricity by burning coal and gas."

Otherwise known as incineration. But not to worry South Tynesiders, Coun Clare is there to protect us. Or perhaps not.

Fiona Brown, project director for the Waste Management Partnership, said:

"... a number of possible sites for the waste treatment facility have been identified in all three council areas, but the partnership could not reveal the locations for "commercial reasons" in case the land had to be bought."

All three council areas.

To be honest we don't really know what's going on. The three councils involved have buttoned up the waste strategy under the cloak of commercial confidentiality. Several Freedom of Information requests have been rejected. Not to protect the commercial interests of the companies involved - but to protect the three councils.

Sunderland council is debating the strategy tomorrow, and council papers issued in advance suggest that the public may be asked to leave the public gallery during the debate.

Local democracy in action.

The con-sultation trap

Curly's Corner Shop recently remarked on the waste of time that is the Downing Street e-petition website, and I agree. Most petitions are just a protest on paper, carry little weight and are easy to ignore. Perhaps reasonably so - they only represent the feelings of the core constituency affected by the issue at hand, and those people who could be bothered to put their name to paper and/or wish to show some solidarity with the petitioners' cause. As long as it doesn't take too much of the signatory's time of course.

Some consultations rely on this kind of apathy, and quite often you can tell by the questions asked which way the authors of the consultation want things to go. So it was with the consultation for the South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership strategy. Some campaigners saw the pointed manipulation that was designed into the consultation response questionnaire so instead formed their own responses.

The consultation document asked things like whether ‘obtaining benefit from rubbish by modern treatment facilities’ was a good idea - but didn't state what ‘modern treatment facilities’ people would be supporting. Hence the interpretation of the results to the consultation assumes that respondents would be happy with any ‘modern treatment facilities’ - irrespective of cost - financial or environmental.

Today's meeting of the exclusively Labour cabinet of South Tyneside Council will discuss/rubber stamp the future of the waste strategy, drawing on the interpretation of results of the recent consultation. The review of responses to the consultation holds no surprises for those with some experience of consultations.

But I suppose at least the council appeared to attempt some level of openness.

Now we discover that the councils which are part of the partnership - South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland, are trying to keep us all in the dark about what is really being planned.

Initially, there were nine treatment options to deal with residual waste, but this has recently narrowed to three options:

Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) of waste through aerobic digestion
A combination of mechanical recovery of recyclable materials with a biological treatment to produce a soil conditioner/compost.

Autoclaving
Recovery of recyclable materials, sterilising biological waste and producing a material that can be used as a refuse derived fuel (RDF or secondary incineration).

Energy from Waste with Combined Heat and Power
Recovering recyclable materials before burning the residual waste to generate energy in the form of electricity and/or heat (otherwise known as incineration - and Councillor Capstick's preferred option).

It's assumed that one of these options will be put forward as part of a PFI project.

A reasonable assumption, because in July 2007, DEFRA approved the initial ‘expression of interest’ for a PFI bid for cash to build a mega waste facility somewhere in the South Tyne area. The expression of interest was originally submitted by the Partnership to DEFRA in March 2007.

Remember, this was all before the consultation ended in August. So it would be nice to know what type of treatment infrastructure was in the expression of interest.

Back in September local waste campaign group BAN Waste asked DEFRA what type of waste treatment infrastructure was being proposed as part of the PFI bid. After six weeks of wrangling DEFRA refused to grant a Freedom of Information request, on the grounds that "the councils involved do not wish this type of information to be made public".

Wow. It's worth saying that again.

"the councils involved do not wish this type of information to be made public."

That's right - our councils want to keep us all in the dark about a policy which will affect us and our children for at least the next thirty years.

What are they concealing?

Guilty pleasures

Cancer Research UK has released research that some cancers have risen due to our lifestyle. Cancer is now characterised as a kind of earthly retribution - paying for the sins of a hedonistic lifestyle - eating, drinking and tanning yourself to death. A timely message perhaps, given that many will be off on their jollies to abuse (enjoy?) themselves in such a manner. CRUK have also kindly provided a twenty page brochure on what you can do to reduce the risk of cancer.

I explored the brochure , where it illustrates the reduction in the number of people smoking has been reflected in a reduction in deaths from lung cancer. The document also rightly emphasised the importance of early detection and prevention. The main message is that personal responsibility is key.

The brochure also heralded a new £12m research project "on health behaviours associated with tobacco use, diet and nutrition, obesity and physical activity, which are major risk factors common to several major disease groups".

I think the conclusions will be pretty obvious without the need to spend £12m - don't smoke, eat a balanced diet and exercise. Pay me please.

However, whilst the brochure calls for personal life changes to prevent cancer (nothing wrong with that), nothing is mentioned of external factors - chemicals and hormones in food and water, cosmetics and household chemicals, pesticides, heavy metals, air pollution, and a whole host of other environmental nasties. Indeed the word environment doesn't even grace the pages.

Now as you've probably guessed, I've got my Waste Management Strategy hat on at the moment so I also explored the brochure for the mention of incineration's biggest risk - dioxins. You guessed it, it's not there. I looked on CRUK's website, which dismissed dioxins as "a group of chemicals that are formed unintentionally by industrial processes such as burning fuels and incinerating waste". The word 'unintentionally' stinks of appeasement. It's like the pharmaceutical euphemism 'side-effect' or the military one 'collateral damage'. We know it happens - but tough shit babe, you can't do anything about it.

Some press releases from CRUK even downplay research suggesting links between the environment and cancer - comments that wouldn't be out of place on a government or chemical company press page.

That environmental factors have become the silent elephant in the room invites accusations that CRUK aren't being entirely honest. The cancer charities should be out shouting on the streets as loudly about the environmental risk factors as they are about their new 'live healthy' guilt trip.

But if they did, would they suddenly find funding dry up?