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.

Glass act

Hilarious comment from the Council about the danger of glass milk bottles in Tuesday's Gazette article about school milk to be supplied in cartons instead of bottles.

The council, essentially backing down to a suppliers wish to be less sustainable (and foist disposal costs onto the council taxpayer), used this gem of spin:

"Cartons are safer and easier to handle, as there is no risk of chipping and breakage."

To prostitute yourself to a corporation's interests using the name of safety must be all in a day's work for a council spokesperson. No wonder the spokesperson didn't want to be named.

I suppose now the council will demand all South Tyneside schools to use only blunt pencils, pointless compasses and set squares without sharp corners.

Room for vroom

An old friend from the International Standard of Comparative Measurement has returned to measure volume - the Wembley Stadium.

Researchers at Oxford Brookes University have calculated that enough vehicle scrap will be created over the next 25 years to fill 1,000 Wembleys. Nice to see all that Oxford intellect being used productively. However, the Guardian piece covering this news also remarks that this is the same university that gave professional oaf Jeremy Clarkson an honorary degree.

It's not clear in the article, but I presume that the unit of the Wembley has been re-assessed to take account of the size of the new stadium. Given that some folk are still stewing over metrication, I'm not sure how society will adjust to the new standard.

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?

Talking rubbish

Not content in allowing the Progressives to get all the stupid is as stupid does action, South Tyneside's Labour councillors are now also weighing in behind incineration. At the Riverside CAF meeting on Thursday 19th July, Councillor Ed Malcolm threw his reputation behind "Energy from Waste" (yes, I know it's a spin word for incineration) as a 'solution' for dealing with the waste we don't recycle or compost. Councillor Michael Clare assured everyone that "no incinerators will be built in South Tyneside"; but it does allow plenty of leeway for building them in nearby Sunderland or Gateshead. I can almost hear the people of Wrekenton groaning.

Councillor Malcolm seemed anxious to let everyone know that EfW (yes, I know, burning rubbish) isn't as bad as it used to be, and verbally painted a rosy image of free energy and heating for homes. He missed out the less than tinted bits about the carbon dioxide emissions, heavy metal particulates and our old cancer causing chums dioxins. He also missed the point that incineration reduces take up of recycling. Oops, and you still have to find somewhere to bury the toxic slag that's left over.

I'm sure the people from Byker have a lot of good things to say about EfW incineration. Well, the one's who didn't get cancer anyway.

Coincidentally, Ed Malcolm's brother, Deputy Leader Councillor Iain Malcolm, has a financial relationship with rubbish supremos Premier Waste Management, although I'm sure Iain Malcolm removes himself from such discussions in council.

I suppose it should come as no surprise that Labour councillors support burning rubbish. Labour councillors support the second Tyne Tunnel, backed concreting the Fellgate greenbelt and proposed planting a training shed (sorry, 'superschool') on Temple Park. Given that Labour and Progressive are supposed to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, when it comes to incineration how do they both manage to take the same ground at the same time?

When it comes to rubbish ideas our councillors are world class.

Has no-one told them - there's no such thing as a safe level of pollution?

Wasted targets

Further exploration of South Tyneside Council's Draft Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy reveals another example of target-itis. Here we have the policy aspiration for recycling:

"Policy 7: The Partnership will aim to achieve the following recycling / composting targets:
- 30 per cent by 2010
- 35 per cent by 2015
- 45 per cent by 2020"

Look impressive? Challenging? Compare South Tyneside's aspirations compared with what other UK councils are doing now:

Top 10 recycling councils:
North Kesteven 51.5 per cent
Rushcliffe 49.9 per cent
South Cambridgeshire 49.4 per cent
St Edmundsbury 48.6 per cent
Huntingdonshire 48.0 per cent
Melton Mowbray 47.1 per cent
Waveney 46.6 per cent
Forest Heath 46.1per cent
Teignbridge 45.4per cent
Lichfield 45.4per cent

These councils are beating South Tyneside's 2020 recycling target now.

Like the Council's pathetic 'target' to reduce it's carbon dioxide emissions by 5 per cent over 5 years, it seems the council only like targets which are easily achievable with the minimum output. It looks good on performance target press releases I suppose.

If the council wants to avoid accusations of being cynical and lazy, it (and that includes councillors too) really needs to up it's game and aim higher.

Burning ambitions

South Tyneside Council has launched it's consultation process covering the new Draft Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy which will take us to 2020. Among the commonsense "three R's" (reduce, reuse, recycle) proposals, the council is raising the subject of incineration.

South Tyneside Council has entered into a partnership agreement with Gateshead and Sunderland councils to establish the new waste strategy.

Incineration is proposed as one of the possible methods of disposal for the waste which we cannot (or we can't be bothered to) recover. Since the terms 'incineration' and 'burning' aren't easy to sell, the process comes under the wizzy euphemism of "Energy from Waste" (EfW) or "energy recovery".

If incineration is selected there's a rumour that the preferred site is on the site of the former incinerator at Wrekenton, on the border between Gateshead and Sunderland, although it should be noted there is no official documentation supporting this.

So soon after seeing off the industrial park on the green belt at Fellgate, and the rehabilitation of the Monkton cokeworks site it seems that residents in that part of South Tyneside may be faced with another dark environmental cloud. Not to mention the people in the Wrekenton area who thought they'd seen the last of local waste incineration.

Dioxins are a pretty nasty bunch

Incinerators release dioxins and heavy metals, which can cause cancer, birth defects and endometriosis.

The rise of endometriosis – a painful condition possibly afflicting as many as ten per cent of British women – is linked to emissions of dioxins. British mothers carry in their breast milk levels of dioxins which significantly exceed the World Health Organisation’s recommended “tolerable daily intake”, partly due to the widespread incineration of hazardous waste.

Studies have repeatedly linked dioxins to both breast and testicular cancers.

A study by the US Environmental Protection Agency suggested that as many as 7 per cent of all cancers are caused by dioxins, mostly from incinerators.

Progressives - the crazy bunch?

At the East Shields CAF meeting on the 5th July Progressive Councillor and Progressive Party leader Jim Capstick nailed his colours firmly to EfW (yes, that's incineration) as his party's preferred method of disposal for the waste designated as 'unrecoverable'. The Draft Waste Strategy concedes that incineration "will generate additional hazardous waste".

Quite why his party is called 'progressive' is odd. They have lent their support to a practice which will damage the environment and will precipitate a new crisis in public health. The victims will be among the poor and the young. In my understanding this is about as far from progress as you can get.