What a waste

Just heard: SUEZ Environment and Cornwall County Council have signed EUR1.5 billion waste management Private Finance Initiative contract - SITA UK, the waste management subsidiary of SUEZ Environment, and Cornwall County Council have concluded a 30-year Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract to manage the county’s household waste. Over its duration, the PFI contract is worth more than EUR 1.5 billion and has an operational and management scope that covers existing and future waste treatment facilities.

Photo above of Katrina: What a waste - Copyrighted photo reprinted here with permission of Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan. See more photos of Katrina.

Greens in Cornwall will hopefully be onto this - I've emailed them to offer support - this PFI will be a total disaster for the people of Cornwall. Cornwall does not have enough waste to justify such a big incinerator. The waste in Cornwall is highly biased towards the summer. Most councils have about 20% more waste in some months than others. Other Green party members are seeking under the Freedom of information to obtain the monthly totals for Cornwall. It would be a good guess that the summer waste is about twice that in winter. And a billion pounds is about £2000 for everyone in Cornwall.

This whole process can't be right. From the initial reports it looks like the council will now be unable to drastically reduce the amount of waste it produces over the next 30 years - it will have to feed the incinerator - if not it is likely that like other Councils it will be fined. The amount of change that has happened to recycling in the UK over just 4 years lead me to hope that we can get to and then exceed the recycling levels found in Europe. Even more importantly we can cut the total amount of waste produced. Cornwall produces 569 Kg of household waste per Head. The best comparable counties produce around 480Kg now. A long term aim should be to drop that to around 300Kg of which most is recycled or composted.

Infact in the same batch of emails as the Cornish news arrived came one from a woman in Randwick - it is a perfect example of how people are willing - and that there are many ways to reduce waste. She writes:

"Just to let you know that I have today contacted Stroud Council re recycling of Tetra Paks and they are going to look in to the company name (below) who also have a website. I am fed up of sticking Tetra Paks in the bin and although I can send them away to be recycled believe that they should be collected by our council. Most households get through numerous Tetra Paks each week - the amount of soya milk we personally get through is astonishing -and I have made it my mission to get it sorted. Thought you would like to know, I will keep you posted on my progress."

We must fight these Waste PFIs as they burn all our bridges as far as waste is concerned. I hope I'm wrong on the contract but we've seen too many of these getting approval - and too many are ending up with these damaging contracts. The more that get approved - esepcially without sustained opposition the easier it becomes for these waste companies. Locally we have recently completed a submission on waste to the County Council - one of the key points we made was about incinerators - they really are not good - better than they were in terms of dangerous emissions but still hopeless when you look at them overall.