Javelin Park incinerator fails all 8 principles of good-policy making

This is my email to my local County Councillor....click here to write to your councillor:

Dear Jason,

As you will know the Tribunal to decide Gloucestershire County Council's appeal against the Information Commissioner's Office Decision Notice (which required disclosure of the full incinerator contract) has been postponed due to the sheer quantity of information submitted by GCC to the court for consideration. Postponement was requested by the Information Commissioner's Office, who did not wish to risk the case being "part heard" in only 2 days.  The new extended dates for the hearing are 27-30 September inclusive. 

Transparency - or lack of it - remains a key issue in the whole saga, as renowned environmentalist and writer Jonathon Porritt made clear at the recent Talking Rubbish seminar at Gloucestershire University. I wonder if you had the chance to go to the talk?

In my view it was fascinating to see the extent of failure by the County Council....Jonathon Porritt outlined 8 principles of good policy-making - Javelin Park fails on all counts. Jonathon Porritt's opening speech at the seminar laid out, blow by blow, all the reasons why Javelin Park is a perfect example of bad policy-making in action.  You can watch his brilliant talk here: http://stroudcommunity.tv/rubbish-seminar-porritts/

Porritt set out 8 principles on which resource management policy-making should be based in a sustainable context, and these are:

transparency
value for money
community engagement
efficiency in resource use
avoiding infrastructure lock-in
moving towards a circular economy
future-proofing
creating an ultra-low carbon future

Javelin Park runs counter to every single one of these principles, and the sooner the County Council and indeed Urbaser Balfour Beatty realise this, the sooner good taxpayers' money can be prevented from being thrown after bad. 

The seminar also featured Mike Brown, MD of waste consultancy Eunomia, who made it clear that by the time Javelin Park is built (if it goes ahead), there will already be more incineration capacity in the UK than there is waste to process, creating conditions for an economic meltdown in the sector.

I would welcome your views on this matter; do you agree we should at least be waiting for the report in September before starting to build an incinerator?

You will no doubt know there is a viable alternative that will be considerably cheaper. See more at: http://communityr4c.com/about/the-technology/

Yours sincerely, Philip Booth