Communities Communities Communities Communities speak out on speak out on speak out on speak out on wastewastewastewaste Living next door to a two-mile long landfill site or a polluting incinerator? Local communities tell us what it’s really like to live with bad waste management and what the government must do about it. The following interviews, with community groups working on local waste issues, give accounts of the misery of living with bad waste management, from fly infestations and bubbling, toxic leachate to increased health problems and litter. However, they also tell of the forward-thinking approach and perseverance of members of local communities to confront these unsustainable systems and challenge our current culture of high consumption. The overriding feeling is that society desperately needs to reduce the production of waste and to use such waste as a resource, rather than just burning or burying it. The accounts were given by individuals during one-to-one interviews, where the following questions were posed: 1. What are you working on and why? 2. What do you think needs to happen and why? 3. If you could make one recommendation to the Government, what would it be? Below is a map of the locations of the community groups and some further background information and a policy analysis of the work for future campaigns. Please use the points on the map or the list of community groups to navigate to the interviews. With each of the interviews are the contact details for the community groups. Should you wish to get involved in a local campaign please contact the relevant person, or your nearest Friends of the Earth local group.

Map of the local communities The map below shows the locations of the community groups interviewed for this project and the area of waste management that they have been campaigning on. Please click a coloured dot to view contact details and the interview response from that group.

Northern Ireland

North East

North West

Yorkshire and Humberside

Wales

East Midlands

Eastern

South EastSouth West

West MidlandsRecyclingLandfillIncineration

Region

Incinerators Landfill Recycling

Northern Ireland

Belfast Friends of the Earth

Bryson House Recycling Centre

Parents Against Incineration (PAIN)

Rhondda Against Nant-y-Gwddon Tip (RANT) Residents Against The Tip In Llanidloes (RATTIL)

Wales TCC, The Wales Broad Based Organisation

Ruabon Action Group

Newport Wastesavers

Actions for Community Recycling Enterprises (ACRE)

North West Bolton Friends of the Earth

Action to Reduce and Recycle Our Waste (ARROW)

CREATE UK Campaign Against The Incineration Of Refuse Derwentside Friends of the Earth

North East

Red Alert

BAN Waste

Hull Friends of the Earth Scabba Wood Residents Doncaster Community Recycling Partnership Sheffield Community Recycling Action Project Ltd

Yorkshire and Humberside

Sheffield Against Incineration

Residents Against Toxic Schemes (RATS)

Kerbside Recycling

West Midlands

Stop Kidderminster Incinerator campaigns (SKI)

Fight Landfill Action Group Stewponey (FLAGS)

Brumcan

Derby Friends of the Earth

Local Environmental Awareness Forum (LEAF) Ault Hucknall Environment Action Group (AHEAG)

East Midlands Nottingham Friends of the

Earth Save Notts Water

Loughborough Friends of the Earth

Friends Of Compton And Surrounds (FOCAS)

Avon Friends of the Earth

Devon Community Composting Network

South West Cornwall Friends of the Earth

Torbay and South Devon Friends of the Earth

South Molton Recycle Ltd

Guildford Anti-Incinerator Network (GAIN)

People Against Landfill Sites (PALS)

WyeCycle

Capel Action Group Portsmouth Friends of the Earth

South East

People Against Landfill Sites (PALS)

Stand To Oppose Pollution (STOP)

TJ Composting, Brighton

Pitsea Mount Community Association Herts Friends of the Earth

East No Incinerators For Essex (NIFE)

South Bedfordshire Friends of the Earth

Colchester & NE Essex Friends of the Earth

Enfield Friends of the Earth London Bexley And District Against Incinerator Risks (BADAIR)

ECT Recycling

Introduction This report is formed from interviews with a selection of 50-odd community groups around the country - those involved with incinerator issues (existing and proposed ones), those living by landfill sites (or where one is threatened), and also with groups who have organised re-use, recycling or composing schemes. As a community group co-ordinator myself (Greenwich and Lewisham Friends of the Earth), I have a fair idea of what community groups are about, however I have found myself impressed and inspired by what I have heard that people are doing – for some of them what they are suffering (with known problems, and worries of unknown ones) and by their positive response, and for others by their dedication and ingenuity in getting things organised. For example, I can think of Val in Newcastle trying to deal with terrible problems from the incinerator there, and Dorothy from Derby who has had to get in contact with Australian groups to help get clued-up on the problems of a proposed gasification plant. There’s no end of suffering gone on for some around landfill sites as I heard from for instance Garrod in Rhondda (who has finally got his site closed) and Peter in Milton Keynes where two primary schools are only approximately 400m from the working face of the landfill (who is trying), and from Paul in Wakefield who I can still hear describing his tip in a broad Wakefield accent as “2 miles long, ¾ mile wide and 64m in height. It’s like bloody Ben Nevis”, and Nicola in Skelmersdale threatened by the 13th landfill within a 5-mile radius, but who still comes up with positive ideas. There are so many impressive stories of groups setting up recycling schemes (usually because as Eric in Belfast said “nobody else was doing it”), and I can’t forget Steve from South Molton in Devon describing the amount of glass to be collected for recycling as generally low, but explaining “there are some wine drinkers by the coast though!” There has been much condemnation of the Environment Agency – sorry tales from those next to sites of a chronically underfunded EA not doing it’s job properly; as Rupert from MiltonKeynes says, they are under pressure to keep a plant open. Pauline from Wrexham says they see themselves as an advisory body for industry and struggled to get it accepted that there were nasty dioxin emissions from landfill gas flares and generators. Sister Imelda from Billingham wants the whole cocktail of emissions they get there tested together. What has come through is that these local community people are incredibly clear and practical about the issues facing them and the blockages to making things better, and positive and forward-looking about what needs to happen – coming up with solutions which might be

Incinerator - SELCHP in London (South East London Combined Heat and Power) Image © Jennifer Bates / Friends of the Earth

practical or legislative. They have exploded myths such as the cost of recycling (it needn’t be, according to Andy from London who says a community approach is not the high-capital way private operators want to help them make profits for their shareholders), and exposed fallacies such as recycling rates (often inflated because they are not defined, as they should be, by what is actually accepted for recycling). What has been shown is that while there is a wide range of different ideas mentioned, there is also great consistency. First of all on what needs to happen – which is essentially we don’t need incineration, we must recycle (and treat waste locally)! Those involved with incinerators do not think we should just go on with landfill as usual, those involved with landfill do not think the way forward is incineration at all, and those who are involved with recycling are not trying to maximise their recyclate – they and the others all talk of waste minimisation! They talk of waste not as “waste”, but as a resource, and that waste should be recycling led according to Andy from Bristol. As Ian from Manchester says the question should not be “why recycling?” but “why not recycling?” There are calls for instance for “pay as you throw” from Ralph from Penzance, and calls from all directions to make manufacturers responsible for packaging. They say we still need landfill even with incineration, but we wouldn’t need any more landfill if we did proper recycling instead of incineration. They say that incineration stops other options like recycling being properly considered, and that after incineration, waste is more pernicious than it was before. Recommendations are consistent for not letting the site operators keep the landfill tax money – it should go towards recycling, and that it should be extended to a disposal tax. There are calls for conflict of interest to be removed (e.g. councils responsible for a waste contract and also planning permission, or in one case -Anne from Chesterfield says- where a county council had shares in a company applying for permission). Separating waste disposal contracts from recycling contracts is seen as important. There is a common call for proper debate and for transparency, and there are concerns for a lack of right of appeal for community groups. Most of all, however the consistent clamour is listen to the people. My own experience in Lewisham gives cause for concern – in the proposals for a Health Impact Assessment on the SELCHP incinerator demanded by the local people an objective was already stated as “to make recommendations about action which can be taken to …narrow the gap between residents’ perceptions and the scientific evidence”, as if people just don’t understand. Certainly my lasting impression has been that these local community groups represent an extraordinary wealth of experience, knowledge, insight and ideas. People on the ground really do know. And as they say “listen to us!” There are stories of success when people do, such as Sue from Hull reporting that after their campaigning some council members changed their minds on having an incinerator, and on the value of local communities getting involved such as Felix from Faversham explaining that at a public inquiry their group’s input with expert witness proved crucial as the county’s witness collapsed. Community recycling groups also say work with us – the money stays local too. You can now “listen” to the community voice by reading the following, and I hope the Government will too! Thanks go to everyone for their time. One woman, trying to find time to speak to me, explained that at home she had 3 kids, 2 businesses to run, as well as 1 landfill opposition campaign to run, seemed particularly busy, but thanks to all. Jennifer Bates Researcher and Greenwich and Lewisham Friends of the Earth Co-ordinator

Policy analysis The Policy and Innovation Unit within the Cabinet Office are currently grappling with the task of identifying policy mechanisms to reduce waste, increase recycling and encourage the sustainable use of resources. In doing this they are speaking to a range of "experts" within industry, academia and national environment groups. However, there a very important constituency which they are not talking to, namely those communities living next door to incinerators landfills or recycling schemes. These communities know about waste management. These groups should not be dismissed as "nimby groups", instead they should be recognised as "self taught experts" with unique perspectives and a valuable contribution to make. The following policy recommendations are examples of recommendations made by a number of the groups:

• Phase out or ban incineration or introduce a moratorium on the incineration of waste.

• Increase the landfill tax, introduce a tax on incineration and remove subsidies to incineration. Scrap the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme and put the money into recycling. Chancellor Gordon Brown recently indicated that he was interested in exploring the introduction of an incineration tax and that he is warm to the idea of substantially increasing the landfill tax. He is reviewing the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme).

• Provide the Environment Agency with more resources and make them much tougher

on polluters - more community focussed than industry friendly. Some groups suggested that the Environment Agency is so poor that it should be disbanded. Groups in Northern Ireland would like an independent environment protection agency (and the backlog of EU legislation introduced).

• Make planning more democratic - for example give local communities the right of

appeal if planning permission is given (currently developers can appeal if their application is rejected but communities have no right of appeal).

• Increase national recycling and composting targets, aim for "zero waste". Make local

authorities recycle more of their waste before they consider disposal options for any residual waste.

• Provide more money for local authorities to recycle. (Research for Friends of the

Earth suggests that the Government needs to invest another £200 million a year in recycling and composting.)

• Charge people for the amount of waste they throw out (i.e. the waste they don't reuse,

recycle or compost).

• Make manufacturers responsible for recycling their products at the end of their lives and financial responsible for disposal costs. Introduce a tax on packaging.

• Provide financial incentives to encourage the use of recycled materials.

Mike Childs Senior Campaigner – Industry and Pollution

Incinerators – Northern Ireland Cathy Maguire, Belfast Friends of the Earth, 32 Lawrence Street, Belfast BT7 lLF Tel: 02890876537(evening) Email: c.m.Maguire@qub.ac.uk 1. We are working on implementing the Northern Ireland Waste Strategy, and at the minute, reviewing the plans that are out for consultation, with the object of getting recycling started and to prevent the building of incinerators. 2. We need a commitment from our devolved administration and local authorities to tackle the problems of environmental pollution; we need a backlog of European environmental legislation implemented into law. We need a commitment to waste minimisation and recycling. We have little to no infrastructure for recycling – we need the money to put this in place. We have a recycling rate of less than 5%, and a very low level of awareness of environmental issues among the public and in Government (these issues were not a priority in a conflict situation, so they’re only starting to be tackled now; they also weren’t a priority under direct rule). We need a cross-border body to co-ordinate waste policy and develop markets for recycled materials together with associated infrastructure. For instance, we’d probably only need one paper recycling mill for the whole of Ireland, and one plastics recycling plant for the whole of Ireland. 3. An independent Environmental Protection Agency for Northern Ireland must be put in place. At the moment environmental protection is handled by an agency within the Department of the Environment, and because of crown immunity they are unable to prosecute some of the biggest polluters which are other Government agencies e.g. roads service and water service.

Incinerators – Wales Teresa Brzoza, Parents Against Incineration (PAIN), 135 Port Tennant Road, Port Tennant, Swansea SA1 8JN Tel: 01792 652526 Email: pain@totalise.co.uk 1. We are trying to stop an incinerator that has been built here in Port Talbot from getting an IPPC licence, because incineration turns waste material from a relatively inoffensive substance into highly toxic emissions and residues. Despite our efforts the licence was granted by the Environment Agency on the 9th May, to the disgust of many of the residents. It is a licence to kill, not just a licence to burn. We are legally challenging the decision. In the documentation supporting the permit, the National Assembly of Wales made no comment at all on this, the first incinerator to be built in Wales. The Assembly has, however, called in the decision on an almost identical incinerator for Wrexham, to be built by the same company, after that council had voted to have it. The Assembly could use their devolutionary powers to revoke all or part of the Swansea planning permission, i.e. call the decision in. We know that most Assembly Members had not even bothered to read the most recent Health Impact Assessment which stated clearly there would be serious health hazards connected with this incinerator. The firm of consultants who prepared the document were told by the plant director to present the health risks in a “more palatable form for the general public”. They were told the document would not have been released in its present form if the company had seen it first.

PAIN (Parents Against Incineration) demonstrating in London. Image © PAIN

2. Incineration is the “Slob’s Option” (use it, chuck it, burn it) – it is a lot easier for councils who are too lazy to introduce efficient recycling schemes. Far more money and time needs to be spent on ways to reduce, re-use and recycle. Out of a total of £32m capital cost of building a municipal waste incinerator about a third is spent on abatement equipment. If they used the same building but without burning, the abatement equipment wouldn’t be needed, and that money could be spent on developing recycling schemes. Roughly another third of the capital cost is spent on separating equipment where waste is separated mainly by size, not by composition. If a fraction of this was spent on separated, kerbside waste collection, most of this equipment wouldn’t be needed. Incineration costs twice as much as landfill, so with incineration council tax is bound to rise – we’d be paying to be poisoned! The Environment Agency says that at Port Talbot we have the worst air quality in Britain. We mustn’t add to this pollution if there are alternatives – which there are. 3. The Government have introduced a landfill tax, but they should introduce a huge incineration tax to discourage councils from taking the option of incineration. We must think of the future.

Incinerators – Wales Chris Pilsbury, TCC, The Wales Broad Based Organisation, 37 Kingsmills Road, Wrexham, LL13 8NH Tel: 01978 262588 (day and evening) l. We have worked to get the waste debate into the public arena. This is because there is a planned Resources Recovery Centre for Wrexham which includes PFI-funded 52,000 tonnes/annum energy from waste incinerator, with a 25-year contract to deal with household and commercial waste. As a community group, our first concern was meaningful public consultation, but the more we looked into the consequences for health, environmental sustainability, finance etc, we realised we had to object to this scheme. 2. In the light of 13,000 people objecting, this incinerator should not go ahead. Since the petition was submitted to the Welsh Assembly, the Environment Minister, Sue Essex, has called the decision in, which we hope will lead to a public inquiry. This has still to be announced. A properly resourced, source-separated kerbside collection of waste system should be implemented across the whole borough as soon as possible. 3. We think that the incineration of municipal waste should be banned because of pollution, health ill effects, and the disincentive to recycling - which makes it unsustainable. We believe the Government should legislate to make products and packaging recyclable, and to promote the markets for recycling. There needs to be enforcement and encouragement for local councils, and an education programme for the community.

Incinerators – North West Phil Newsham, Bolton Friends of the Earth, 23 Kirklands, Harwood, Bolton BL2 4LU Tel: 01204 366913 (home) / mobile 07944 724581 Email: PHIL@kirklands40.freeserve.co.uk 1. We’ve been trying to find out whether incinerators are a health hazard or not. I’ve contacted the Environment Agency for them to test the air quality, but they just told me the Raikes Lane incinerator in Bolton did meet current standards. 2. There needs to be greater public awareness about the issues around incineration. We need to look to alternatives to incineration, like doing more recycling. We seem to be towards the bottom of the table compared to other European countries for recycling. 3. The Government must progress alternatives for waste disposal instead of incineration.

Incinerators – North East Val Barton, Campaign Against the Incineration of Refuse (CAIR), Newcastle-upon-Tyne Tel: 01912 655241 Email: val@cair.org.uk 1. Our initial campaign was to rid the City of Newcastle upon Tyne of the Byker incinerator when we heard by chance that the Council wanted to double the capacity of the incinerator to burn 83,000 tonnes of waste and 15,000 tonnes of tyres to lift the calorific values of the waste. In the past pellets were made out of the waste to burn and to produce heat for houses. The heating system is inefficient and unreliable. People are told it’s cheap, but at £8 for a one bedroom flat and £11 for a family house, every week, whether the heating is on or not, it is very expensive. Coal is burnt at the moment, as the company waits for a new authorisation. The pellets are a really polluting system, and I also understand that pellets are to be made in the plant near Swansea. With the incinerator in amongst the houses, local people have had to live for 20 years next to mounds of stinking waste waiting to be burnt attracting rats and flies, the stink often penetrating the houses. The stack has caught fire, and there have been regular fires in the pellet making plant. Also there have been soot blowing operations via the stack carried out during the night. This is never tested. The council has kept telling us that the Environment Agency would monitor everything, but we found that the Environment Agency hadn’t been monitoring properly at all. They hadn’t noticed for six years that the incinerator company had been giving our Council a mix of fly ash and bottom ash to put on footpaths in allotment sites, public parks and bridleways, and even given it to farms calling it recycling. It has cost over half a million pounds of taxpayers’ money to test and clear the ash to landfill, where it should have gone in the first place. Both the plant operator and the Council have been prosecuted by the Environment Agency, but the Environment Agency, so far, have got away with not fulfilling their statutory duty. The report on the ash tested said there was “massive contamination with dioxins/furans and substantial contamination by heavy metals”. The target level for dioxins in the environment is 5ng/kg; 9,500ng/kg of dioxins was found on one allotment site where hens pecked at it and children played on it.

CAIR (Campaign Against the Incineration of Refuse) demonstrating against the Byker incinerator Image © Val Barton

We’ve found that a third of the waste that is burnt is left as toxic ash, and that still has to go to landfill - so incineration doesn’t remove the need for landfill. The other two thirds is emitted into the air as “airfill”. This is a toxic cocktail of chemicals, acid gases and heavy metals, with mercury vapour a particular worry. There are also global warming implications. The Environment Agency issues permits allowing incinerator companies to release these chemicals, measured by the tonne. Dioxins are also released but measured in picograms, tiny but deadly levels. As filtration systems are improved, these pollutants are released as smaller particulates which are more easily absorbed into the systems of people and animals. This highly toxic cocktail of chemicals can never all be monitored. These chemicals effect our health. They accumulate in our body crossing the placenta, giving a developing foetus a massive dose in proportion to its body weight. The consequences are endometriosis, behavioural differences and impairment of our immune systems, intellectual difficulties and hormone-related cancers. We’ve heard from the US that their EPA say that 7% of all cancers are caused by dioxins. In Byker, we have 20% long term sick, and deaths by all causes are high. 2. Landfill and incineration are a risk to health. They cause pollution and they waste the world’s diminishing resources. We all need to look at our wasteful ways. We need to reduce waste and re-use these resources, cutting back on pollution, producing more jobs and creating a healthier environment. This can only be carried out effectively if our waste is separated out and collected from every doorstep. Waste should be treated as a useful resource to help the economy. 3. The Government must stop all subsidies to incineration, and move to a zero waste strategy. If recycling were on a level playing field with other waste strategies it would win every time. It could produce thousands of jobs around the country and is better for health and the environment. It should be a criminal offence to burn or landfill organic waste which, if separated and collected, could be a vital replenishment for the land.

Incinerators – North East Don Kent, Derwentside Friends of the Earth, 33 Summerdale, Shotley Bridge, Consett, County Durham DH8 0ET Tel: 01207 591559 (home) Tel: 01912 778955 (work) Email: don.kent.@virgin.net Website: www.derwentside.org.uk/foe/ 1. We’re working on the draft County Durham waste plan that is out for consultation, and we’ve been asked to be involved. We’re concerned about the environmental and health impacts of waste disposal in the area. There’s been a huge amount of landfill in this area over the last decades, and now that there’s a landfill tax, the council are tempted into incineration, which concerns people. 2. Recycling targets should be upped as a way to divert from landfill. Tax breaks and grants need to be increased to make recycling more attractive to divert from the idea of incineration. The benefits of heat from waste being burnt in incinerators are more difficult to achieve in a rural area like Durham – to get the benefits you’d have to site an incinerator in a town, which people wouldn’t want. 3. Local authorities should have to be told that recycling is the first option, and should have to make the case to do anything else e.g. landfill or incineration.

Incinerators – North East Sister Imelda Poole I.B.V.M. (Loreto), The Clarences Environment Group, Billingham 1. We are concerned and need reassurance that a third line at the incinerator plant will not give the firm free license to bring waste from further afield than Teeside, Durham and Tyneside. We feel that the government (local and national) are putting finance before due considered care of local people. We feel that finance rules much of the decision making in relation to the developments of this plant. Since the opening of the plant the rules for where waste comes from seems to be being extended further and further afield. This concerns us. We also want continued assurance that only household waste is burnt at the plant. (I was passing the plant the other day and the smell from one of the lines, which seemed to be in trouble, was very bad and unusual smoke was coming from the plant. I rang up the manager and he said that they had to close one of the lines temporarily due to this trouble). We have involved our local MP in investigating the plant operator, to assure ourselves that the fly ash and the bottom ash from the plant are being effectively separated. We have been told that this is happening safely, but this needs constant checking. The disposal of the ash really concerns us. We are being told that some of this processed ash is being used as a road material, but we are aware that much of this is being stock-piled and is not being shifted quickly enough. Ash is stocked in high piles open to the wind at the Tonks site next to the plant, and is dangerous. We would like something done about this We are given an annual reading of all the varieties of possible pollutant emissions from the plant and this in relation to national guidelines on pollution. We are aware that the plant is always within these guidelines presently set, but is way above, in some respects, the emission levels accepted as the European guidelines. We know that the plant is working hard to reduce these levels in the knowledge that by 2007 (I think) they will have to comply with the European guidelines. Our concern is that government watchdogs inspect the pollution levels at a given time of a given day in only one particular plant. Port Clarence is an estate community totally surrounded by three miles of chemical and waste plants plus a landfill. If all these plants were inspected for emissions at the same time on a given day I fear that the air pollution would read quite differently. Is it possible for this to be done once a year? We are grateful, however, for the contributions the plant operator has made to the development of community life. 2. We need constant checking that the bottom ash and fly ash are safely separated. We would like something done about the stock-piling of ash and the ash being open to the wind, and regular checks made of it. We would like to have inspections that looked at the emissions for all the plants together and consider the cocktail effects. Stockton-on-Tees borough council should be spending a lot more than they are on its recycling. 3. The government needs to examine the issues stated above which concern local people.

Incinerators–Yorkshire & Humberside Sue Jolliffe, Hull Friends of the Earth, 47 Kingsway, Cottingham, Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire HU16 5BB Tel: 01482 845958 Email: sue@jolliffe.karoo.co.uk 1. There is a proposal for a waste to energy incinerator at Hull. After a lot of publicity and a lot of campaigning by a mix of local groups who loosely came together as Hull Against the Incinerator, some members on the local council changed their minds and the plan was rejected. The waste company has appealed, and so there will now be a public inquiry. The main concern that local people had was the production of dioxins and other possible dangerous chemicals, which would be released into the atmosphere. There was also the fact that Hull has a very low recycling rate, and we were concerned that other options like more recycling weren’t considered properly. 2. The Government needs to look at waste more seriously than it has been, and listen to local communities in how they want their waste problems solved. The packaging industry must also be sorted out. Whatever legislation there is doesn’t work – we are still producing too much packaging. 3. The Government needs to put more resources for the local councils to use to set up proper kerbside recycling schemes and/or composting schemes, because a lot of them would like to do this but they’re strapped for cash. Maybe it should be mandatory. The Government should also sort out the packaging industry.

Incinerators–Yorkshire & Humberside Andy Booth, Sheffield Against Incineration, Sheffield Tel: 07899 710765 Email: andy@spacewasters.com Website: www.sheffieldagainstincineration.co.uk

1. We’re trying to get the proposals for a new Sheffield incinerator stopped, and in place of incineration to try to get recycling off the ground in Sheffield, because that would be better for the environment and better for the sustainable management of waste. 2. Sheffield City Council needs to get recycling schemes up and running – they need to focus their energies on it. It’s an either /or situation. Despite the fact that the council say that you can have both - incineration and recycling – in fact if you are incinerating you’re not recycling ambitiously enough. You can avoid incineration by minimising waste production and increasing recycling. 3. The Government must scrap the incineration building programme.

Sheffield Against Incineration's Gemma Lock protesting Image © Sheffield Against Incineration

Incinerators – West Midlands Clare Cassidy, Stop Kidderminster Incinerator campaign (SKI), Kidderminster Contact: Bob Harris Tel: 01562 752436 (day and evening) Contact: Christine & Brian Jordan Tel: 01562 746339 (evening only) Email: brian_jordan13655@hotmail.com 1. We have been working on a campaign to stop an incinerator being built in Kidderminster, which would be in a densely populated residential area close to houses. We got the planning application turned down by the county council, but the company appealed, and we then had a public inquiry. We are awaiting the decision which will be announced in August 2002. What is irritating is that democratically elected people make a decision to turn down a planning application and the company can appeal, but if the boot was on the other foot and the council approved the application, local residents would not have the right to appeal. We don’t think there is a need for incineration at all, and there are serious concerns about incinerators. They crowd out recycling in the future (you have to feed these things), and also there are concerns about impacts on health from emissions. The way the whole thing has happened is a problem. The county council didn’t have a waste plan, so the public weren’t consulted about how waste should be disposed of, and specifically there has been no public consultation about having an incinerator. The county council asked companies to design waste disposal schemes and the detail of these proposed schemes became “commercially confidential information”, so there could be no public consultation on the detail of these schemes. 2. Although the proposed scheme would have a doorstep collection and recycling scheme associated with the incinerator, the amount of recycling planned is totally inadequate. We need to pursue some radical waste minimisation policies e.g. to reduce packaging. We need to do more to help people separate their waste out, and increase recycling. There does need to be public consultation about how we dispose of our waste. There also needs to be a radical change with PFI for waste disposal plans. Tax payers and council tax payers would be paying a lot more for the disposal of their waste using PFI, than they would if PFI wasn’t used. Even now the council is paying the costs for the company to bring an appeal. The PFI schemes actually encourage incineration. 3. We need a moratorium on incinerators because local people don’t want them. There must be financial incentives for people to recycle, and disincentives if you don’t. In other countries if you refuse to separate your waste out you suffer financially.

Incinerators – East Midlands Dorothy Skrytek, Derby Friends of the Earth, 95 Crewe Street, Derby DE23 8QQ Tel: 01332 727237 Email: dot@theadora.screaming.net Website: http://beehive.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/derbyfoe

1. We are fighting proposals for what the company are calling a recycling plant, but is in fact a gasifier – a new hi-tech breed of incinerator. The process involves the gasification of domestic waste to produce syngas, which is then burnt to produce electricity. The experimental form of this plant is in Australia, and the figures the decision being taken here are based on, come from this experimental Australian plant. The company are quoting figures for dioxins of 0.003ng/cubic metre of syngas released (and say the European limit is 0.1), but this can’t be guaranteed as constant. In fact, from talking to community people in Australia monitoring that plant, we believe that their figures were obtained when the plant was using green waste, not the mix of household waste that would normally be used. This means that when gasifying normal household waste we would get more dioxins than they say because household waste would contain more plastic. The plant has been shut down because ash kept getting into the syngas. This would increase emissions further. This plant is proposed for Derby’s most polluted suburb, also the 9th most deprived out of 842 UK urban/industrial areas (figures from the Environment Agency website). People here suffer from the worst health statistics in the City, including the lowest birth weights and highest rates of death from lung

Derby Friends of the Earth campaigners and others at a demonstration at the Derby City Council House, December 2001, at which over a 1000-signature petition was presented to Margaret Becket, the local MP and Secretary of State for the Environment. Image © Gemma Jones

and heart disease; it is poorest socio-economic area too. There is no Environmental Impact Assessment, only a description of the development, called an Environmental Statement. 2. The plant needs to be refused by the Secretary of State and alternatives need to be evaluated such as kerbside collection of separated wastes and composting etc. To date alternatives have not been evaluated. The gasifier proposals rely on ever increasing amounts of domestic waste being produced in order to produce profitable syngas. This is unsustainable and relies on increasing amounts of fossil fuel based products being produced, to replace those not recycled. This hampers waste minimisation, reuse and recycling initiatives. It is claimed the plant will take only residual domestic waste - that is not true, because at the moment we have no kerbside collections except paper and card. Gasification of fossil fuel based wastes is not a renewable form of energy. The gasifier proposals do not recycle any paper or card in the domestic waste received by it and whereas Derby’s waste contains about 10% plastics, they would recycle only a fraction of that (plastic polymers are needed for the production of higher calorific content of the syngas). 3. There is little public confidence in the practice of waste management. Full community and public participation (not specially selected panels chosen by the developer and the city council!) in full Environmental Impact Assessments could raise that confidence. What is needed is:

• Life cycle Assessment of the proposal, including detailed design, operational impacts and control features of the development, and also alternatives, plus continuous monitoring of the pollutants and related issues.

• Ecological Impact Assessment including sustainability assessment, climate impact assessment, cumulative impact assessment

• Social Impact Assessment including Health Impact Assessment. For example studies including lung and laryngial cancer figures, other cancers, comparison of the consumption of medicines for respiratory problems among residents living in the above area, which may show a decrease in consumption of medicines with increasing distance from industrial areas.

• -Total transparency in the role of local waste management plans in the application process.

Demonstration of current waste policy at City Council House by Derby Friends of the Earth and others, December 2001 Image © Derby FOE

Incinerators – East Midlands Nigel Lee, Nottingham Friends of the Earth, 51 Braidwood Court, Nottingham NG7 6EW Tel: 0115 9788059 Email: Nigel@lee-nottingham.freeserve.co.uk Website: www.gn.apc.org/nott_foe 1. We will be working on the municipal waste strategy for the city and county of Nottingham, and opposing the expansion of the Eastcroft Incinerator. 2. One thing that needs to happen is to produce things that can be re-used and don’t need to be thrown away. If the people who produce things have a responsibility to take them back, they will have an interest in them being re-usable. Having separate kerbside collections for compostables as well as recyclables is also crucial. 3. The Government must extend the legislation on producer liability for products and packaging.

Incinerators – South West Ralph Openshaw, Cornwall Friends of the Earth, Penzance Tel: 01736 360548 (day and evening) Email: ralphopen@onetel.net.uk Website: www.foecornwall.org 1. We have been very involved in the public inquiry into the waste local plan for Cornwall. We want to get incineration out of it, and raise recycling and composting levels because we want to reduce the amount of residual waste. We are now starting a project to support and encourage community waste management.

2. We need fiscal and legislative measures to reduce waste arising.

3. The Government should increase national recycling and composting targets. We should also have “pay as you throw” legislation – i.e. pay for the amount / weight of waste thrown out by each household.

Incinerators – South East Kate Gallagher, Guildford Anti-Incinerator Network (GAIN), Guildford Website: www.no-incinerator.org.uk 1. Last December the proposal for an incinerator at Slyfield Industrial Estate in Guildford (one of three proposed for the county), was turned down by the Surrey County Council Planning Committee. Our campaign has now gone into a new phase. We will resist any application affecting Guildford – being ready for any appeal by the proposers of the plant, monitoring any applications relating to the site, and continuing to look at problems related to the site e.g. flooding. We are campaigning for Surrey to adopt principles of zero waste, to enable a waste summit to be held, and to further promote public awareness that waste is not rubbish, it’s a resource. We are working to ensure a desirable outcome from the Surrey plans/strategies – we are trying to work with council officers and members, keep the public informed, and mobilise opinion through public meetings and stalls. 2. Surrey County Council needs to adopt the concept of zero waste, providing proper facilities to reach this goal. We all need to work together to show that incineration in any guise is not an option and that reduce, re-use, recycle and composting is the way forward. 3. The government should look at the evidence against incineration and introduce a moratorium on incineration immediately.

Incinerators – South East John McCall, Capel Action Group (CAG), Capel (between Dorking and Horsham) Website: www.capelactiongroup.org.uk 1. Until April 2002 we were working on getting a call-in on the planning committee of Surrey County Council’s decision to grant approval to the Capel incinerator. This was so that there could be a proper public inquiry, because the decision was taken prematurely without a proper local waste plan, and without regard to proximity, and most important of all, without regard to the need to kick-start recycling. Following the surprising no call-in decision, we have issued legal proceedings for judicial review, on the grounds that the decision was legally flawed, and than any subsequent granting of permission based on that decision would be unlawful. 2. The Government needs to impose a waste tax – not just a landfill tax – so that everyone works towards recycling. 3. The Government must introduce a general waste tax nationally. Everyone should be required to aim for zero waste.

Incinerators – South East Phil Coombe, Portsmouth Friends of the Earth, Portsmouth Tel: 02392 696070 Email: phil@coombe0.fsnet.co.uk Website: www.portsmouthfoe.org 1. I’m a core group member of the review of the Hampshire minerals and waste plan. We are currently doing the compulsory 5-year review of the 10-year plan. I’m also on the core group of the natural resource management project in Hampshire. We’re involved in these because there is currently too little recycling of domestic waste and the Government is seen by the larger community to be failing in the handling of domestic waste. 2. We need more facilities for recycling. They must be user-friendly, covered-over facilities. 3. Publicly-funded resources must be made available to local authorities to provide proper recycling facilities. Proper, publicly-funded recycling schemes are a considerable vote winner. This option is clearly best value, as opposed to long-term PFI contracts which definitely do not benefit the community.

Incinerators – South East Rupert Lodge, People Against Landfill Sites (PALS), Milton Keynes Email: p.a.l.s@btinternet.com Website: www.palsbletchley.cjb.net 1. We’re fighting to oppose an incinerator planned for Milton Keynes because Milton Keynes council want this incinerator as a means of complying with the landfill directive. It’s a quick fix – Milton Keynes council don’t believe they can improve on waste minimisation. In fact their recycling rate has gone down in the last few years. We’re worried about incinerators – we’ve been given a lot of flannel in the past about the landfill site here. The argument with the incinerator is that it will not be a problem because it will be well managed and well regulated. However those same promises were made about the landfill and those were shown to be false – it was badly managed and the Environment Agency was shown to not be robust enough on regulation. We understand that incinerators elsewhere aren’t regulated very well – they are under pressure to keep the incinerator going, and if there is a problem they tend to say only that it must be sorted out. Just about everyone here who has an interest in the incinerator don’t live within 5 miles of it! 2. The incinerator would be a quick fix with a nasty spin. What we need, and what seems to be lacking nationally, is a waste minimisation strategy – and a minimisation of packaging. There is a dichotomy between two areas in Government - food hygiene and packaging minimisation are handled by two different departments. 3. The Government has to grasp the whole issue, it needs to consult with everyone at a local level in dealing with waste strategies, and needs to take people’s thoughts and feelings seriously. The climate change levy must stop seeing incineration as a form of renewable energy. At the moment it favours incineration because the levy is a tax on fossil fuel, but it should be a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from any source.

Incinerators – East Katrina Sullivan, No Incinerators For Essex (NIFE), Basildon

1. We are campaigning against an incinerator in Basildon and in fact against plans for 12 incinerators in Essex because we believe there are dangers with incineration, and we know there are better alternatives to deal with waste. 2. Essex County Council should filter more money into local authorities for recycling schemes. At the moment there are trial doorstep-collection schemes here, which are working very well – people are recycling. The local authority is trying to see if it is cost-effective, and say they are short on funds. We want to make sure there is enough money so that the schemes can continue at the trial sites and for everyone to have schemes like that. It would encourage people if there is doorstep recycling. 3. The Government has got to be harder on people to recycle. Recycling is the answer. In some countries they fine people! They need to bring in something to make people do it.

Campaigners outside the high court before a legal challenge to Essex County Council’s incinerator policy on 25/3/02. The challenge was brought by Paula Whitney co-ordinator of Essex Friends of the Earth, Graham Pooley a Chelmsford LibDem Councillor and Neville Jessop the Chairman of Sandon Parish Council, with support from others. Image © Mark Insull / Essex Courier

Incinerators – London Denise Vallance, Enfield Friends of the Earth, Enfield Tel: 020 8360 9193 1. We have been working on preventing the expansion of the Edmonton incinerator, because we believed that making it larger was not the answer. Thankfully, we understand the expansion has now been refused by the DTI. What will happen is that, hopefully, with new legislation when everyone will have to recycle more of their waste, the incinerator will not be put in a position of having to incinerate more industrial waste. The incinerator, as it stands, has to burn 2 lots of household waste to one lot of industrial/clinical waste, but the new expansion wouldn’t necessarily have had to burn in those proportions. If the incinerator had been expanded, and household waste volumes are reduced, it would have been reliant on more industrial waste to be financially viable. That would be bad as we don’t know what might be in industrial waste. 2. Packaging must be stopped at the production line. It cannot be left open to be voluntary. A much stronger stance is required from the Government to introduce legislation to reduce packaging, and to require things to have a longer life expectancy e.g. electrical goods. We also need to educate people to recycle. 3. There comes a time when industries must be made responsible for the production and disposal of their products. This is beginning to happen with the car manufacturing industry, but it needs other manufacturers to follow suit. And if this means legislation to enable this to happen, then we expect this Government to do just that – legislate. We’ve got one planet; we’ve got to get it right! We need to stop pussy-footing around and make it happen – and if that means legislation, so be it. It seems developers and manufacturers can do what they like – it’s time the tide turned.

Incinerators – London John & Joanna Livingston, Bexley and Districts Against Incineration Risks (BADAIR), Bexley Tel: 01322 440539 day and evening Email: jo_Livingston@hotmail.com Website: www.badair.users.btopenworld.com 1. We are preparing to fight a public inquiry on an incinerator proposed for Belvedere. For the previous public inquiry we had about 5,000 letters of objection sent (only Sizewell B had more, I believe), and a petition of about 27,000 names was presented to the inquiry. 2. There should be a moratorium on all new incinerators. Incineration is wasteful – five times more energy than is generated is needed to replace the materials that have been destroyed, as well as producing hazardous polluting materials. There are also health hazards associated with incineration. Particulates, dioxins, furans and phenols are among the pollutants released into the atmosphere by various processes. Legislation covers small volume emissions and describes them as not significant; large volume pollutants are merely required to meet permitted concentration levels, with no regard to the total quantity of pollutant emitted. Dioxins are inhaled as well as being ingested, and this is more likely when the same process produces particulates (PM10s and PM2.5’s), which act as vectors to the lungs and release the dioxins etc into the blood stream. Particulates themselves are a problem anyway, irritating lungs. If you produce, as happens through incineration, products that are known to exacerbate asthma sufferers, then we shouldn’t be doing it. This area already has high asthma levels and poor air quality. Incinerator operators count on this to mask their own emissions. 3. We should be working towards zero waste (in line with the London wide strategy recommended by London’s Mayor), and kerbside collections of separated waste for all, will be most effective in achieving this. We should be looking at what is produced – i.e. not producing things that can’t be, or are hard to, recycle or re-use. We need legislation which ensures that products and residues are recyclable and that manufacturing processes minimise harmful emissions. There must also be legislation to promote recycling – there should be financial incentives to using recycled materials.

Landfill – Wales Garrod Owen, Rhondda Against Nant-y-Gwyddon Tip (RANT), Gelli, Rhondda, Wales Tel: 01443 432786 (day and evening) Email: garrodowen@ukonline.co.uk 1. We are working, after the closure of Nant-y-Gwyddon site, to make certain that the remediation works that are necessary will be carried out to the satisfaction of the local residents. Following on, we are hoping to be able to participate in the health studies that were recommended by the Welsh Assembly. It is imperative, in order to allay public fears, that the health studies and remediation works (as recommended in the independent report) are executed by world renowned and independent experts. These should not be executed by Bro Taff Health (the local health authority), the Environment Agency or the environment division of Rhondda Cynon Taff (the local authority), as it is felt that their results could be prejudiced by their previous results. We have been campaigning about the Nant-y-Gwyddon landfill for over 10 years. On the 7th December 2001 at a public hearing, the independent investigation appointed by the National Assembly for Wales, recommended that tipping be ceased that afternoon. Nant-y-Gwyddon is on top of a mountain, about 400m from villages surrounding it below. For the past 10 years residents around here have been concerned about the affects of the landfill on their health, and on the health of their unborn babies, and the nuisance to the environment. There have been many studies by different authors, none of them conclusive in results, but then with the independent investigation came a result that has satisfied local residents - up to a point. The stench from the landfill – gases that are not common to all landfills (and that’s the result of investigations on behalf of the Environment Agency) has increased our alarm. We’ve had cases of gastrochisis (a baby when it is born has areas from inside the body born on the outside, and it needs an operation). I know personally of 2 local cases where the child has had follow up operations and treatment, and still is not well after a number of years. We are alarmed about the number of cases of sarcoidosis which is a very unusual complaint affecting the immune system – different parts of the body for different people. We’ve had more than what would be normal. We’ve also had congenital abnormalities. These three things are what the Lancet determined were within the proximate zone of 2km of the landfill site. In 1998 in the Lancet, and in the BMJ last year were studies about health problems around landfill sites – that there was a higher than average risk of problems. It was not proven cause and effect, but they didn’t say it wasn’t landfill sites either, and since our problems have occurred only since the starting of landfill, we have to draw conclusions. We have had runny noses, sore throats, runny eyes, and a study for the Health Authority by RANT of local prescription rates show they are higher than average around the landfill. There is no other obvious source, although the Local Authority, the local Health Authority, the Environment Agency have all tried to find other sources for the irritation. Since the publicity the site received six months ago,

RANT (Rhondda Against Nant-y-Gwyddon Tip) celebrate. Image © RANT

we’ve had calls from local people who have realised their symptoms could be related to the site, and who are worried. There are now 6 local cases around the site of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a form of cancer. It is very, very unusual, and the rate of finding it in the community should have been 30 times lower than we had. These cases were within 400m of each other, and all within 400m of the site. From Westminster right down, they have never understood the problems, or they have just ignored them. I would draw a parallel with BSE/CJD and Foot and Mouth – the Government just play everything down. It’s probably to stop people getting worried, but it’s time people did become frightened and concerned about these things. In contrast is the superb way the National Assembly had the independent investigation – the National Assembly has gone further into these things than ever before, and more is being done for us – if they weren’t in place the site would still be open and up and running. We’d been at least three times to Westminster and to the Welsh Office countless times (and nothing had been done). At the height of campaigning we had seven local residents taken to the High Court in Cardiff by the site operators and had claims of damages of £lm against them, and as of today (5/4/02) that order is still in force. As part of the injunction we’ve been banned from going to certain parts of the site, protesting or encouraging people to protest. We had blockaded the site for a few months with up to 100 people – that was the only way we could prevent any further disasters on the site and get some publicity. The injunction actually took away our human rights by stopping us protesting. We had been on Local Authority land prior to the injunction, but then that bit of land became leased to Landfill – Wales/Nant-y-Gwyddon the operating company – they forced the Local Authority to lease it to them, and within 3 days the company took us to court. For the Local Authority to do that to its citizens is awful. 2. We now have a situation as important as getting closure, because if we don’t remediate properly, then we might as well not have bothered. Remediation needs to be carried out by experts who have done this in other areas, and who have had success with it. There have been schools built on former landfill sites. There should be concern that if the work is not done properly, there could be problems. The work should be done so that there’s no doubt these sites are safe, but as a precautionary principle there should be no schools built on landfill sites. 3. The Government needs to listen to the people, rather than just ignoring the groups around the country. They have sufficient evidence to help; they know what they are suffering from. Westminster doesn’t listen, the National Assembly does. The Westminster Government should look to the example of the National Assembly – listen to the people and act on whatever they say. The sooner the National Assembly discontinues its agreement with the national Environment Agency board, and sets up its own board for Wales, the better.

RANT (Rhondda Against Nant-y-Gwyddon Tip) protest outside Environment Agency offices, Cardiff Image © RANT

Landfill – Wales Roland Stevenson, Residents Against the Tip in Llanidloes (RATTIL), Llanidloes, Wales Tel: 01686 413420 Email: roland@dogstuff.co.uk 1. We have a landfill site here (Bryn Posteg) that is the only one in mid Wales and we get at least two counties worth of waste. It’s been in operation since about 1980, but since it has been passed into private hands in about 1997 the problems have magnified. It’s the usual problems of traffic, odour, flies, litter, and questions of “what’s going into the air?” and “is it polluting the water?” We are one mile from two rivers – one is the Severn and the other a tributary of it, and the landfill site is on an old lead mine. I don’t think anybody including the Environment Agency knows where all the shafts are. There is no surety that the site is sealed – there is concern that leachate could get into the rivers. In November 2000 the site was given permission to approximately double onto another approximately 30 acres of what is quite good pasture-land. We tried to get the National Assembly to call the decision in, but they didn’t, in the end. The doubling will take place over the next 10-15 years and as part of this there’s already what’s jokingly referred to as a recycling centre, but all that does is shred up black bag waste unsorted, except that metals are extracted, and then it’s sort of composted, and then spread on the landfill. This is to fulfil the EU Directive. There is also a problem because the site operators now charge for taking in suitable material for cover for the site, so there isn’t enough cover. So what they do use for cover, with the blessing of the Environment Agency, is this “composted” ordinary waste. There’s an organism – aspergillus fumigatus – that’s present in all decomposing waste, which in the woods is at a background level, but with this waste being shredded and “composted” it could make this organism present at higher levels. The Environment Agency say this process should be done in sealed buildings at a negative atmospheric pressure, or be in sealed vessels, but we’ve got it in the open air. The people involved with the nuisance problem are not more than 20 people, but with nuisance the Environment Agency is utterly powerless to do anything about it. We’ve had over four years of complaints, and no real success whatsoever. The Environment Agency seem to adopt a light handed attitude, and Powys county council, who rely on the site for their waste disposal, are utterly disinterested in doing anything whatsoever which is not in the interests of the site operators (because that is in turn in their interests). Also, under a modification of the existing licence, they say they will monitor the landfill gas flare for

Leachate leak from Bryn Posteg landfill site, Llanidloes, Wales Image © Roland Stevenson

dioxins, but only annually. If it’s worth monitoring for dioxins at all, it should be monitored considerably more frequently than annually. It is worrying that incineration to destroy dioxins is done at 1200C or more, but this flare is capable of 1000C at most, but the Environment Agency seems to adopt a low degree of concern. The Environment Agency would rather not challenge a site operator, than challenge and loose, for instance on the cover material. They haven’t got the resources to take them to court, and seem to be under-funded. The extension to the site hasn’t got a licence yet – they will have to convince the Environment Agency that ground water protection is satisfactory, and that the proposals in the new licence application are satisfactory. They’ve got a problem with trying to join up a new liner to an old one, and there’s a bit they can’t find of the old one, which means they must have tipped on unprotected areas. This all shows that landfill is an 18th or 19th century solution. 2. The English Waste Strategy 2000 is basically moving in the right direction – we need to be doing more recycling, but recycling isn’t just collecting banks etc – it’s no use unless a use can be found. We also need to follow waste minimisation. My wife wrote to the local supermarket – you can’t believe how much packaging you can get around a potato! There’s a tray with polythene, and then a bag. You have to have some packaging, but not packaging for marketing purposes. I would ban disposable nappies, or at least they should be shredded and sent with the sewage. We need to evolve how we deal with waste. We are interested to see a new waste treatment facility nearby which appears to have mechanised the segregation of useful parts of the waste, without the need for manual sorting or kerbside collection. This is combined with composting to a higher degree of quality in a closed vessel. 3. The Government must totally remove the landfill tax credit scheme from the overwhelming influence of the waste industry. Whilst worthwhile schemes are funded, the whole system uses what is effectively public money to buy favourable PR and influence for the waste industry. Entrust should be abolished and a new body established with minimum participation of the waste industry, along the lines of the national lottery, to administer the money. Only schemes should be funded which have a direct relationship to limiting landfill or incineration, promotion of recycling and most importantly developing markets for recyclates. Applications should be made directly and not through umbrella bodies set up by waste companies. As an example of how the money can be used, our local paper shows in December 2000, shortly after granting of planning permission for the extension of the landfill site, a cheque for £15,000 being presented by the landfill site operator to the local war memorial hall committee. This hall is based in the village where the chairman of the planning committee lives and whose family have an active involvement in it.

Litter problems from Bryn Posteg landfill site, Llanidloes, Wales. Image © Roland Stevenson

Landfill - Wales Pauline Smout, Ruabon Action Group, Bryn Offa, Pen-y-Gardden, Ruabon, Wrexham LL14 6RE Tel: 01978 810275 1. We were working for better conditions at the landfill site at Ruabon, particularly against a planning extension procedure. Last year we had what became a test case for Britain and possibly the world – a public inquiry into concerns on planning permission for a gas generator. It was acknowledged that the emissions from the flare and generator would contain dioxins, nitrous oxides, sulphur oxides and fine particulates; whereas the Government had been insisting it would only be pure methane. It had never been acknowledged that dioxins were an issue, that there was any potential harmful effect from the landfill gas flares and generators. We had been concerned about emissions from the flare and generator, but especially from the generator, which we feared could be more toxic than from the flare. With the flare you can adjust it to whatever temperature you want, and adjust the length of burn, both to destroy dioxins particularly (if the temperature is too low dioxins are produced, and if the temperature is too high nitrous and sulphur oxides are produced). We thought it would be safer to stick to a flare only (i.e. with no generator to produce electricity) because we knew the temperature and length of burn could be controlled. With the generator there is a varying temperature in the engine itself, and also a very short stack – about 6 foot -, and dioxins could reform in the air outside. We were in a hollow area with houses all around. So emissions can vary depending on where in the burn process or outside it tests are done. The public inquiry placed a condition on the planning permission for when the generator is installed, over the dioxins, but that was just for our site. We are hoping that from this will come monitoring standards and emissions standards for dioxins, nitrous oxides, sulphur oxides, and particulates from flares and generators. We fought to stop the site operating company, with the blessing of the Environment Agency, from using playing field soil (which I knew was toxic and radioactive because the playing field was by the Capenhurst reprocessing plant) as capping material on the landfill. All this is in addition to flies you could scoop up with your hands, and smells that lingered upstairs which meant that you couldn’t put your children to bed upstairs, and couldn’t open windows for years. The site has now been closed for a couple of years. 2. What landfill we have to have should only contain homogenous waste so that it’s controllable, which would make it easier to control the emissions and to monitor. We must improve on recycling – we must press for reduction in packaging, and things should be made with end of life responsibility. I’m not saying it’s the answer, but I think we should look into pyrolysis particularly for things we can’t recycle like car tyres – although why can’t they be chopped up and used somehow. We must have legislation to cover emissions from all waste plants – flares and generators. At the moment environmental problems are divided between the Environment Agency, Environment Health Officers and planning, and the buck is passed constantly. The Environment Agency seems to have seen itself since its inception as an advisory body for industry, rather that as a regulatory body to protect the public. They allowed our company to say “with the advice of the Environment Agency” which means they cannot be prosecuted. 3. The Government should reassess renewable energy – landfill gas should not be classed as a renewable resource. There should be legislation for emissions from landfill flares and generators, and the Environment Agency should have a clearly defined regulatory role for all pollution control.

Landfill – North West Nicola Escott, Action to Reduce & Recycle Our Waste (ARROW) (previously Action to Restrict Round-O-Waste), members of Ormskirk Friends of the Earth, Beacon House, Willow Walk, Skelmersdale, Lancashire WN8 6UR Tel: 01695 721915 (day and evening) Email: nicola@arrow28.freeserve.co.uk 1. We’ve been successful for the moment in stopping a 3million tonne landfill site opening 150yards from a school and 250yards from land zoned for housing. In order to stop the tip we’ve fought 3 public inquiries and one court case. It would have been Skelmersdale’s 13th landfill site within a 5 mile radius of the town – we’re a dumping ground for Manchester and Liverpool’s waste. Now we’re

campaigning to stop the county council and a waste company from embarking on incineration, which they see as the solution to the waste problem, whereas we are moving to promote waste reduction and recycling and reuse. We find incineration totally unacceptable with dioxins the main problem. We think it’s much more cost effective and sustainable to reduce, recycle and reuse, and then we advocate mechanical and biological treatment (MBT) for the remainder before land-filling. If Lancashire would recycle 56% (which is their target) and treat the remainder before land-filling, they’d end up with less to landfill than with incineration. This is because mechanical and biological treatment reduces the volume by about half, whereas incineration leaves 33% as residue/ash that needs disposal. MBT leaves the possibility of recycling beyond the 56%, whereas an incinerator needs to be fed and stops waste reduction taking place. But we have a huge problem convincing councillors and officers of this because they prefer to take advice from industry. Lancashire Waste Services was once a council owned company, and there are several ex-council officers and members who are now at Lancashire Waste Services (which itself has been bought by a large waste company). They are the ones in reality who are guiding the development of the Lancashire waste strategy behind the scenes. The official position is that no decision has been made on the incinerator, but the company are so confident that it will be built that they are offering Cumbria councillors to take Cumbria’s waste and burn it in the Lancashire incinerator. So the recycling

ARROW (Action to Reduce and Recycle Our Waste) children protesting against the Round-O quarry proposed landfill site. Image © ARROW

effort in Lancashire is hopeless and is guided by the waste industry. Recycling is poorly promoted, poorly designed – in fact designed to fail.

2. Lancashire county council and all the district councils need to be exposed to the information about really efficient and successful recycling and waste reduction schemes. Most recycling schemes in this country are poorly designed and run, and it’s unusual to achieve more than 30%, but it is possible with efficient system design and good promotion to achieve 50-60% within weeks of establishing doorstep schemes. The differences aren’t due to the socio-economic status of the area; they are due to efficiency of design of the schemes. The Canadians are the greatest exponents of the best systems, but here systems are often designed by people from the landfill or incineration industry. They are not independent; they tend to use expensive equipment and inefficient collection systems that are poorly promoted. It’s really important that the council don’t rely on industry, but use independent designers who can achieve high recycling rates, quickly and relatively cheaply. There needs to be a change of emphasis or order in what we promote i.e. doorstep collection of waste for recycling needs to be promoted before waste reduction policies, because people will only start to reduce their waste after they’ve been separating their waste for recycling. 3. The development of a recycling strategy with the goal of zero waste, and overseen by a Zero Waste Institute, run by independent recycling experts with a good track record.

ARROW (Action to Reduce and Recycle Our Waste), part of Lancs Friends of the Earth groups demonstrate at County Hall, Preston in April 2001 Image © ARROW

Landfill – Yorkshire & Humberside Gordon Morris, Scabba Wood Residents, Woodside, 166 Cadeby Road, Sprotburgh, Doncaster, South Yorkshire DN5 7SG Tel: 01302 853462 day and evening

1. Here at Scabba Wood, Near Doncaster, we have the BDR (Barnsley, Doncaster & Rotheram) site where we have gone from land-fill to land-raising. We are working to try to stop the visual intrusion, which the Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council has already said in their UDP they do not want. It is already a visual intrusion – blocking out our view, and this was admitted by a council officer. The way it is also creates a wind hazard. There have also been terrible smells – we can’t open our doors or windows in the summer. The site has been allowed too close to our houses – there’s a planning regulation that set distance from the site for new houses, but our existing houses are nearer than that. One house is only 30m from the perimeter. We’re taking up the issues of visual intrusion affecting our quality of life with our MEP to take it to the European Court of Human Rights. 2. The first thing that needs to happen is that the Environment Agency (EA) needs some teeth and clout. What is happening is government has given us an umbrella in the form of the EA, but they take it away when it rains. The field officers of the EA, they do what they can with the constraints they have, but they are very limited in resources, very limited in staff. They are overworked, probably underpaid, and there are too few staff for the number of sites. Apparently they have five people for 100 sites. By the time they arrive the landfill company has got whatever was smelling covered over and the EA can only report as they see it then. There is a pressure on the site operators who want to keep the site open at all times, for instance if it’s windy. It’s left to the site operator’s discretion to close the site temporarily – the EA can’t tell them, and by the time they close it the litter has escaped. There’s too close a relationship between the councillors and the site operators. The council should be working for the people and their health. The primary role of council is to see the site is run correctly, but there can be a conflict of interest. There is a liaison committee, but it’s weighted very heavily in favour of the company and the council. There should be more recycling to reduce what comes to the landfill, but at least it should be run correctly within the constraints of the licence and they are not doing that.

Correctly covered rubbish according to the manager of the site; Scabba Wood Residents say if you can see a plastic bag the site isn't covered. Image © Frank Devine

3. The Government must give more resources and staff to the EA, and also should allow the EA to take on complaints and then act on them. The government must give the EA teeth, and the statutory right to enforce the licence conditions. The government should listen to local people about what is happening and what they want.

The results of uncovered rubbish. This sort of rubbish was spread across the countryside for a distance of approximately ¼ mile into a wood and fields beyond Image © Frank Devine

Landfill – Yorkshire & Humberside Paul Dainton, Residents Against Toxic Schemes (RATS), 64 Altofts Lodge Drive, Normanton, Wakefield WF6 2LD Email: p.dainton@notoxictip.co.uk Email: dynamitedainton@breathemail.net Website: www.notoxictip.co.uk 1. We are working on having openness and transparency around waste issues, communication not confrontation, and for the Environment Agency (EA) to impose the licence laws on the Welbeck site and surrounding area, and on all other sites. At the moment the EA is totally and utterly inept and incapable and irresponsible in the way it deals with the public, and totally inactive against the waste industry. The Welbeck site is 2miles long, ¾ mile wide and 64m in height. It’s like bloody Ben Nevis. We’ve got illegal dumping, fly infestation, stench, leachate going into the river Calder, thousands of dead fish in the canal, the litter retaining nets have failed 8 times since Christmas and litter’s blown into the river. Because the management can’t comply with the licence conditions, the EA are going to change the wording so it won’t be illegal to let the stuff fall into the river. The EA can’t deny about the litter because you can see it, but the dust you can’t see. The dust that comes off the site is horrendous and they claim that it’s never, ever exceed their levels. There’s no gas collection system in action whatsoever at the present time. There’s a regular feeding flock of 3,000 seagulls a day. I’ve been fined £2,000 and had 2 injunctions against me for common trespass, and these were held in camera. I was investigating sacks and sacks of sheep’s heads which weren’t supposed to be there. For 3 years they claim that filter-cake (a mix of hospital incinerator ash and sewage sludge) dumped on the site was not toxic, but after pressure from RATS they had to admit it was. This means that previously they could have laid the filter-cake on top at the site and not buried it as they should with toxic material. Car-frag (ground up car bits) is toxic and was used as cover on the site, but it is so light that it blew off into the river, and also lorries bringing it in were dropping it as they went. Despite the EA’s own pictures showing bits of car-frag beside the road, they denied it was happening. We recently occupied an EA Board meeting because they won’t answer us about why they won’t take the company to court. We had old age pensioners, someone in a wheel chair; we had 1 doctor, 1 nurse, 1 airline pilot, 2 vicars, 2 archaeologists and 2 deputy head teachers with us. 2. What we’d like to see is that environmental action groups not be persecuted, but be used as the first line of defence against breaches by the site operators. There should be absolute transparency in dealing with waste issues – no documents should be withheld from the public. What they tend to do is put “draft” on the document and they don’t have to publish it. The Alan Dalton report should be forced to be placed on the EA website – the chap was sacked for doing his job. Local groups should get funding to do their work – we could have part of the landfill tax money, otherwise it should be used for recycling schemes. No money from the landfill tax should go to the site operators. We’ve got to do more recycling. Our local authority is the second worst in the country. The site operators call themselves a waste recycling group, but they do nothing but some composting. 3. The waste industry must be better regulated, and not by the waste companies themselves, or by the EA who are useless. The local authorities don’t have the resources, and they go cap in hand to get funds from the landfill tax. The regulatory body should be very closely in touch with local environmental groups in each area.

Landfill – West Midlands Chris Smart, Fight Landfill Action Group Stewponey (FLAGS), 44 Bridgenorth Road, Stourton, Stourbridge, South Staffordshire DY7 6RT Email: csmartcasuals@aol.com 1. The landfill site here is an inert waste site at the moment, but the company applied to the Environment Agency to extend the licence to take special waste (which is hazardous) and difficult waste. However, the company dropped the special waste element prior to a public hearing due on 17th July. But the Environment Agency granted the licence on Friday 13th July - on the 16th July the landfill directive came into force meaning more stringent conditions for landfill! Under these new regulations, the difficult waste the Environment Agency granted the licence for, has now become categorized as hazardous waste. It seems they were trying to get around the landfill directive, but we put pressure on them. Now the Environment Agency say that because the landfill directive requires best available technique, the licence granted on the 13th July is inoperable, it was a “futile grant”, which makes a mockery of the Environment Agency granting the licence on Friday the 13th. The site operators are disputing whether they have to comply with the new landfill directive. The company are pursuing an area of disagreement with the Environment Agency through the ombudsman. We have been in contact with a number of groups around the country – 40 odd – who live by hazardous waste sites, and who believe they are seeing the backlash of health problems associated with landfill and incineration. I have presented Baroness Young of the Environment Agency with 15 cases of other groups who are dissatisfied with the approach of the Environment Agency to environmental and health protection. 2. We need to look more to recycling. If people had facilities like doorstep collections, it would be done. Here we only have paper collections on a fortnightly basis. With the landfill tax scheme, what it has actually done is make waste carriers who transport material down classify documents because that way they can avoid the landfill tax. The Environment Agency needs disbanding and re-establishing in a form sympathetic to the needs of the community, who need to be listened to. The Environment Agency doesn’t have the resources, the finance, or the ability to monitor sites in a way to ensure they are operated in a safe way. People seem to have lost respect for the Environment Agency, and it is hard to re-establish that with the Environment Agency as it is. The planning system needs to be more closely linked with licences. With legislation that controls planning the inspector has overall control, but with licences they are along the lines of planning procedures, but the inspector doesn’t have complete control - the company can make things difficult, they can prevaricate. If a waste company gets planning permission turned down they have a right to appeal by hearing or inquiry. If the inspector rules their plans can’t go ahead, they the company can appeal again to the Secretary of State. However if the waste company win the inquiry, the local community have no right of appeal except judicial review, which is very expensive. There’s also no right of appeal for the community if a waste company get the initial go-ahead from the local planning authority or Environment Agency. FLAGS believe this is in breach of article 6 of the Human Rights Act, and needs redressing. 3. The Government must take an active role to make sure communities are heard and valued on all issues associated with waste management, including recycling.

Landfill – East Midlands Jim Collins, Local Environmental Awareness Forum (LEAF) / Corby Friends of the Earth, 11 The Lawns, Corby, Northants NN18 OTA Email: jimaes@aol.com 1. We’re campaigning to prevent any more landfills – we already have 3 domestic waste sites within 2.5miles of Corby, as well as 3 toxic waste sites. There’s also great concerns about leaching from existing clay lined sites – we know they are leaking. There’s a correlation with birth defects and proximity to landfill sites according to research done by Newcastle University and others, which is very worrying. The Corby birth defect rate is several times the national average. 2. In the European Union you can’t build a dwelling within 2km of a landfill, but here it’s 500m, I think, so we should bring our legislation into line with Europe, if not make it better. The overriding thing is let’s reduce waste, so we don’t need these landfill sites. If we don’t tackle it that way it isn’t going to work. I’ve just come from Ireland and they’ve got a plastic bag levy, and it’s working – people don’t want to pay! It would be a good idea if we were to adopt something like this, but I doubt whether this Government has got the bottle to do it. We must reduce packaging waste of all sorts and make mothers put babies in proper nappies - it takes 250 years for a disposable nappy to degrade. I haven’t won with my own family though – I gave my daughter proper nappies, but then she had twins and they’re now on disposable nappies! I recycle almost everything – my dustbin’s almost empty. 3. Anything that can’t degrade, we should stay away from. We should hit the source. People who create packaging should be taxed to the hilt, and we should introduce a levy to stop them producing packaging materials, so they won’t want to produce it – they’ll soon find another way. You can make merchandise attractive without unnecessary packaging – you can have quite pretty paper bags, you don’t need cellophane. I get my veggies in a big cardboard box which I return every week.

Landfill – East Midlands Ann Syrett, Ault Hucknall Environment Action Group (AHEAG), The School House, Stainsby, Near Heath, Chesterfield, Derbyshire S44 5RN Email: AnnSyrett@aol.com 1. We are working to oppose the expansion of tipping at Glapwell, Near Chesterfield. We’re very anxious about the perimeter being half a mile from the nearest primary school. We are concentrating particularly on health research that shows low birth-weight babies (near landfill sites), and also on the effects on air quality because we already have high asthma levels here. The officers are recommending that the expansion goes ahead, and if it is passed, then we feel we have grounds for the decision to be called in because the county council owns shares in the company which is applying. 2. We are worried about the government’s new green paper on planning. We already feel we don’t have enough say and rights under current legislation, and the green paper proposals would make it a lot worse. We have to look at the landfill tax acting as encouragement to councils to approve licences. They should look at the distance waste travels because there is a lot of pollution en route. In our case they’re bringing in waste from the other side of the county. We are all hoping that waste will reduce. 3. The government must look at landfill tax, and stop it being an encouragement to approve licences. The government should enforce only short distances for waste to travel. The government should reject the current proposed green paper on planning, and look for more democracy in planning procedure, not less.

Landfill – East Midlands Mark Harrison, Save Notts Water, 16 Halfmoon Drive, Kirkby in Ashfield Nottinghamshire NG17 7FY Tel: 07879050083 1. We have been resisting the Nottinghamshire County Council and Nottingham City council scheme for a waste site of approximately 5 million tonnes (which would include toxic wastes) which as well as being about 300 yards from the nearest houses, is also at what is the highest part of the aquifer that supplies up to 80% of the drinking water for the entire Nottinghamshire county. The aquifer is actually on the site of the dump. We believe that the threat to the drinking water supplies outweigh any other considerations. We understand that the site would automatically leak to a degree. We have on video the company saying that any leachate escaping from the site will go into the mine works below the site, and be dealt with by the Environment Agency. But the mines are connected to lots of others including some in Yorkshire. Apparently all mine water from the whole mine system collects at Calverton colliery to be pumped to the River Trent. The problem is also that leachate could be in gaseous form as well, and within the mine system are some that are still active mines, and coal miners could breathe the toxic gaseous leachate. When they are considering a site they should not just look at all the known problems, but also at possible problems. We wonder whether the county council have the information – have the waste company provided information – sufficient for a proper decision to be made. The site actually has 2 parts which together are the size of several football pitches. There’s an old colliery waste tip with dangerous swamps, which has been identified as in need of restoration to make safe, and the Bentick void is a former open cast mine site, that is now a local nature area. There’s a lake with birds and supposedly protected great crested newts and water voles. These are of county-wide importance. 2. We want to see the nature area kept as a benefit for the community, rather than as a blight for the community. We don’t want to see any controlled waste at the site (i.e. anything except inert waste). Some truly inert waste could be used to restore the colliery tip site, and maybe do some work to make safe the banks of the void – although planting trees might do that. The trouble is that they are more likely to push for filling the void as they are not so in favour of land-raising. We feel we should instead be recycling more – as much as possible. There’s no excuse now with European directives. Recycling will also create jobs. 3. The Government must take responsibility fully whereas at the moment most is with the company. The Government should identify suitable sites for dry tomb storage for controlled waste residues once all recycling is done. This way sites are on top of the ground and free of

Bentink Void landfill site Image © Save Notts Water

the water table. Top liners to keep rain off can be replaced if that goes after about 30 years, and the bottom of the site is not sitting in water if that eventually leaks (whereas ordinary sites that are closed probably aren’t pumped, which would be a problem). Dry tomb storage was the old way, but if you let paper and wood etc rot you get methane which is saleable, so that has been what has been done. However if you recover all paper, card, woody material from the waste stream (as should be done anyway with recycling), then you wouldn’t be producing the methane in the tip. Those materials can be separately digested producing methane as well as compost. Human sewage can also be added to the digester to compost, unless it is contaminated with e.g. heavy metals from e.g. landfill leachate entering the sewage system! Dry tomb storage sites should be sited to minimise people being downwind of them, and the waste should come from the population centres by rail, with recycling done locally. Also the Government should take responsibility for disposing of special toxic waste because otherwise there is too much temptation for inappropriate disposal. The Government as landfill tax money it could use.

Landfill – South West

Nick Boyd, Friends of Compton and Surrounds (FOCAS), LowerCompton near Calne Email: focas@2020pr.com Website: www.2020pr.com/focas 1. We are working on stopping a planning application for an extension to an existing landfill site because we feel our location is inappropriate, and also there have been failings with the existing management. We are next to an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) with small villages and small roads. The planning application goes against planning permission already given. Wiltshire County council are treating the planning application as insignificant – no environmental impact assessment, no traffic impact assessment. A proposed household recycling centre would have a huge effect on traffic on our small roads. We conducted our own traffic survey, and levels were already close to a grade B road, where ours are unclassified category. The incidence of fly tipping would increase – if you don’t like the look of the queue, or if you have a fridge to dump and you find the site closed. Also proposed is to increase composting, which is a problem because we already have bad fly and smell problems, and the site operators have had repeated warnings from the Environment Agency. They have been asked to do things that they have failed to do e.g. covering up the composting to help with the fly infestations. The site operators have been fined £20,000 by the Environment Agency plus costs, all related to incidents last year. Any complaint about flies the site operators blamed on another landfill site nearby which has been taking foot and mouth carcases, but the Environment Agency said it was our site. Also the Environment Agency fines were in relation to 3 separate charges where they pleaded guilty to methane and carbon dioxide gases coming uncontrolled from the site. We didn’t know about this until the case came to court. This was all happening while we’ve been fighting the planning application. The site operators have now had another abatement notice from the Environment Agency put on them because we have had in the last 2 months more terrible fly problems – i.e. nothing has improved. We have also been working on the draft waste local plan from Wiltshire County Council for 2011, which has plans for an energy-from-waste plant – i.e. an incinerator of some kind. No-one can give any assurances that it isn’t a straightforward incinerator (as opposed to pyrolysis or something). They’re trying to force this on us without any information. We see the planning applications and the waste local plan as linked, and think this is the thin edge of the wedge. For instance, if nearby RAF Lyneham closes there could be many homes built there. If our planning applications go through, we could end up with their waste – i.e. it would take away the need to explore options such as a Brownfield waste site at Lyneham, or to have a proper household recycling policy. Wiltshire County Council has no aims, plans or

Local villagers protesting outside Compton Basset waste site 9/5/02. Image © Belinda Boyd

investment for a proper kerbside recycling system. They have just taken delivery of I think three new vehicles, which are not capable of doing kerbside collections of recyclables. This goes against Agenda 21 which they have signed up to. 2. We need to vote out this particular council. From the local point of view, they have to look at proper suitable sites for things. The operators of the nearby other landfill site have suggested their Brownfield site for a household recycling centre instead of ours, but the local Calne residents object because it is too close to the town. It does seem to make more sense to locate any household recycling centre on a main road, on a destination route (e.g. near a shopping centre), but ultimately of course what we need is kerbside recycling. If there needs to be a charge to collect big items, then maybe. The draft local plan is a short term solution to meet the Government’s short term targets, and is completely unsustainable. If we want kerbside recycling we don’t need the proposed 20 household recycling centres and 2 incinerators, because we want to reduce waste. We should instead be investing in proper kerbside recycling. 3. The Government have got to think again about what they are doing. We are going down the path of forcing councils to come up with solutions that meet the council’s budget, rather than achieving the end aim. The Government is failing to come up with a policy that is properly funded. They have come up with policy that meets certain criteria, and also the budgets of councils. The Government is not going to fund the councils any more, and the councils can’t put up any taxes, so they can’t afford kerbside recycling.

Landfill – South West Diane and John Irwin, Torbay and South Devon Friends of the Earth (meetings at the Crown & Sceptre pub, Torquay, the 2nd Monday in the month – all welcome)

1. We have a landfill site here that is less than ¾ mile from our door. They allow too much too close to people. We’ve had blue asbestos dumped here. We are terrified of receiving pearlite (calcium sulphide) because we know that has caused problems at Nant-y-Gwyddon. We are getting waste brought in here from Exeter and Torbay, and some transferred from Plymouth – half a million tonnes a year is brought in. These resorts are getting blue flag awards, but at the cost of our health, because they are not dealing with their own rubbish. The last year has also been nightmarish because of foot and mouth disease. Last year 8,055 plus carcases were brought here, including some from the welfare cull. They were placed in our household waste site because that was decided by the rural payments scheme, organised by the Government and approved by the Environment Agency. They’ve also placed human excrement sludge cake because they couldn’t spread that on the land because of foot and mouth disease. We are the only landfill in the country who is putting the grade 1 toxic leachate into the main sewers. Other places tanker it out. We are concerned that the sheep carcases might well contain dangerous sheep dip chemicals, as the Lancet journal say some can persist in wool and these would be a problem in the water. Here people between the site and the sewage plant are subjected to terrible odorous gases which are vomit inducing. This is since the foot and mouth carcases came. It also turns out that at a time when the plant operator should have been taking extra care with pests e.g. seagulls because of the extra problems with foot and mouth carcasses, the company was working on a study of landfill pests around the country, which must have preoccupied them. There was in the licence that cover material was to be put on daily on the site, but now the Environment Agency says they don’t need daily cover. Other places do have to have daily cover and they’re strict. The problem is the site operators have to buy the clay for cover so they don’t want to and also it takes up their valuable space. We’d have better nights in the summer if there was daily cover. We had an independent air monitoring company, on behalf of the Environment Agency, the local council, the site operator and the Health Authority, who also advised on how to operate the site. These people control everything. We had a doctor from the local Health Authority speaking, and it looked like it was just something rehearsed from this air monitoring company had said. I’d like to know who owns the air monitoring company. South West Water and the site operators are owned by the same people. 2. They must downgrade the waste categories, and stick to domestic waste only near people. We feel they shouldn’t be bringing in waste from further afield. There must be daily cover on the site, and an independent company should measure the site. 3. We would like to see the Government organise a totally independent body to oversee landfill, not the Environment Agency. We need newly trained up people because the Environment Agency hasn’t been effective. It should be somebody who cares about people who live around sites, it could be someone who has lived near a landfill site themselves and knows the problems. You could make sure the people at the independent body have their areas changed around, so they don’t get too cosy with particular acquaintances.

Landfill – South East Peter Shine, People Against Landfill Sites (PALS), Milton Keynes Tel: 01908 632787 Email: P.a.l.s@btinternet.com Website: www.palsbletchley,cjb.net/ 1. We are working to achieve the closure of the site at Newton Longville due to waste handlers’ failure to manage the site in a safe manner. They have been releasing gases to the atmosphere which could cause probable harm to human health, and have admitted as such at a court case brought by the Environment Agency (EA). 2. There needs to be a public inquiry. Our site should be closed. 14 ppb of hydrogen sulphide in Wales closed the site there (Nant-y-Gwyddon, Rhondda – see above). 220ppb we had, and the site hasn’t been closed. 105ppb can be detrimental to health say the World Health Organisation, and 5ppb a nuisance and we still had 29ppb just before Christmas. The site itself has problems with the water table and is on top of Bletchley and too close to Milton Keynes. Two primary schools are only approximately 400m from the working face of the landfill. The site policing system needs to be changed – the EA have too much on their plate. There needs to be independent specialist teams dedicated to landfills and incinerators. We have demanded a health study on the landfill site, but have been denied one. At one point the council said they would defer the new planned expansion until the health study had been completed, but the expansion plans went ahead without a health study even having been started. 3. The government should take the policing of the sites away from local authorities and give it to completely independent expert bodies which are properly funded. There is a potential conflict of interest with local authorities which give contracts for waste and give planning permission. There needs to be much more research and thought on alternatives to landfill. The whole consumer industry needs to be changed, and we need to educate the public.

Leachate eruption (black liquid) from below the ground at the Newton Longville landfill site, March 2001. The white foam in the black liquid is caused by raw landfill gas leaking from below ground and venting to the atmosphere. Image © Peter Shine

Landfill – South East Felix Krish, Stand To Oppose Pollution (STOP), Homeside House, Dargate, Faversham, ME13 9HQ Tel: 01227 751950 Email: felixkrish@onetel.net.uk 1. We started six years ago to fight proposed land-raising “landfill” – a 7million tonne landfill site on a farm near Faversham. We went through two stages of an inquiry before a decision last August –it was turned down for a variety of reasons particularly no proven need and landscape value. Although under MAFF the land was designated lower grade 3B agricultural land that might have otherwise been seen suitable for such a site, the Secretary of State endorsed the County Plan’s strict view on “protecting the countryside for its own sake” i.e. on visual grounds. Need can override almost any other consideration, but need is established on a regional basis, not on a local basis, and no regional need was established. Land-raising is also at the bottom of the hierarchy of need. This was to do with a European Directive; it was that that saved us. At the inquiry the County’s witness collapsed under grilling from opposition counsel, and so our group’s input with our expert witness proved crucial. Our evidence challenged all their technical evidence which the County didn’t even touch. 2. We must do more recycling. Before the inquiry I set up a community composting scheme, collecting from kerbsides every week to show people that we could do something practical to make a difference, to show we were not just objecting on paper, and that we weren’t being NIMBY. We were however accused of being a BANANA for objecting to the landfill – i.e. don’t ‘Build Anything Not Anywhere Near Anyone’ I think it was! On the composting, I think that is the first stage of recycling and reuse - we should not be sending any organic waste to landfill or incineration. We need all of our biodegradable “waste” put back into the ground to complete the natural cycle, so the idea of land-filling or incinerating it is ridiculous. We worked with our local authority on this scheme and they have now taken on the principle of the scheme on a bigger pilot. Waste management is going to cost all of us significantly more money in the future, but this is an opportunity to change people’s behaviour. We need to make it easier and more financially attractive for people. 3. The Government must release the risk assessment on composting of food waste which has held back development of food waste composting for a year. They must give industry and households incentives to change their behaviour. The House of Commons Select Committee report on waste management said that landfill tax needed to be increased significantly to make other alternative operations financially viable, e.g. composting. The Government needs to get off the fence and make decisions, which aren’t as bad as it thinks, i.e. it will be more expensive to do nothing. The Government seem afraid to do anything they think might upset the voter, but the cost to the community and the environment is incalculable. This cost needs to be made more obvious. The Government mustn’t leave it to local authorities to change waste collection regimes. They would be under pressure from their voters, but the Government has the overall responsibility and can’t pass the butt to local authorities.

Landfill – East Peter Nicol, Pitsea Mount Community Association, 4 Fieldway Pitsea Mount, Basildon, Essex SS13 3DJ 1. Pitsea Mount Community Association is concerned about what is dumped locally and the effect it may have upon people’s health and the environment in general. We also monitor proposed changes in use of the local landfill sites in the vicinity. We are currently liaising with Essex County Council and Basildon District Council regarding the ECC plan to store hundreds of thousands of refrigerators and freezers at the local landfill site for the next 5 years. We work with Basildon to encourage recycling and composting. This has included manning a stall to help the Council sell compost bins to the public, persuading the Council to use our area in their pilot scheme for recycling and funding the siting of recycling bins outside our community hall. We have also campaigned against the proposed building of incinerators and the disposal of toxic ash from incinerators in landfill sites. 2. First the Government must ensure that safety is paramount. No substances or potential mixture of substances should be disposed of in landfill sites, particularly those close to residential areas, unless proven to be harmless. More effort and technology should be put into recycling and composting because there is a finite amount of landfill space available and these methods will drastically reduce the volume of rubbish to be disposed of. Waste should be treated locally, i.e. in the district of origin. Transporting waste to other areas adds to pollution and does not encourage people to adopt a responsible attitude to waste. Small, local waste treatment/recycling centres would be a better option. Taking waste from a wide area to one site increases the concentration of pollution in that location. 3. The Government should encourage recycling. Make tax concessions to industry to create and use recycled material. Change the waste disposal cost structure so that payment is made for excess non-recyclable waste. Assist Councils to set up local waste treatment centres and to improve facilities for recycling and composting and to fund investigations into new technology.

Pitsea Mount Community Association demonstrating in Chelmsford. Image © Simon Ellery

Landfill – East Alina Congreve, Herts Friends of the Earth, Hitchin Media contact: Jo Birch 01438 237697 Email: alina@congreve.prestel.co.uk 1. We’ve been working on strategic issue to do with waste, objecting to the county’s waste plan in 1997, and we appeared at the public inquiry. We’ve worked on individual sites, the main one was Holwell, near Hitchin, and one reason we objected was that the site was a designated regionally important geological site. We lost that at the minerals plan inquiry – it was kept as a landfill site that the county council had wanted. We also objected when the planning application came through, but the county council and the Environment Agency approved it – it never went to inquiry. The site operator is a large company and we couldn’t dispute their licensing suitability with the Environment Agency. Landfill hampers recycling. The town nearest to the Holwell landfill is Hitchin which has been the most progressive in the county with local Agenda 21, and had been getting their recycling together. However, now they have a landfill site a few miles away, their incentive to recycle is less. The parish council didn’t object at the public inquiry into the waste plan, because they didn’t know the landfill site was in the plan –nobody had chosen to tell them! Our landfill takes waste from London and our own waste goes mostly to landfill in Bedfordshire, with a little to landfill in Hertfordshire, and a bit to the Edmonton incinerator. This is because the Bedfordshire ones are cheaper, because they’re enormous. They are also on clay, so they think they can be complacent about leakage etc, although we know clay does leak. You can show clay cracks, which is why the Bedfordshire landfills haven’t been used as nuclear repositories (which they were being considered for). 2. We need more infrastructure in Hertfordshire for dealing with recycled materials. We need to make the inquiry process into landfill sites and waste policy much more open and democratic, so that it is not dominated by large waste companies and large gravel companies. The gravel companies make more money out of the hole they create, than out of the gravel they get out! 3. The Government must act on the above.

Herts Friends of the Earth objected to the Holwell landfill site near Hitchen - one reason being that the site was designated a regionally important geological site. Image © Alina Congreve

Landfill – East Gill King, South Bedfordshire Friends of the Earth, 10 Rothschild Road, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire LU7 2SY Tel: 01525 371248 Email: gill.king@care4free.net 1. Bedfordshire is one of the landfill capitals of the UK. There are lots of landfills in Bedfordshire. A lot of what goes to landfill here is imported, especially from London. The county council have said that it will refuse imports by 2010 from London and other home counties, and we support that because we feel it is important that people should be responsible for their own waste. One of the biggest landfill sites, Brogbrough, handles 700 lorries a day. 2. So, it is important to increase recycling rates. London must look to reduce its own waste and stop relying on taking their waste to Bedfordshire. For Bedfordshire’s own waste, the council is trying to get to grips with it and there are good people now in the county council. They need to increase recycling rates and composting, but they need funding. The county council do not have enough money. The Government should put more funding in – particularly the Government should divert landfill tax towards recycling and composting. Manufacturers should be responsible for the waste effects of their products. If we are going to have zero waste, we must have action at Government or EU levels. Manufacturers must only put on the market items that can be recycled or composted. 3. The Government must divert landfill tax to recycling and composting, and bring in conditions on manufacturers and co-ordinate at an EU level so that EU legislation is consistent.

Recycling – Northern Ireland Eric Randall, Bryson House Recycling Centre, Unit 3, 16 Prince Regent Road, Belfast, BT5 6QR Tel: 02890 401070 (daytime) Email: cashforcans@freeuk.com Website: www.rubbish2resource.com 1. We’re working on a pilot multi-material source-separated kerbside box scheme for 14,000 households and hope to extend this in partnership with local authorities. We’ve done this because nobody else was doing it. We think that the non-for-profit sector can bring a lot to the process – added value.

2. Local Authorities need to implement their waste plans rapidly. The waste plans are not all that bad – we could pick holes, but the Eastern Region plan is pretty good. We think the recycling element to the plans needs to start soon and with the not-for-profit sector. 3. For Northern Ireland they must ensure future funding is clearly identified for the next 5 years, so local authorities know what they will be getting, and what they can spend it on. There must be some funding available directly to the voluntary sector.

Loading glass. Image © Bryson House Recycling Centre

Recycling – Wales Mike Croxford, Newport Wastesavers, Uskway, Newport NP20 2DS Tel: 01633 216855/6 Email: mike@wastesavers.co.uk Website: www.wastesavers.co.uk 1. We have an education project which contacts schools, colleges, groups and organisations to promote the re-use project for furniture and white goods. Last year we helped over 2,300 individuals and families. 50,000 households are covered by a green box kerbside scheme for dry recyclables (not garden waste). 4,000 home composters have been distributed. We’re doing all this because there is no alternative. 2. The Government should finance recycling properly. There should be financial incentives. They should re-form the land fill tax because at the moment it is not working. Why should landfill tax revenues go to churches, stately homes, playing fields? It should go to re-use and recycling! The local authority should be obliged to pay a recycling credit for everything re-used or recycled that otherwise would have gone to landfill. 3. The Government should realise that if you want it to work you have got to pay for it. If the Government is realistic about local authorities and communities working in partnership, they must pay. The only way partnerships can work with the community is to pay for re-use and recycling – they pay for local authorities’ waste disposal.

Recycling – North West Ian Scott, ACRE Recycling, Bridge Street, Middleton, Manchester M24 1TP Tel: 0161 6535377 (daytime) Email: info@acrenet.force9.co.uk Website: www.acrenet.force9.co.uk 1. We’re a community based recycling company. We work in the borough of Rochdale and North Manchester. We do a wide range of recycling collections, and also have an increasingly dynamic and over subscribed education and information service. On domestic waste we’ve been small scale – 5,000 homes kerbside collection for 5 years now, but we have won a contract with the local authority. We think this is the first contract between a local authority and a community group in the North West to deliver kerbside collections to a whole borough. This will be 79,000 households – starting with newspaper and glass. We offer best value and best versatility for future recycling development, which means that within a year and a half to two years we should have got to full scale, multi-material collections. Our future plans include the development of an environmental centre and visitor centre facilities, and for kerbside collections to introduce organic waste, and to set up community composting. We’re at the start of major developments. We’ve got to keep plugging at it. We didn’t want to see waste going into a hole in the ground uselessly, and because there is a better route for our waste. If waste is separated at source, it’s my belief that it’s not waste. Waste is only “waste” when it’s mixed up; when it’s kept separate it’s a resource. Source-separation is a way of maximising resource efficiency and getting the best benefit from what we call “waste”. I believe in Zero Waste, that it is not just pie in the sky, but that we can achieve it, and that it will benefit us all. 2. The national drivers for change are the EU landfill directive and the National Waste Strategy 2000. We can’t carry on the way we are, so major change is needed in how we all deal with waste. The principle requirement is that people change their understanding of what they call waste and how they deal with it. Kerbside collections by community schemes are a major way forward to engaging with people in addressing their “waste” problems. People think waste is the council’s or someone else’s problem – but it’s each of our’ problem. People say they can’t help it, they had to buy something like they did, but we don’t have to buy it like that, and even if we do, we can deal with the waste better. It’s something – people look at waste and recycling and say recycling is expensive or doesn’t work, but despite the fact that things do work out, the bottom line on why people object to recycling is that they can’t be bothered. This is because they see it as rubbish, a dead issue, and only because they don’t attach value to it. In kerbside collecting, people come out to give a box of recycling and they

Volunteers at work. Image © ACRE Recycling

feel they are helping produce something, and that they belong to something that is beneficial for everyone. 3. If the Government wants to take recycling seriously it must stop tickling around the edges. Why is industry still allowed to produce things not recyclable, or stuck with glue to things that are? It’s because it’s cheap. The Government know what we have to do with waste and I believe Michael Meacher’s heart is in the right place. This Government has got to stop bowing to pressure from big business when it comes to changing packaging regulations and streamlining packaging regulations, and make it so people have to do it. Get out clauses such as BATNEEC (Best Available Technique Not Entailing Excessive Cost) should not be used to allow industry to continue to do nothing. We must find a way to make industry streamlined so that packaging waste is easily retrievable as a resource. The Government has got to grasp the nettle in leadership terms – financially and strategically. Major change will cost money at first, but the disadvantages of recycling are exaggerated by industry. The question should not be “why recycling?”, but “why not recycling?”. There are retrieval possibilities at every stage in the production process. Businesses are beginning to realise there is a pay back for them – in terms of efficiency and public acceptance as well as financially, and it isn’t painful. One recent piece of work by the Environment Agency showed that if industries addressed their waste at each stage of its production, instead of mixing it all into a skip of hazardous waste, some 11 firms were saving $4,000,000. There is a pay back time for all of us and that’s before we even start on social and environmental benefits.

Recycling – North West John Redmayne, CREATE UK, Spekehall Road, Speke, Liverpool L24 9HA Tel: 0151 4481748 Email: info@createuk.com Website: www.createuk.com 1. We collect and refurbish and resell or recycle domestic appliances e.g. cookers, fridges, washing machines, and we use this as a way of training long-term unemployed people. Tens of thousands of households struggle to afford basic necessities e.g. electrical appliances. Also thousands of people are unemployed because they don’t have recent work experience. Also 9m appliances, white goods, are reaching the end of their life in the UK each year, and we wish to see some of those at least reused.

2. The main thing we are facing in the future is the EU WEEE Directive (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive), which will require action in the UK in 2004/5 to collect, treat and recycle large numbers of waste electrical appliances. The legislation will require manufacturers to pay for this as producer responsibility. The Government needs to start planning now and put in place a pragmatic strategy of legislation, operations and standards - in order to make sure the UK is well prepared to meet the requirements of the Directive – i.e. all the stuff they didn’t do with fridges!

With white goods, around 70% are already picked up and recycled, but there is still more to do. Some councils are still breaking up white goods, and putting them into landfill. There are also other small appliances, some of which contain valuable metals and/or potentially toxic or harmful substances. These are simply land-filled or incinerated, and we ought to reduce this burden to the environment. The WEEE Directive says that anything that has a plug or batteries should be collected separately, so that we can deal with them in a better way. We also see the WEEE Directive as providing an opportunity to develop social enterprises in most cities in the UK, which can provide employment and training for those disadvantaged in the labour market.

Trainee working on washer Image © CREATE

3. There are lots of ways to prepare for the WEEE Directive, but whatever way, the Government needs to plan ahead. Decent planning is needed now and needs to be carried through, in discussion with those involved in the field – producers, retailers and recyclers.

Shoppers of refurbished goods Image © CREATE

Recycling – North East Bill Hopwood (Contact person is Cal Boal), BAN Waste, 14 Great North Road, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE2 4PS Tel: 0191 2323357 (daytime) Email: banwaste@bykerplant.freeserve.co.uk Website: www.banwaste.org.uk 1. BAN Waste was set up two and a half years ago as a partnership between residents, the Health Authority and the council. In practice 95% are local residents. We’re preparing a written waste strategy for the city of Newcastle. We’ve outlined general ideas, and now we are making more specific proposals. We suggest kerbside collection of dry recyclables, hazardous materials such as paint and batteries, organics and then the residue. The council have said generally that they welcome the zero waste principle. They have now agreed to look at the options, and are working on the question of jobs, finance, and the practical implications. We expect the civic amenity sites to take dry recycling, clean composting and the residue for mechanical and biological treatment. There will be a health impact assessment, and an environmental assessment which will now look at a number of options for waste and compare them - incineration, what we propose and others. 2. Waste minimisation needs to be treated seriously. Companies need to produce less packaging; it’s the top of everyone’s list. We need to stop seeing waste as “waste”, and start seeing it as a resource. We need to support research for recycling industries, financially and in other ways. You can buy wine glasses made from recycled glass here that are made in Spain, and here we have a excess of green glass particularly, so why don’t they made glasses here? With the local authority it is a question of money – Newcastle are sacking homecare workers. They say how can we justify spending money on recycling (which we would need in the first years) when we have to sack homecare workers. It is hard because I think we need homecare workers too. If there was a way the council could see to do it easily and affordably, they would do it.

Rag- rugging with local children in Newcastle upon Tyne Image © BAN Waste

3. The Government must make Britain have some recycling industries, recycling can be the industry of the future.

Composting in Byker Image © BAN Waste

Recycling – Yorkshire & Humberside Jim McLaughlin, Doncaster Community Recycling Partnership, Unit 15 & 16 Bootham Lane Industrial Estate, Bootham Lane, Dunscroft, Doncaster DN7 4JU Tel: 01302 842770 Email: doncastercrp@hotmail.com 1. We are doing a community-led pilot kerbside collection of dry recyclables in Doncaster. It is not only about recycling – it also creates employment in this deprived area. At the moment no-one is recycling or is doing very little – i.e. just collection banks - so we have got public money to show it can be done, and can be successful, and that the community sector can deliver. The community sector delivers to 1.6million households in the UK in all, i.e. 5% of the market. That is important when we look to sell the material for reprocessing – i.e. the community sector can negotiate good deals with paper mills etc, because we have a big share, we are not a one-man band. The reason the community sector is so successful, is because we are already part of the community that we are servicing, and because participants feel they have ownership of the service. This creates local employment, and reinvests money locally. The community is taking responsibility for the waste it produces, and is taking that problem and dealing with it.

2. Recognition needs to be given to the community sector as a main deliverer in their local waste strategies to achieve “Waste Strategy 2000”. The Government needs to take a lead and offer more incentives to local authorities to contract out service delivery. They need to make available suitable development money to build on good practice already in existence in the UK, to overcome areas where there is no or little recycling activity. It’s about recognition – a lot of local authorities don’t see the community sector as a player for the whole process of separation at source that kerbside collection provides, and the whole process of sifting that furniture recycling does with bulky household goods. On the whole, it is about supporting the community sector strategically at national level, e.g. through the Community Recycling Network, regionally so that they can be responsible for regional development of the community sector, and locally so that local communities can be enabled to do their bit. Our money is public money – it is a mix of landfill tax money and Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) funding (which is about regeneration). We are at the forefront of developing the social economy in waste. 3. The Government must demonstrate to us that they recognise that the community sector can contribute to the waste strategy 2000.

Recycling lorry. Image © Doncaster Community Recycling Partnership

Recycling – Yorkshire & Humberside Jude Warrender, Sheffield Community Recycling Action Project Ltd (SCRAP), 1 Malinda Street, Sheffield, S3 7EH Tel: 0114 2755055 1. SCRAP is involved in the re-use of bulky goods – white goods and furniture and paint. We also want to raise awareness. We were set up as a membership organisation coordinating community recycling activities and raising awareness throughout the city. The underpinning importance is for seeing waste as a resource rather than as waste. It’s also important for information to be available to all – for waste issues to be upfront in society. It shouldn’t be hidden in libraries, but be endemic to people’s lifestyles. It should be easy for people to minimise waste. 2. Schemes in all areas need to be well-funded, stable schemes, following best practice and with staff on permanent job contracts. If it’s worth it environmentally, socially and economically then it’s worth investing in and making sure that for each area – especially conurbations - there is a range of options for every type of item. We must try and expand systems and schemes to areas where there isn’t provision and this must be backed up with awareness raising of the benefits of re-use. The landfill tax has helped the economic argument i.e. the cost of getting a skip has gone up so people think of passing things on rather than scrapping them. Money raised from the landfill tax should go to waste avoidance measures. 3. The Government needs to get its act together in terms of the EU Directives – the electrical directive and various waste directives about recycling. The Government needs to implement stick or carrot measures for large businesses and the public to wise up. The supermarkets get away with murder – they make profits partly from having over packaged goods and non-returnable systems, yet their involvement in recycling and re-use is minimal. They could set a much better example. The Government should enter dialogue with supermarkets to improve targets and make life in Britain more environmentally sustainable. 80% of people shop in supermarkets; they hold immense power, and if waste minimisation were implemented through retail structures, this would have a great impact on society. Sustainability can only happen by supporting local shops and distribution, and the large supermarkets are largely incompatible with this. The large supermarkets are supported at the moment by cheap oil prices, which support wasteful national distribution systems. We need to support local produce for local areas.

Recycling – Yorkshire & Humberside Chip Wood, Kerbside Recycling, Salem Mill, Central Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6HB Tel: 01422 881110 Email: kerbsiderecyclers@yahoo.co.uk 1. We work on kerbside recycling, horse bedding, battery recharging with solar energy, and composting. The big thing is that it is a social enterprise and we help the most vulnerable people in our society. They get work experience and training and we are totally not-for-profit. The social aims come first – helping people with learning difficulties to

have a better quality of life, and hopefully giving them long-term work. We are an environmental project, and we are working to get people to do more recycling. We have a newsletter, leaflets, an e-mail notice-board and a regular page in the local paper to tell people what sort of tonnages we are doing. 2. The Government needs to start reducing the SSA payments (that they give to local councils to top up the rates) – to those councils who are not recycling or recycling properly. The SSA payments are comprised of several sections e.g. roads, libraries, and recycling, but it is up to the councillors where to spend the money. Last year the SSA payments went up to cover councils doing more recycling, but there’s nothing to force them to spend the money on recycling. Councils who have been investing in recycling to the detriment of other areas are not getting extra money compared to councils who don’t increase their recycling targets. The Government should cut back the funding of those that are not spending on recycling. If they didn’t get the funding the councillors would have to raise the money from somewhere else, which would mean they’d loose their jobs, they’d get voted out. The Government should release money they said they’d release 2 years ago to fund recycling (£140m across the UK). Everyone wants to get going. When local councils are going out to tender for recycling they shouldn’t have combined waste contracts – they should have separate waste contracts and separate recycling contracts. We know that big waste companies are good at picking up bins (that’s the easy bit!), but they are not so good at recycling. They put things through a dirty MRF (material recycling facility) whereas it should be sorted at the kerbside. They don’t do this because they win contracts by reducing manpower commitments, and that’s why the

Trainee, Micky Hopkins recycling Christmas trees Image © Kerbside Recycling

community sector can deliver a better service – because manpower isn’t an issue for us, because we have social aims etc. The experience is in the community recycling initiatives. 3. The Government have got to start looking at it seriously. When Michael Meacher said that local authorities will have to meet (their recycling) targets that’s the right way, because before that we’ve had 10 wasted years where councils thought we won’t be fined so we won’t bother. That way we’ve got behind out European partners. Also the New Opportunities Fund money hasn’t materialised. The Government has got to get the money to people who are doing recycling. Local authorities who don’t know how to recycle would waste funding from the £140m, so the Government should give funds to local authorities who have already shown they know what they are doing, or who have a community partner. It is not worth going to a waste contractor and asking them to do it for the local authority, unless they have a proven track record.

Recycling – West Midlands Lorna Langdon, Brumcan, Unit 8, Sapcote Business Centre, Smallheath Highway, Birmingham B10 0HR Email: admin@brumcan.co.uk Website: www.brumcan.co.uk 1. Our primary concern is the integration of environmental education & community involvement processes into practical waste reduction, re-use and recycling activities. We are a Birmingham focussed community recycling organisation which operates on a not-for-personal profit basis, providing a range of services to meet the following aims: • To create a better understanding of environmental issues in general and waste

management and recycling in particular. • To increase the amount of recycling in Birmingham and to reduce the generation of

waste. • To encourage and support the general public and local communities, including schools

and businesses, to actively participate in recycling and waste reduction activities. • To offer opportunities to volunteers, to provide training and to establish new jobs in

recycling. We currently provide education and community involvement services to local schools, youth and community groups, where home and community composting is encouraged. We provide subsidised home composting bins in specific neighbourhoods of the city. We also collect & recycle waste office materials and are in the process of organising brand new domestic collection and recycling services with funding the New Opportunities Fund SEED programme, Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, The Community Fund and landfill tax money. This work, known as The Birmingham Waste and Resources Partnership, is a three way partnership between ourselves, the city council, and very local neighbourhood based community groups like neighbourhood fora. We will be using pedestrian controlled electric vehicles in high density housing neighbourhoods e.g. where big trucks can’t get between the parked cars. We think we can cover 10% (approx. 40,000) households of Birmingham with this system, and part of the design is 50% cash–back to the community partners from the recycling profits. They must use this money for environmental improvements in their area. We hope this will be an incentive. The difficult issues have been the need to secure funding from lots of different sources to get the domestic kerbside service off the ground. The council has existing waste collection and disposal contracts which tie the city into agreements with respect to required tonnages for disposal e.g. 400,000 tones per year for incineration for another 20 years or so. If we want to collect and recycle domestic waste materials, we have to finance the service from external sources as there are no recycling contracts up for grabs at present. We are directly competing for “ownership” of the waste with the disposal “giants.” We are taking tremendous risks, as there is no certainty that we can continue the kerbside service if no contracts become available for the supply of these services, or if they do, that

they are specific to recycling which allows us to tender, or that we will win such a contract anyway.

2. We’re in the middle of a Best Value Review of Birmingham’s waste management services. The council must re-negotiate the existing waste collection & disposal contracts. This could resolve the financing issue for city wide recycling services. There needs to be emphasis put on the waste minimisation strategy for the city. This needs to be integrated into other policy areas, which should include new market development and expansion of the social economy, and procurement policies, for example.

3. Local authorities must show their commitment to partnership working with the community sector and follow guidance in Waste Strategy 2000 to achieve this i.e. They must have a strategy focussed on waste minimisation as the ultimate goal, which can only be achieved through effective partnership.

I’d like to see the government rewarding the best local authorities, as a way to encourage the “lagards” to do better!

Recycling - East Midlands David Bentley, Loughborough Friends of the Earth, 34 Paget Street, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 5DS 1. We started a monthly paper collection in the early 1980’s. We persuaded Charmwood borough council to give us a few square metres of a town centre car park – enough to put a skip on. We advertised extensively, saying that people coming to the town centre (usually by car) could unload their papers into a skip when they came to shop. Later we started getting agreements with supermarkets, persuading them to have skips permanently in their car parks for paper and also glass and cans. This is still happening, in 3 major supermarkets in the town. The supermarkets pay for the removals of the skips – they negotiate direct to have them collected, so they contribute a bit. We get recycling credits from the county council based on the tonnage of what is collected from the supermarkets. We spend this money on various environmental schemes. We usually get around £3,000 per year, and we might give some to national Friends of the Earth when it has an appeal for funds for a particular campaign, and we might give funds to local schemes that ask for it e.g. for a wildlife garden at a local school. 2. We are concerned about incineration because it sets up a cycle of having to produce waste. Also if you burn waste, you are bound to be producing some pollution, however clean they say it is. They talk of getting energy and hot water from incineration, but that means everyone has to keep producing more waste to burn. We want waste minimisation - we don’t want to produce waste in the first place. 3. The Government should choose renewable energy e.g. wind, solar and do more about insulation, rather than trying to get energy from waste. For disposal of waste we should not have incineration, but waste minimisation.

Recycling – South West Andy Cunningham, Avon Friends of the Earth, Trelawny House, Surrey Street, Bristol BS2 8PS Tel: 0117 9081303 (day) For general information please contact Community Recycling Network or Wastewatch. I regret I am not able to help students with projects etc. 1. We’re doing multi-material kerbside collection of dry recyclables for 350,000 households. We’re piloting organic and green waste collection from kerbsides and promoting home composting, waste minimisation, re-use etc. We’re recycling 30,000 tonnes an year, generally marketing our own materials. We have a variety of contractual relationships, from partnerships to sub-contracts with waste management companies, and to some extent work is determined by contractual obligations. In addition we have a number of research and development projects into different material recycling possibilities, techniques and methods. We are doing all this primarily for environmental reasons although the original objective had employment and social objectives as well. It was the most direct way we could engage the public in positive action, to help the environment in their everyday lives. We see waste management as a people issue before a technical issue. 2. It’s all got to happen at once. Concerning outlets and collections – you can’t just focus on one aspect, or else it doesn’t work. We need a coherent approach from design to re-use of secondary resources. Waste management contracts should be recycling led, rather than disposal led. Waste management strategies tend to focus more on the end strategy i.e. landfill or incineration, so we’d like to start with waste elimination, reduction, re-use and recycling. If we want it to work we have got to accept recycling industries need to be nurtured, and we are not doing it just to avoid penalties from Europe. We can get positive outcomes in other fields – for the local economy, for employment and socially. We shouldn’t necessarily look for big simplistic solutions; we should expect lots of smaller options to be involved. For example, at a regional level we would like to see these listen to districts to find local solutions. We must accept that this is a long game – it will take time for people’s attitudes and behaviour to change.

Two horse power recycling vehicle. Image © Avon Friends of the Earth

3. The Government must embrace recycling as the main option. As a sector we need contracts to be let in such a way that the community sector can participate. So often they lump recycling in with waste disposal and street cleaning – i.e. they are lumped together in such a way that it is impossible to compete. The Government could guide local authorities in this. The landfill tax is not sufficient – it probably needs to be a disposal tax.

Sorting recycling at the kerbside, Bath. Image © Avon Friends of the Earth

Recycling - South West Nicky Scott, Devon Community Composting Network co-ordinator, 8 Meldon Road, Chagford, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ13 8BG Tel: 01647 432880 (day) Email: nscott@devon.gov.uk Website: www.othas.org.uk/dccn

1. I’m employed by Devon local authorities to help set up community composting groups, and give on-going advice. I helped set the first one up myself, and now we have a network of about 26 community composting groups in Devon. Nobody was doing it on a community level, and masses of lovely organic material was just being sent to landfill or was being burned on bonfires. 2. The key is to change the law, waste legislation, so that community groups can more easily be set up. If it wasn’t for the waste licensing laws we’d have more community composting groups. It’s the (need for an) exemption from having a waste licence that’s the particular problem. If you don’t have a licence, you can have waste taken to your site (and garden trimmings etc are classed as waste), but if you compost it, you can’t sell it or even give it away – give it back to the community. Also you can’t put a trailer etc. in a car park and receive trimmings because that would be classed as a waste transfer station. The third thing is that the animal by-products order means that you can’t collect kitchen waste for composting. Hopefully we will have a ruling soon on the animal by-products order. We need more dialogue. The government talks to big organisations like the composting association, but when it comes to the community they don’t, because we’re small and disparate. I am chair of the community composting network, and we are a member of the composting association, and we have had one of their employees on our management team, so we are gradually forming a coalition front. The key thing is that if you look at league tables for Europe and beyond, the UK is near the bottom for recycling and composting. We are so far behind - we need more resources and political will. There has been New Opportunities Fund money promised, but we haven’t had it and we need it. We need to get money for core funding. Funders tend to want a new project to

Devon Community Composting Network co-ordinator, Nicky Scott (left) and Alan Woolley at the launch of a new system with their council's mobile chipper in September 1996 Image © N. Scott

fund, so you have to reinvent yourself to get this project funding or landfill tax money. We need to reform the landfill tax. At the moment the money goes about 80% to the Treasury, and about 20% can be used for schemes. But much of this 20% goes to restore churches etc., and even if you do get some of it, you only get 90% of the money and you have to find the last 10% from a third party. This is difficult, especially as you can’t even use your own funds. The landfill tax should have more money going our way, and there needs to be a recognition that we need to build on what we are doing. We need a bit of solidarity of funding to build on what we are doing, and not need to have to initiate something new. There is a landfill tax consultation happening now, which gives the opportunity to address all these points. I am interested in local food links, and am trying to set up a zero waste facility – not just the recycling schemes that make money, but all sorts. The weakness of the Government waste strategy is that it is mundane, it has no spark. There is so much that could be done – links with social aims and social exclusion/inclusion, training and employment. The targets are pathetic – we could easily get to 80-90%, and compost. The very small amount left of residual waste going to landfill wouldn’t smell or give off methane. There would be no need to even think of incineration. This is based on what is happening around the world. There is not enough political will to help it happen. They’re pretty good in Devon but they are still talking about incineration. We don’t tend to look at what other countries are doing, and one county doesn’t look at what the next door county is doing. It’s important to link the community with the social and also business sectors. We want to set up community groups as businesses, so that they can properly employ people and be proper ethical businesses. Companies in general don’t realise that they can pollute less, design processes better, save energy and save money. It can be a win-win for companies, and they can work with communities with scrap stores, waste exchanges etc. 3. The Government should have the community represented at the highest level. They are making inroads, they are trying, but it is vital to have more dialogue going on at the top with people working directly with the community grass roots, like me. Talk to us! We must have real joined up talking and thinking!

Prototype in-vessel composter, made from two chest freezers, designed and built by Aaron Custance with DETR (now DEFRA) funding. Image © Proper Job 2001

Recycling – South West Steve Portsmouth, South Molton Recycle Ltd, 2 Southley Road, South Molton, Devon EX36 4BL Tel: 01769 573081 1. We’re a kerbside multi-material collection organisation that will serve 50,000 households by June. Material collected includes by weight: paper, glass, plastic bottles, cans, textiles and foil. We are particularly strong on plastic bottles. They are important because more recycling decisions are made on plastic bottles than any other category – i.e. there are a lot of them. Our area of Torridge and North Devon districts covers a large land area with some towns. There’s a population of around 130,000, and a lot of people are “C” and “D” households with lots of kids, where they don’t have a lot of heavy newspapers in their waste or lots of heavy champagne bottles, but do have lots of plastic bottles. There are some wine drinkers by the coast though! If you get people hooked on the habit of recycling with one thing, then they recycle everything else. We get good support from people because we do plastic bottles. The more all encompassing the recycling is, the more is done. Recycling is not just a bottle bank. 2. The Environment Agency hasn’t come out with their risk assessment on composting kitchen waste. They have not been allowing us to compost kitchen waste, but it is a big part of the compostable sector. The landfill directive talks of reducing putrescables or compostables from the waste stream to avoid methane and carbon emissions. Devon county council will not give us a recycling credit for collection of garden waste. They say it isn’t part of the waste stream. They are one of the few county councils who are saying this. They don’t want to afford it. This would encourage the local authorities to get on with it. It is the biggest block to the local authorities not achieving their recycling targets (30% and 33% for Torridge and North Devon). 3. The Government has to have a vision of zero waste. That is the sort of strategy they have to aim for. We have to start producing things in ways that we don’t have to dump them or burn them. It is not sustainable – if we carry on, in 20 years we will double the amount of stuff we throw away. Incineration is not the answer – we still would need landfill, and waste after it has been through the incinerator, the residual waste, is even more pernicious than it was before.

Recycling – South East Richard Boden, WyeCycle, 14 Scotton Street, Wye, Ashford, Kent TN25 5BZ Tel: 01233 813303 / 813298 (both daytime) Email: info@wyecycle.org Website: www.wyecycle.org 1. We work on waste minimisation, recycling and composting and refill schemes. We do swap days, furniture restoration, farmers markets. Farmers markets count as waste reduction because of packaging reduction, which is why we do it. We’ve cut down waste in our community to 250kilos per household per year – compared to the UK average of 1,000kilos (or 1 tonne) per household per year, i.e. to a quarter, or by 75%. We started doing this after being in a Friends of the Earth student group at Wye college. We are doing it firstly for environmental protection, and also for job creation – some long term unemployed people are now being paid. We are saving pollution from landfill, extraction of peat (half our tonnage is organic), fossil fuel consumption (every tonne of material saves energy and raw materials). The cost to the taxpayer is now as cheap as landfill, but as landfill becomes more expensive, ours will become cheaper. We do what we do without council tax in Wye being any higher than the rest of Ashford Borough. The bin-men come now once a fortnight, instead of once a week, and we get 46p per household per fortnight as a collection credit. We also get £39 per tonne disposal credit – i.e. for what is not sent to landfill, as well as income from materials. 2. Recycling from the community sector is vital. There is still a mindset with councils and every level of Government that to get work done, you need to pay the commercial sector. But with the community sector, the results surpass anything the private sector is achieving. The Government is getting there – Michael Meacher is OK, but too many people think you have to work with a big name. With us the money we get from the council stays in the community because we are not-for-profit, whereas with the private sector profits go to shareholders and to pay managers in remote offices. The landfill tax is too cheap – it needs to go up. £l/tonne it is going up by, but that is not enough – at that rate it will be 20 years before it will have an effect on people. Landfill needs to be hiked, and incineration needs to be taxed at the same rate. The taxpayer will stand it because it will encourage them to do the right thing. We could also have legislation to shut superstores down! I feel we need to address the market share of food supplies taken by

Farmers’ Markets help reduce packaging and waste. Image © WyeCycle

supermarkets. All things are connected, and we can’t properly address waste without addressing the market share supermarkets have of food retailing. 3. The Government must turn the landfill tax into a disposal tax, and we must address the market share of food retailing

Recycling – South East Petra Johnston, T J Composting Services Ltd, Brighton Tel: 01273 261163 Email: petra@tjcomposting.co.uk Website: www.tjcomposting.co.uk 1. We have got four on-farm composting sites for green garden trimmings, and aim to have eight by the end of the year, and hope to divert 20,000tonnes from landfill to composting this year, and quite a bit more in the future. We’re dong this to save methane gas being released – which it would be if the green waste went to landfill. Methane is 27 times more destructive than carbon dioxide in causing the greenhouse effect to this planet. All these concerns are being directed by Europe in the landfill directive, to divert green waste from landfill (we have to meet our targets under the landfill directive). We have a mobile giant shredder and turning equipment, and a massive screener to make the finished compost, which we then distribute mostly to farmers. 2. We need a step change in society, and a big overhaul of public and Government attitudes to waste. We have to start playing the planet’s game – we’ve been going in the opposite direction. For instance people buy leylandii from a garden centre in a peat-based product, then it grows too big and the trimmings go to landfill and create methane gas! The public also need to stop contaminating their garden trimmings at the civic amenity site, with garden furniture, plastic flower pots etc. 3. There needs to be joined-up thinking which we are seeing from Europe. My world vision includes organic farming and zero waste. Composting needs to grow – there are 10-20 million tonnes of organic waste available i.e. British households waste about 20m tonnes of organic matter every year (organic matter is about one third of our waste). People shouldn’t be wasting organic matter. I make stock out of most of my extra food, and my brother has a pig which is also very useful – she eats grapefruit skins! The Government must remember that they themselves, our public officers, our public services, and the media shape people’s habits. The public will follow the leads. We want responsible reporting from the media – television should be yet another zero waste and composting messenger.

T J Composting site Image © T J Composting

Recycling – East Paula Whitney, Colchester & NE Essex Friends of the Earth / Essex Friends of the Earth, 4 Shears Crescent, West Mersea, Colchester, Essex CO5 8AR Tel: 01206 383123 Email: paula.essexfoe@btopenworld.com 1. We have spent six years fighting Essex County Council waste incineration plans and promoting recycling, particularly at Mersea Island where separated recyclables are collected at the kerbside, and garden waste has been composted since 1996. Now we have a larger area trial of 4,500 households that is recycling 58% already. It has been really exciting to see Councillors getting fascinated - so much that they have taken 2 days off work to do a dustbin waste audit. 2. We need a moratorium on incineration, say until 2010 by which time hopefully it will never be allowed. A recent High Court challenge against Essex County Council on 25th March 2002, re-established that there is no legal or Government requirement to permit incineration in waste plans. To stop major 25year disposal contracts to build incinerators, we need 10 year maximum local contracts controlled by waste collection authorities (i.e. districts). These should be for separated kerbside recycling collections of paper/card, textiles, cans, glass and plastic bottles, with purpose built or suitable vehicles, not using wheely-bins. Wheely-bins are an anathema to recycling properly – people put everything in together, they can’t see what’s in there, and 40% ends up in landfill. Wheely-bins are not suitable for garden waste because garden waste is not a regular amount – it tends to be in large batches. There needs to be a local central place for garden waste to be collected and sent to composting. What’s left for disposal – plastic wrappers and tetra packs doesn’t need wheely-bins. Both of these are recyclable. Producers should provide collection facilities for these or they should be eliminated. Wheely-bins also need special trucks, and then that is tied in with big waste disposal companies. Big trucks aren’t suitable for small rural villages, or narrow urban streets? Trucks have to stop for each wheely-bin. We need urgent funding to expand the paper and glass reprocessors because they have been at capacity for years now. We need help from Government. There is payback in 5 years. Aylesford has been a brilliant example of success. They wanted to expand almost as soon as

Paula Whitney of Essex Friends of the Earth with her recycling Image © Essex Courier

they started. There is plenty of glass and paper. Talk of lack of markets is rubbish. With aluminium, the plant in Warrington is having to import 70% of its used cans because we’re not collecting enough here. 80% of plastic bottles and sheet plastic is being imported for even the plants we have got because we’re not collecting it. We have to start with the large fractions of our MSW (municipal solid waste). Garden waste is a third, and paper and card is a quarter. We need more plants for those like glass which are at capacity, but more materials are needed for aluminium and plastic. In Germany waste recycling and reprocessing industries are bigger than retail, bigger than insurance and telecom. They are wonderful for balance of payments as well as saving pollution, energy, and carbon dioxide emissions. Everything we bury or burn we have to replace which produces 10 times the material’s own weight of waste. Landfill tax credit money should go not to small trials (we’ve done enough!), we should be expanding existing kerbside collection schemes. Once you start kerbside collections, more people take note and join in – it becomes a normal habit. The more different materials you collect the more is collected of all the materials. My residual waste is a bathroom sized flip-top bin – that’s two weeks’ worth. I put 3 times the weight of my “rubbish” into my composter in winter, and much, much more the rest of the year with garden clippings. 3. We need a moratorium on incineration – nothing will stop until we do that. This must be combined with statutory recycling targets: 50% by 2010, 75% by 2015, and zero by 2020. You can’t not be doing 50%, once you are doing your garden waste and paper. After that you look at what is holding you back. Apparently the Government is no longer asking for combined figures for each district or unitary authority. We need figures combined for recycling with civic amenity sites, so that we know what an area actually does. We need funding to go direct to district councils/collection authorities (not to county/disposal authorities). Councils must keep their own public services i.e. direct service organisations, because that way there’s local accountability.

Recycling – London Andy Bond, ECT Recycling, 97 Bollo Lane, Acton, London W3 8QN Tel: 020 8993 0737 Email: abond@ectgroup.co.uk Website: www.ectrecycling.co.uk 1. We do a multi-material, source-separated kerbside collection for 660,000 households which involves 75,000 tonnes per year and rising. We want to do lots more of it. We think we’re much better at this work than the private sector are, and with some justification because we keep beating them in contracts. We are starting to get involved with traditional waste management companies, and direct service organisations. We often find that they lack knowledge about recycling and how to do it effectively. We believed recycling could be done a lot cheaper than anyone said it could, and we’d looked at the problem from a different perspective i.e. we didn’t assume you could only collect in refuse vehicles and using MFRs (material reclamation facilities) - which is the assumed method. Because if you co-mingle (which MRFs do) you loose the value of the material because of contamination, i.e. 20% would go back to landfill. With source-separated you don’t have problems like that. The industry says that there are no markets. This is not true, there are. If you present the material in the quality that the market wants to buy it in, there are – which is what we do. 2. The most important and easiest is to whack up landfill tax substantially. If it was increased to European levels that would help a lot. Also it should be extended to be a disposal-based tax – i.e. not just landfill but all residual disposal. The reason is that if it is just landfill, it could be that incineration is the next cheapest, and than nothing would be recycled. We would be subsidising incineration and they already have subsidy. We need to sort out the animal by-products order, because that is stopping us from composting kitchen waste which we have to do to meet recycling targets. We need to make it clear that if the UK does not meet it’s targets, that the local authorities that are the problem should pay the fine on behalf of the UK. If you compare recycling in the UK and Europe, we are not as bad as it seems because of the problems of how things are defined and compared. We need to tighten up the definition of recycling, so only material that is delivered to reprocessing sites and accepted for recycling is counted as recycling. At the moment the definition says that if a local authority collects material with the intention of recycling, but subsequently doesn’t, it still counts. So there is a perverse incentive to collect, but not necessarily to recycle. A higher rate of recycling can be claimed than is actually being done – i.e. with MRFs around 20% goes to disposal. Sutton

Recycling at an estate towerImage © ECT Recycling

council claimed a 40% recycling rate, but a lot of the material they collected and sent to the MRF was contaminated and therefore failed to find a market. The Audit commission recently looked at Sutton and the recycling rate nearly halved. 3. The Government should move to a disposal tax, sort out the animal by-products order, make local authorities responsible for failing targets, and we need to tighten up the definition of recycling. The Government could give lots of cash away, but there is lots of exaggerated talk on the cost of recycling, because this is based on what many traditional waste companies say – and that’s because they need to make a profit. Their way is a high capital way (e.g. building incinerators, MRFs etc), because for most proposals that is a better way to make a profit – i.e. systems can be chosen because they are the best way to make a profit i.e. maximising returns on capital invested by shareholders, which may not necessarily be the best for recycling. The Government should abandon PFI for waste, and also move away from long-term integrated contracting for waste. Most of these long-term integrated contracts, while they include the delivery of recycling services, are generally driven by disposal where most of the value to the company is, so there is a tension between the needs of recycling and disposal.