Are Ashford serious?
Up to clubrecycle forum
So Ashford are apparently under the impression that we should give them credit for diverting waste from landfill.
While I don't oppose EfW as part of the disposal process (especially if you can harvest some of the energy through gassification or thermal recovery) simply throwing your waste into an incinerator and pretending that's job done is nigh on criminal in my mind.
Being only one small dirty rung up the waste hierarchy efw is the laziest and dumbest way to divert a valuable resource away from a smelly pit in the ground.
I agree with you totally - it would appear that some dimmers see efw as 'zero waste' and as such should be vilified rather than applauded.
I think it's probably shame. If you have a recycling % that is 30-40% + then losing 6% is bad, but to lose 6% when you are only doing 20% is disasterous, and I think they are trying to gloss it over.
Previously Gideon wrote:
Being only one small dirty rung up the waste hierarchy efw is the laziest and dumbest way to divert a valuable resource away from a smelly pit in the ground.
I agree with you totally - it would appear that some dimmers see efw as 'zero waste' and as such should be vilified rather than applauded.
Yawn, not this old chesnut,more e books are now being bought than real ones, when Russia decides that we are not worthy of their gas any more, and Mr Hune has finished wasting our money on stupid windfarms that we can ill afford, I am sure that you will be happy to burn whatever you can get your hands on to keep you warm.What a silly arguement.
sceptic
An efw bonfire in a bin is hardly pushing the envelope - I'll happily take my energy from a nuclear power station thanks - what have ebooks got to do with it?
Previously Gideon wrote:
sceptic
An efw bonfire in a bin is hardly pushing the envelope - I'll happily take my energy from a nuclear power station thanks - what have ebooks got to do with it?
There will always be a supply and demand to recycled paper.My example of e-books is a case in point, where is the capacity for all the old books? We are quite happy for the Nuclear industry to merrily bury it's waste in a frankly pretty dodgy geological area, but hey ho out of site out of mind, bit like our love of landfill, perish the thought of EFW and all those silly engineering and construction jobs,why employ thousands in a growing technical industry when we can have a big dog and a weighbridge on a landfill.
Bonfire in a bin.Grow up.
Previously Gideon wrote:
sceptic
An efw bonfire in a bin is hardly pushing the envelope - I'll happily take my energy from a nuclear power station thanks - what have ebooks got to do with it?
There will always be a supply and demand to recycled paper.My example of e-books is a case in point, where is the capacity for all the old books? We are quite happy for the Nuclear industry to merrily bury it's waste in a frankly pretty dodgy geological area, but hey ho out of site out of mind, bit like our love of landfill, perish the thought of EFW and all those silly engineering and construction jobs,why employ thousands in a growing technical industry when we can have a big dog and a weighbridge on a landfill.
Bonfire in a bin.Grow up.
I'm not against efw plants as long as the fuel is absolute residues diverted from landfill as opposed to it being a convenient tick in a box diverting waste from MRFs.
Even if this the case then it would seem far more logical to build nothing in the UK yet until we've diverted as much 'fuel' into Holland's over capacity sector.
I can see you're a tad uptight on the subject of efw - good to see some rubbish passion.
Previously Gideon wrote:
I'm not against efw plants as long as the fuel is absolute residues diverted from landfill as opposed to it being a convenient tick in a box diverting waste from MRFs.
Even if this the case then it would seem far more logical to build nothing in the UK yet until we've diverted as much 'fuel' into Holland's over capacity sector.
I can see you're a tad uptight on the subject of efw - good to see some rubbish passion.
Oh, what an excellent idea! Let's export it, then we can give Holland and Germany our taxpayers money, genius.Then when the economy expands and they chuck us out or expand capacity to deal with extra materia,l we can sit back in the knowledge that all those skills and jobs and money are nowhere near us.What forsight, Brunel would be proud.I know lets all sit in tents round a church, and think the economy better (or hum, chant or even fiddle, like the Roman's did when they got all comfy, fat and spoiled).
Previously Gideon wrote:
I'm not against efw plants as long as the fuel is absolute residues diverted from landfill as opposed to it being a convenient tick in a box diverting waste from MRFs.
Even if this the case then it would seem far more logical to build nothing in the UK yet until we've diverted as much 'fuel' into Holland's over capacity sector.
I can see you're a tad uptight on the subject of efw - good to see some rubbish passion.
Oh, what an excellent idea! Let's export it, then we can give Holland and Germany our taxpayers money, genius.Then when the economy expands and they chuck us out or expand capacity to deal with extra materia,l we can sit back in the knowledge that all those skills and jobs and money are nowhere near us.What forsight, Brunel would be proud.I know lets all sit in tents round a church, and think the economy better (or hum, chant or even fiddle, like the Roman's did when they got all comfy, fat and spoiled).
There shouldn't be any need to export any of the material, either as EfW or as recyclate. The basic fact is that up to 70% of residual waste can be recycled, Ashford are recycling 14% - less than even the poorest London Boroughs. That means that 56% of material that could be recycled (and generating an income stream) is actually being burnt and a resource is lost.
The fact that Chris Huhnes daft wind turbines are being used as an excuse to carry on being inefficient is just plain daft. By burning the resource it means that processors need virgin resources which often take a greater quantity of energy to produce than to re-use materials, resulting in a net energy loss.
There's no reason why they couldn't send any remaining residual to EfW to generate power keeping your construction jobs (although you would probably have more if you processed and preserved your resource - I know that the MRF in my area employs more people than the local RDF plant and I doubt that there are huge numbers employed at the kiln where the RDF is burnt).
And as for supply and demand - there is plenty of demand in the UK for recyclable materials, it's only the CRR (which seems to be comprised of old school firms who don't wish to invest in plant) that are unhappy. The materials produced in my area are in demand and fetch a very good price.
Previously sceptic wrote:
Previously Gideon wrote:
I'm not against efw plants as long as the fuel is absolute residues diverted from landfill as opposed to it being a convenient tick in a box diverting waste from MRFs.
Even if this the case then it would seem far more logical to build nothing in the UK yet until we've diverted as much 'fuel' into Holland's over capacity sector.
I can see you're a tad uptight on the subject of efw - good to see some rubbish passion.
Oh, what an excellent idea! Let's export it, then we can give Holland and Germany our taxpayers money, genius.Then when the economy expands and they chuck us out or expand capacity to deal with extra materia,l we can sit back in the knowledge that all those skills and jobs and money are nowhere near us.What forsight, Brunel would be proud.I know lets all sit in tents round a church, and think the economy better (or hum, chant or even fiddle, like the Roman's did when they got all comfy, fat and spoiled).
Cor blimey, what’s up Skep? – your scepticism seems to be metered out carpet bombing stylie. Have you built your own energy from waste facility?
To be fair to Ashford, it does state in the article that they are introducing food waste collections and moving to AWC, so it's not as if they are content with a 14% recycling level. They are changing their collection system to increase recycling and reduce the amount sent to EfW.
Previously stat.boy.slim wrote:
There shouldn't be any need to export any of the material, either as EfW or as recyclate. The basic fact is that up to 70% of residual waste can be recycled, Ashford are recycling 14% - less than even the poorest London Boroughs. That means that 56% of material that could be recycled (and generating an income stream) is actually being burnt and a resource is lost.
The fact that Chris Huhnes daft wind turbines are being used as an excuse to carry on being inefficient is just plain daft. By burning the resource it means that processors need virgin resources which often take a greater quantity of energy to produce than to re-use materials, resulting in a net energy loss.
There's no reason why they couldn't send any remaining residual to EfW to generate power keeping your construction jobs (although you would probably have more if you processed and preserved your resource - I know that the MRF in my area employs more people than the local RDF plant and I doubt that there are huge numbers employed at the kiln where the RDF is burnt).
And as for supply and demand - there is plenty of demand in the UK for recyclable materials, it's only the CRR (which seems to be comprised of old school firms who don't wish to invest in plant) that are unhappy. The materials produced in my area are in demand and fetch a very good price.
Of the many things that infuriate me, the idea that EFW plants do not create many jobs is one of them, The construction of an efw Plant creates thousands of jobs, and good ones as well.Once running they do not need many operators, however when undergoing annual maintenance again hundreds of skilled engineers are required,rather than hundreds of poorly skilled often imported labour on a picking belt or kerbside sorting.
UK mills take a fraction of the paper we recycle, because they are full. The rest is exported,to say that we should recycle everything,just because we can, is daft,paper is grown from trees so therefore it is no different to burning biomass, I accept that there is some embedded carbon in the milling process, however in most cases mills run their own EFW plants to provide their on site energy need.
Sure recycle as much as you can, but there is a point when you reach a diminishing financial return, so then rather than exporting it (just check out how many TFS notes are now in place for RDF exprt) build our own infrastructure.Because when it comes to engineering we rock.
You are of course right to compare burning wood (biomass) with any other form of efw. Wasting good wood that could be recycled is a real waste and the old gag that it's carbon neutral because of the CO2 the tree sucked up is funny.
I agree that there is always a cut off point where recycling waste becomes financially negative and this in turn means that more localised reprocessing is required or using the 'zero waste' theory - use another material to package the item etc.
Energy from Waste is fine and I have never suggested it's not but at the expence of recycling a valuable resource - it's stupid.
Please begin your carpet bombing at your convenience.
Previously Gideon wrote:
You are of course right to compare burning wood (biomass) with any other form of efw. Wasting good wood that could be recycled is a real waste and the old gag that it's carbon neutral because of the CO2 the tree sucked up is funny.
I agree that there is always a cut off point where recycling waste becomes financially negative and this in turn means that more localised reprocessing is required or using the 'zero waste' theory - use another material to package the item etc.
Energy from Waste is fine and I have never suggested it's not but at the expence of recycling a valuable resource - it's stupid.
Please begin your carpet bombing at your convenience.
I would suggest that you look through your comments, proponents of EFW should be 'vilified '? I would also suggest that you start to understand the difference between sequestered carbon as opposed to biogenic carbon,I would then encourage you to consider energy as a resource as well as material.
Then, once you have mastered a little bit of science perhaps you might be able to describe 200 million pounds of state of the art infrastructure with slightly more reverence than a burner in a bin.
The thread that I was responding to is that diversion from MRF to efw is not good management. Waste management has changed over recent years from a disposal operation to a materials handling one (waste hierarchy etc).
I have the same views that bottle glass should always (where possible) go to remelt as opposed to aggreggate which just as with efw, it's the end of a resource.
I admit to being ignorant re sequestered carbon/biogenic carbon and will remain blissfully so. I agree to differ.
Previously sceptic wrote
Sure recycle as much as you can, but there is a point when you reach a diminishing financial return, so then rather than exporting it (just check out how many TFS notes are now in place for RDF exprt) build our own infrastructure.Because when it comes to engineering we rock.
And that was the very point I've been making. There is nothing wrong with sending the waste to EfW further down the line when you have extracted recyclate, but to throw everything straight into an EfW plant seems foolish.
But as to the jobs arguement - I didn't introduce it. A MRF takes skilled engineers to build and doesn't maintain itself, as does an EfW plant. I doubt the employment levels vary that greatly between the two. As to the nature of the labour market, my experience is that there are people to fill the jobs, but if those people are coming from abroad it's because people in this country don't want the work because they think it demeans them. We can't all be highly paid bank managers. I for one certainly don't get gold plated pensions or any of the other great perks a council employee is supposed to have, but I enjoy what I do.
And as for infrastructure, surely the arguement should be why are we exporting materials to foreign countries to recycle if we can build the infrastructure and process them here, but that then loops back into supply demand, and economic viability. I'm not some wild haired eco-activist insisting that we should save and recycle everything - only that to simply throw everything straight into a giant burner without consideration was a waste of fantastic resources (without taking away from the fact that the left over waste could go into a burner and become a valuable resource in itself).
So Ashford are apparently under the impression that we should give them credit for diverting waste from landfill.
While I don't oppose EfW as part of the disposal process (especially if you can harvest some of the energy through gassification or thermal recovery) simply throwing your waste into an incinerator and pretending that's job done is nigh on criminal in my mind.
Previously Gideon wrote:
The thread that I was responding to is that diversion from MRF to efw is not good management. Waste management has changed over recent years from a disposal operation to a materials handling one (waste hierarchy etc).
I have the same views that bottle glass should always (where possible) go to remelt as opposed to aggreggate which just as with efw, it's the end of a resource.
I admit to being ignorant re sequestered carbon/biogenic carbon and will remain blissfully so. I agree to differ.
Gideon, I have never once in my entire life heard of an arguement that ends 'I intend to remain ignorant'.
Well done! I will use this when I am next challenged intellectually ' So sorry I dont understand what you are saying, and I dont intend to, that way I will always be right'.
No wonder people write blogs and post stuff on the internet, in any other arena we would be castigated.
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