MPs told of RDF export disadvantage

Waste management firm Viridor has renewed its call for government support to reduce the UKs reliance on foreign waste infrastructure at a select committee hearing in Westminster yesterday (June 25).

Giving evidence in front of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee on waste management, Viridor external affairs director Dan Cooke told MPs that there needed to be more investment in UK-based energy-from-waste projects.

Viridor which is investing 1.5 billion into UK waste infrastructure recently responded to a government consultation on RDF arguing the country is at a siginficant commercial disadvantage to other parts of Europe (see letsrecycle.com story).

But, asked by committee chair Anne McIntosh MP whether the firm had a vested interest in securing RDF for UK plants, Mr Cooke argued that all businesses would profit from supporting domestic recovery.

He said: Yes, we are investing a lot in domestic infrastructure but our interests are the interests of UK plc. In terms of energy security we are currently exporting investment opportunities and job opportunities.

He added: Where there is crime involving RDF, the government should do more to encourage the Environment Agency to regulate and eradicate that problem of illegal waste operators.

SITA UK chief executive David Palmer-Jones, who was also speaking on the panel, conceded that the export of RDF to the continent was a temporary market and that together the waste industry could provide 7-8% of the countrys electricity if investment and strong leadership from government was put in place.

He added that more needed to be done to police waste crime, suggesting that criminals were moving into the energy-from-waste industry because it was rich pickings and sentencing was comparatively lenient to other sectors.

Cautious

However, ECO Plastics founder and deputy chairman Jonathan Short took a more cautious view of energy-from-waste, arguing that the most pressing concern for government was meeting the 50% EU recycling target by 2020.

Mr Short argued that clear communication between local authorities and householders is crucial to meeting these targets.

He said: There is a lot of confusion out there from the public and those councils achieving 60% rates can put it down to communication. Confusion leads to scepticism which leads to cynicism, and then finally to the Daily Mail and thats it.

Meanwhile, fervent opposition to energy-from-waste came from the UK Without Incineration Network secretary Shlomo Dowen who gave evidence during the second session of the hearing.

Dismissal

Mr Dowen, whose dismissal of energy recovery led to a lively exchange with committee members, argued composting of greasy cardboard pizza boxes and landfill mining were sound alternatives to incineration of waste.

He said: We are moving towards the age of decommissioning of incineration. Defra should shift its efforts from a ban on landfill to a ban on residual waste altogether. It should also help those local authorities that they have led down the garden path in terms of long term PFI contracts that have not been fulfilled.