Is an incinerator the best way to deal with waste?
Posted by Stephen Williams, MP for Bristol West, at 17:22, Sat 31 May 2008:
I've been out meeting residents in Montpelier and St Pauls today, asking them about Bristol's waste disposal policies.
From 2005 to 2007 when my Lib Dem colleagues ran a minority administration in the city we boosted recycling from 13% to about 40% - an exceptional rate for an urban area. We had plans for a further radical shift in waste management that would reduce landfill and save the city a lot of money in landfill tax. But for the last year the city has been run by a minority Labour administration, propped up by the Conservative group. They have decided to opt for a mass burn incinerator in Avonmouth. I think this is a retrograde step, bad for the environment. We should continue to expand recycling, attack waste at source (eg working with supermarkets on bags and packaging) and embrace proven technology such as pyrolosis that "cooks" residual waste and is much cleaner than an incinerator.
Please let me know your views, either via this web site or by writing to me at stephenwilliamsmp@parliament.uk Please remember to include your postal address so I can respond to Bristol West constituents.
Best wishes
Stephen
Comments
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Posted by Garry Gordon, 17:51, Sat 31 May 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
Stephen, I agree that we need to deal with waste issues at source. Recycling has improved but we still don't have recycling of plastics and that needs to be resolved. Pyrolysis is incineration by another name. In pyrolysis the hot gases driven out of the fuel/waste are not combusted. They are cooled, scrubbed and then used directly as a source of industrial heat or to fire lean burn reciprocating engines that drive generators. Conventional incinerators as proposed at Avonmouth are higher polluting, emit more CO2 and should be avoided.
Posted by Martin Freye, 21:06, Sat 31 May 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
A burner at Avonmouth? Great idea! Hopefully it will have a heat exchanger so we can at least get some energy out of it.
Posted by Colin Capner, 06:13, Sun 1 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
I was pleased to receive this message on this issue as I feel that previous email contacts with Mr Williams have been a complete waste of time as no reply has ever been given and I must say that like all politicians I have ever met we only ever SEE Mr Williams here in Kingsdown when he wantes our vote. I fail to see why the issue of waste recycling should be party political!! Burning waste with safeguards on emissions could be perfectly ecological I should think. Sadly the email I received gives us little information on the proposed plans to make an informed decision. We want facts and an arguement on the issues Mr Williams NOT a purile one on how Labour and the Conservatives are mismabaging Bristol. If you dont like that perhaps the LibDems should have taken control when they had the recent opportunity!!
Posted by Dr. Georges Ware, 07:42, Sun 1 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
There are two side to every question. Global warming is here to stay. Scientists now understand that it is partly caused by tiny changes in the earth's orbit round the sun, partly by increased solar temperatures and, yes, to a tiny degree by CO2 in the upper atmosphere. It has all happened many times before in the history of Earth and we can't stop it. We should be spending money on how to protect ourselves from the effects of global warming, not on trying to stop it.
As for plastic bags - many are already bio-degradable; all could be.
Posted by Al Shaw, 07:58, Sun 1 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
In principle, I agree with you that we must take a more radical line on waste management, starting at the production and distribution end of the process. The aim must be to dramatically reduce the amount that needs to be incinerated in the first place.
Plastics seem to be the obvious next target in this regard.
In this context, I agree that an incinerator does not seem a great idea.
Posted by Jim Lewis, 08:53, Sun 1 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
I have to agree with the comment that the email question contains insufficient information to make an informed decision, but in my opinion incineration has its place in waste management. The legislation is taking too long to react to this issue. More effort should be taken to force retailers to use less, or biodegradeable packaging. However, at a time when we are facing a real energy crisis, burning waste to recoup the energy in it actually seems like a pretty sensible course of action. I also agree that cheap political point scoring is symptomatic of the crummy administration we have had to put up with in Bristol for too long. These issues are too important to get wrong. I want to see cross-party consensus. When I can see that a politician is working for the good of the communtiy, they will get my vote, irrespective of their poilitcal allegiance.
Posted by Peter Thompson, 14:19, Sun 1 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
I agree that 'mass burn incineration' is a bad idea, particularly as this proposal is for an incinerator that will service a large area, requiring transportation of waste. Smaller scale, more local solutions are more likely to be sustainable.
Posted by Sharon Harris, 08:00, Mon 2 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
Good to hear from you! I love all the recycling initiatives and am pleased that the council is finally going ahead with tetrapak recycling (although not via the blackbox scheme so not as good as it could be).
Although I agree that we should be recycling as much as possible and that more could be done on a national level to encourage retailers to reduce packaging, I would actually be in favour of an incinerator although I hope that we would be able to get some energy out of it (that's what I understood was going to happen when I last heard about it). Thanks to previous respondent for explaining the difference between pyrolysis and combustion. I guess the pyrolysis would be better if you get more energy out of it and it produces less 'waste/emissions', but I would have thought that the combustion incinerator needn't be that dirty?
The fact is that there will always be some 'non-recyclable' stuff unless we change our lifestyles completely, and we have to decide what to do about it.
Posted by Kevin Duffy, 10:56, Tue 3 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
In principle I agree with your statement: "We should continue to expand recycling, attack waste at source (eg working with supermarkets on bags and packaging) and embrace proven technology such as pyrolosis that "cooks" residual waste and is much cleaner than an incinerator." If, as another respondent says, pyrolosis produces energy that could be used for domestic or industrial energy - then we should be looking to use the energy produced in this way.
Posted by Jenny Szewiel, 12:35, Thu 5 June 2008: (Is this post abusive?) #
I agree with you that a mass incinerator would be a very unwelcome move and agree that attacking waste at source is an important part of the solution, as well as using more environmentally friendly methods of waste disposal.
However, I also agree with Colin Capnor and Jim Lewis that I'm disappointed at the way in which your message makes this appear to be a party political issue when these are global issues that we should be working together to change.
I'd like to see politicians proposing viable and realistic solutions to environmental and social problems rather than pointing fingers at each other.