Enviroparks. What better way to deal with waste?

I have to admit to being dismayed, in fact angered, by two posts yesterday from Dafydd Tristan on the proposal for a waste handling plant at Hirwaun by Enviroparks.

     Enviroparks - open letter to councillors
     If you tolerate this your children will be next

As a society, we produce a lot of waste and need to reduce it. The first way of doing it is to reduce it at source, in particular to reduce unnecessary packaging, and to make the sort of goods which last and can be repaired or upgraded rather than thrown away. The second way is to increasing the amount of waste we recycle. I'm sure there is broad consensus that we need to do both. The first is something that is rather harder to do because we buy products from all over the world, but the second is something we can deal with at local and national level. We have set ourselves targets for recycling, and we are gradually increasing the amount we recycle as a result. That's good.

But, even after doing those things, we are still left with lots of waste. The traditional way of dealing with it has been to put it into landfill sites. However we cannot continue to do that on the scale we have been doing, and there are now considerable disincentives to doing so in the form of landfill taxes which rise steeply year-on-year.

Because of that disincentive, we need to look for new ways of getting rid of waste, and the next obvious solution is to burn it, and to generate electricity from it. This explains why there have been a spate of planning applications for waste incinerators not just in Wales, but everywhere. Now yes, I would agree that burning waste is a better option than burying it. But it is not a good option ... it is simply the "next worst" option.

The reason it is bad is because it is very difficult, if not impossible to ensure that what is burnt can be burned cleanly. Therefore waste incineration produces a host of nasty emissions which are dangerous to people's health. The companies that operate such incinerators are also put in the invidious position of producing less electricity if they filter out the more dangerous waste before burning it, and of being left with waste that they can only get rid of by putting into landfill sites. They lose money if they don't burn it, and it costs them money to get rid of it. So of course the temptation will always be to burn it.

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Now, rather than talk in general terms, let me make things more specific and more local. In the valleys next door to Cynon we have two examples of what needs to be avoided. Trecatti is a landfill site just outside Merthyr. It was a big hole in the ground, and some bright spark thought it would be a good idea to fill it. However it is far too close to residential areas in Dowlais Top and Caeharris, and the shape of the valley tends to hold the smell rather than allow it to be blown away. The same is true for the dust that the Ffos y Fran opencast mine produces ... but that's another story.

However, just a few miles south, there are plans for a huge waste incinerator (there has been talk about it taking waste from all over south Wales) by the name of Brig y Cwm at Cwmbargoed ... and the preferred operator is the American firm Covanta, which has been repeatedly fined for breaking environmental laws in its waste incineration plants over there.

So, right on Cynon's doorstep, we have two examples of what not to do.

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Let me now turn to project proposed by Enviroparks. The process is multifaceted, but involves recycling, the separation of food and not food waste with food waste going to an anerobic digester to produce gas to be used as fuel, the plasma gasification (as opposed to incineration) of other waste to again produce gas, and burning the gas from both sources to produce electricity. This animation shows how these processes work together:

     

The crucial difference between this and incineration is that burning the gas is clean, whereas burning waste directly gives rise to high emissions of dioxins, nitrous oxide, toxic metals and particulates. The plasma arc breaks these down into individual atomic elements.

The Wiki article is here, including a list of projects planned or already operational. Enviroparks own website is here.

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When election time approaches, politicians might be expected to say things motivated more by political rivalry than an objective analysis of any particular proposal. But this is an issue which is far too important to be treated in a partisan way.

I simply cannot see what is particularly "dangerous" about this proposal. Yes, there is waste water, but it is produced by a controlled process and is therefore as treatable as any other water waste. The danger of polluted water seeping from landfill sites is much greater. The Penderyn Reservoir is above rather than below the site, therefore it would be almost impossible for any leak to pollute it.

But if Dafydd and others think these risks are understated, then I urge you to discuss this in objective terms. Please don't resort to language like, "If you tolerate this, your children will be next." It is horribly sensationalist, if not downright offensive. You insult people's intelligence by resorting to cheap headlines of this kind. It is not the way to foster debate on an issue that concerns everyone in Wales, not just one valley.

To the Plaid councillors that voted against it and to Plaid supporters in general who read this blog, I would ask that you look at the merits of this proposal rather than just treat it as if it were just another waste incineration scheme. It is not, the process is many times more environmentally safe than ordinary incineration.

I cannot think of a better way to deal with waste. So if people are so opposed to this, I have to ask what alternative you have in mind. For me there is only one thing wrong with the Hirwaun scheme, namely that waste is brought in by truck. For all its other faults, the Brig y Cwm scheme envisages waste being brought in by rail. But that can be very easily fixed; the rail link for the old Tower Colliery stops only a hundred metres or so from the site, and is due to be upgraded for passenger use anyway. If the Enviroparks scheme was redesigned to allow waste to be brought in by rail I think it would be just about perfect.