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Growing county ‘needs burner’
Friday 12th March 2010, 2:50PM GMT.
An artist's impression of how the Shrewsbury incinerator would look
Shropshire’s expected boom in population over the next 20 years will mean an incinerator is needed to deal with a surge in household waste, a county environmental health chief has claimed.
In response to questions over a proposed controversial multi-million pound burner at Battlefield in Shrewsbury by MP Daniel Kawczynski, Shropshire Council officer Andy Goldsmith said a predicted 10 per cent population rise would provide the bulk of residual waste the facility would need to operate.
The assistant head of public protection has also dismissed calls for an eco- friendly anaerobic digester instead of the incinerator, claiming the technology is unreliable.
Mr Goldsmith used recycling figures provided by Mr Kawczynski and Government figures to make the predictions.
Mr Kawczynski has called for Veolia, the firm behind plans for the burner, to look at alternatives. He claims bosses are progressing with the scheme despite “safer options” such as anaerobic digestion.
But Mr Goldsmith said: “It is interesting to note that that the demonstrator anaerobic digester in Ludlow that was designed to receive food and garden waste had to stop receiving garden waste as contamination caused the plant to fail.”
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I hope that Shropshire’s population does NOT grow from immigrants.
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I find Andy Goldsmith’s apparent dismissal of “an eco-friendly anaerobic digester “ highly inappropriate when South Shropshire District Council and now Shropshire Council gains from a significantly increased overall recycling rate from the Ludlow anaerobic digestion plant (part-owned by Shropshire Council).
Greenfinch (now BiogenGreenfinch) designed, built and runs the 5,000 tonne-a-year capacity plant at Coder Road which was the first full-scale AD facility to treat municipal waste in the UK. Greenfinch is an engineering company that provides AD technology for sewage, slurry and food waste treatment. The company this year has won three prizes at the Rushlight Awards (the Oscars of the environmental world) and has been Highly Commended for the coveted AFOR (Association for Organics Recycling) Local Authority Partnership Award 2010.
Mr Goldsmith apparently said: “It is interesting to note that that the demonstrator anaerobic digester in Ludlow that was designed to receive food and garden waste had to stop receiving garden waste as contamination caused the plant to fail.” He should note that people are calling for an AD plant to take food waste and that many incinerators have had operational problems, including breaching emission limits for months on end.
If Mr Goldsmith checked his facts before making such statements I believe he’d find the first two years of the Ludlow operations were primarily to facilitate research including garden waste. There was a problem with contamination, as is likely in any such scheme. It has long since been addressed and the plant works efficiently, providing environmental, social and economic benefits, including employment for local people. It is quite unhelpful to criticise in such circumstances.
Mr Goldsmith should perhaps restrain himself in appearing critical of a Shropshire business that has contributed to the Council achieving higher recycling rates, won a number of awards, is the leading national company in this field and pays taxes towards the salaries at Shirehall.
He may also be aware from the Shropshire Council website of Waste Contract Frequently Asked Questions the following:
“(4) Construction of an in-vessel composting facility, which will allow the treatment of all compostable wastes, including all food waste – turning it into valuable, peat-free compost whilst increasing landfill diversion. (A proposed site for the facility should be agreed shortly and the aim is to build in 2012).“
http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/waste.nsf/open/3E6658D5A59E169F80257329004B31B0
I’m sure this plant will at some point suffer from contamination as I’m sure the existing garden waste and recycling services in Shropshire have already experienced. He should be consistent and condemn recycling, composting, anaerobic digestion, waste from energy or incineration, and landfill – all having suffered from contamination as all waste treatment processes are susceptible.
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Shropshire’s population currently stands at 290,000.
Andy Goldsmith says a predicted rise in population means Shropshire must incinerate its waste.
Thousands of individuals within that population have voiced a wide variety objections to this logic.
They have made it clear that they want greener alternatives to incineration to be explored.
Couldn’t better education, for example, ensure that contamination of compostable material became less of a problem?
San Francisco’s population is much bigger than Shropshire’s: 808,976.
Yet San Francisco already recycles or composts 72% of its waste.
72%…
If Mr Goldsmith’s population argument holds water, could he or someone in favour of the incinerator explain why San Francisco, with its large population, is pushing for higher and higher recycling targets (See New York Times, ‘San Francisco to Toughen a Strict Recycling Law’, June 10, 2009)?
The national average for recycling in England is 37.6%.
In South Shropshire, which uses an anaerobic digester, the figure is 57.45%.
Burning waste would undermine recycling and composting.
San Francisco, with its much larger population, recycles and composts more than DOUBLE what we achieve in Shropshire as a whole.
South Shropshire is the 5th best performing council for recycling in the UK because of its anaerobic digester.
Surely those charged with protecting our health should be promoting the sustainable thinking of forward-looking administrations, rather than dismissing it because of surmountable problems, which better education could overcome.
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burners are excellent but the problem comes when plans are produced showing just where the plant is going. in devon and cornwall there are packed meetings of objectors to the schemes.
if one is built in shropshire, it must first have a rail access, secondly be in a remote, non picturesque part of the county and third any local population must be adequately compensated
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“The assistant head of public protection has also dismissed calls for an eco- friendly anaerobic digester instead of the incinerator, claiming the technology is unreliable.”
This is a dangerous and uneducated statement to make. I work for a company that has over 20 years experience in the field of Anaerobic Digestion in Europe. Any plants that have been unsuccessful has been a direct result of poor management, poor maintenance and inferior equipment. However the successes far outweigh the failures.
The UK is in its infancy in this technology as we have simply lagged behind the rest of Europe. BUT we have the advantage of learning from previous mistakes made.
And personally living within 1 mile of the proposed incinerator, your damned right, I don’t want it on my doorstep!
When the incinerator is brand new, they may very well filter out 99.99% of discharged particles. But tell me what will happen in subsequent years when the pressure on maintenance costs sees cutbacks in the servicing of equipment designed to filter out these particulates?
Incinerator technology has had its day. Anerobic Digestion is the new ‘tick all boxes’ on waste management & energy recovery.
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how about free electricity for life ?
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i dont think mr goldsmith knows what he’s on about, the population of shropshire grew significantly in the last 5 years, significant new housing has been build here and yet the amount of waste produced by shropshire has gone down every year, check the facts, even the councils own website shows increasing recycling and decreasing landfill and all against the backdrop of rising populating completely disproving his theory. The burner is unneccessary and he only supports it because they have a contract with veolia which requires the council to support it subverting the planning process and local democracy
see there own website they are bragging about less than 80,000 tonnes of rubbish last year.
http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/waste.nsf/open/571A133DE6202DC78025767000418696
Also see the link below. Nationally household waste has declined by 5% in the last 3 years and the amount sent to landfill is down by 40% in the last ten years
http://www.defra.gov.uk/wasteandrecycling
there is no NEED for this facility
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population boom!! In Shropshire!! yeah right!! most new housing is for single people due to demographic change, there is not a huge increase in population, just more singles and divorces
The sums dont add up the only way to keep the burner operational will be to ship waste in from oswestry, whitchurch, ludlow, telford and wolverhampton there just isnt enough rubbish in shrewsbury to warrant such a large facility
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what a load of rubbish, anaerobic digestion is a proven technology widely used on the continent to manage both sewage and solid waste
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these comments are outrageous i hope that the anaerobic digestion industry will sue him for slander, we should be supportign this new industry because it gets rid of rubbish without pollution and surely its better than a polluting incinerator or ugly wind turbines all over shropshrie
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this is just not true, more people does not mean more waste in fact with the improved packaging regulations there is only likely to be less waste in the coming years
call me a NIMBY but there are so many incinerators in the west midlands already i think we can use them instead
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by that rationale we would build more roads and extract more water etc too, this could go on ad infinitum until the earth (and taxpayers) are exhausted, you cant keep building more and more to deal with all our waste, just like with traffic or energy or anything really, at some point you have to say enough is enough and manage demand and get people to waste less and be more efficient
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Mr Goldsmith talks rot (pun intended).
If CHP technology was unproven and unreliable, why do many water authorities throughout the country invest millions in building such plants? I personally have been involved in building such schemes in Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Cannock and will be – shortly – involved in one in Scotland.
As Tony above alludes to, energy-from-waste is the way forward.
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i agree people should be compensated because they will lose money on their house prices, when they built the hodnet by pass hundreds of thousands was set aside to compensate homeowners and this should be budgeted for here too, sure the needs of the majority who produce lots of rubbish out weigh the needs of a minority who live near the dump but those people should atleast get a few grand each to make up for the fact that they will never be able to sell their house and will be unable to hang their laundry out and children may be asthmastic etc
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i’d like to see the maths here, shropshires population is rising steadily for sure, but how does this mean more rubbish??? There is no correlation, clearly because the amount of rubbish produced in the area has nearly halved in the past ten years against a backdrop of rising population, i hope elected members call this judgement in for scrutiny of these dodgy figures. also i agree with the comments that AD is a mature, advanced, proven technology for treating all kinds of waste including rubbish and garden waste
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seems logical to me to burn the damn stuff, its rubbish after all what else can you do with it, do you seriously expect us like some third world country to get people to rummage through it and fish out the plastic bottles? thats not going to happen here, we are british for god sake. besides the pc health and safety brigade wouldnt allow it.
I just wish they had the sense to put the thing out of site some where away from our scenic medieval town, we dont want shropshire to be industrialised and polluted, what was telford built for after all!?
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Householders here in Shrewsbury and in Telford are already keen recyclers, and judging by official figures, it seems we are getting more and more keen.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem that recycling rates go down if population goes up.
I’m sure that those opposed to incinerators in both Shrewsbury and Telford would wholeheartedly support moves towards anaerobic digestion, and would like to see their councils following the excellent example set by South Shropshire.
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mr gold smith should check his facts, the governments experts all say Anaerobic Digestion is the way forward for managing waste as the blogs above show he is also wrong about assuming growth in population in shropshire, i think as the poles are going home now the population will fall if anything as young people move to the cities for affordable housing it is likely population will decline
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clearly the conservative MP is correct and the chap from the council does not know his stuff, lets hope the conservative councillors in charge of the planning are aware of the greener alternatives like anaerobic digestion too
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burning material which could be used in contstruction projects or composted is absolutely wrong economically and environmentally this must not be allowed in an era of scarce resources we do not need to be wasting them on inefficient burning
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