ANTI-INCINERATOR community group leaders, HOTI (Hull and Holderness Opposes the Incinerator), have offered to take part in local negotiations in efforts to “arbitrate” and help resolve the “stalemate” over plans to construct a waste-burning incinerator at Saltend.
The Joint Waste Authority (JWA – acting on behalf of the East Riding and Hull City Councils) and the Waste Recycling Group (WRG) are currently locked in ongoing discussions and legal proceeedings over the contract to finance and build the waste incinerator.
But now, according to local media reports in the Holderness Gazette and the Hull Mail, HOTI Chairman Peter Turner has written to both the JWA and WRG and offered the group’s help to sort matters out.
Peter Turner’s letter apparently refers to the Waste Management Quick Guide published by the Audit Commission in 2007. This document published for the Commission’s staff and inspectors working with local councils, suggests that incineration is better than landfill but not as good a recycling or composting, and that:
“Burning mixed waste is no longer really sensible practice. For a long time, councils with incinerators have had poor recycling rates… The importance is not to embark on arrangement that will prevent another taking place. Incineration has typically been a culprit in this – the contractor requires, say, 100,000 tonnes of waste a year to operate the incinerator. This is the big difference between incinerators and other treatments.” Waste Management Quick Guide.
The Government has since ordered the repeal of this internal guidance document, but it does reveal the serious doubts that exist over incineration.
At a time when the Government is emphasising its “Big Society”, which is all about encouraging citizens to get involved in achieving change in their local area, then perhaps the JWA and WRG could do no wrong by involving HOTI in new partnership negotiations to get this issue finally resolved!
Links: HOTI News Website