TUESDAY 7 NOVEMBER 2000

MR STEPHEN TINDALE AND MR MARK STRUTT

  360. There is a bit of illogicality, is there not; you say you are quite happy with crematoria but you are not happy with some of the hospital waste being incinerated. Now quite a bit of the hospital waste is actually bits of fingers, other body parts, is it not?
  (Mr Tindale) We would not object to that being incinerated.

  361. So some hospital waste could sensibly be incinerated?
  (Mr Tindale) That is correct, yes.

  362. Could I pose a question to you though. I do not think anybody would agree that everything on the dust-cart ought to be heaped in an incinerator, but, if you want to reclaim the calorific value of certain fuels, is it not better to burn them sooner than dispose of them in landfill?
  (Mr Tindale) It is almost certainly better to recycle them than it is to do either of those two things.

  363. So you are going to have your new kitchen done out of recycled timber, are you then, instead of Mrs Tindale, or whoever, having a brand new one?
  (Mr Tindale) I am very happy, most of my house is probably made of recycled timber and bricks, and so on and so forth.

  364. Greenpeace are obviously paying you too much.
  (Mr Tindale) I do not know about that, Chairman. I look forward to the Committee's recommendation though. I am sorry, I have lost my train of thought.
  (Mr Strutt) Reclaiming energy from waste is an inefficient way of generating energy, I think that is the answer.

  365. Really, an awful lot about waste management strategy is, and witness after witness has come up with it, it is the separation, and it is how you deal with the separated constituent parts. Now all I am saying to you is, if they were separated, and separated properly, why should not some of the calorific value of stuff be got sooner than putting it into landfill: you would not object to that?
  (Mr Tindale) We would object to it, primarily because of the toxic implications of incinerating municipal waste, but also because—

  366. No, no.
  (Mr Strutt) No, when it is not mixed.

  367. I am talking about when it is separated, not when it is mixed up?
  (Mr Tindale) Yes, I know, I am talking about when it is separated as well. And it is also not a renewable form of energy. If you burn municipal waste you get about 80 per cent as much carbon dioxide as you do from generating electricity in a gas-fired power station; so to be promoting incineration as a form of clean energy generation, which is what both the previous Government and the current Government have been doing, is, in our view, misguided.

  368. So you would put all the scrap timber into landfill and let it rot, instead of burning it to get the calorific, to reclaim the value on it?
  (Mr Tindale) You would reuse it.

  369. But you cannot reuse it all?
  (Mr Strutt) It is biodegradable timber, there is no need to put it in a landfill.

  370. Do you think the incineration receives too much public subsidy?
  (Mr Tindale) Yes.

  371. And what would you do to halt that?
  (Mr Tindale) First of all, we are very pleased that Stephen Byers has announced that he is minded not to include it in the renewables obligation; if it were to be included in the renewables obligation, that would be a further public subsidy of over £300 million. So we welcome that Government decision and we hope that the Committee will support that. The remaining large area of public subsidy is historical NFFO contracts. The incineration industry has received, over the past ten years, some £230 million in subsidy under the guise of renewable energy, which is approximately a third of all the Government subsidies going to renewables, and if the contracts remain live, and if a similar rate of construction occurs, which is around 20 per cent of all the contracts that have been let, then incineration will receive a further £187 million over the next 18 years. We think that those contracts should be cancelled.

  372. So let us be clear about that. There is £230 million of NFFO contracts that have been taken up; and what have actually been granted, you said that amounts to one third, did you say, or 20 per cent, I did not quite get the figure?
  (Mr Tindale) The total NFFO monies that have been dispersed are about £650 million, but that is to all technologies; £233 million has gone to incineration, under NFFO 1, 2 and 3, there are further NFFO 4 and 5 contracts in the pipeline, and the NFFO 3 contracts are still live, so money is still being dispersed under NFFO.

  373. There is an incinerator plan proposed for my constituency, which has the benefit of a NFFO subsidy of about £2 million a year, in terms of the electricity generated from that plant, the scale of subsidy; it was knocked down at a public inquiry because it was a totally unsuitable site, in 1996, and it has now come round the circuit again. Where do you score that, because obviously that subsidy is not being paid yet?
  (Mr Tindale) That would be in the £187 million. If the money has not been dispersed yet, that is in there.

  374. So the £230 million is being paid, and there is a further potential £187 million on top of that?
  (Mr Tindale) That is right, yes.

  375. If we are to meet the requirements of the Landfill Directive, and we cannot have incineration, what should happen?
  (Mr Strutt) Primarily, it will be an intensive, serious drive for reduction of waste, reuse and recycling. We should meet the requirements of the Landfill Directive; as I understand it, it applies to biodegradable waste, initially, and untreated waste. I believe that can be met without too much problem by those methods that I have just said, reduction, reuse and recycling.
  (Mr Tindale) It is worth adding, I think, that some communities in North America which have decided to really go for it, in terms of increasing recycling and composting, have seen very dramatic and very quick increases in their recycling rates; the community of Edmonton, in Canada, by coincidence, has increased its recycling and composting rates from virtually nothing to 50 per cent this year, in the space of five or six years, and is aiming to get to 70 per cent by the end of this year.

  376. What needs to happen here to enable that to be achieved?
  (Mr Tindale) It is a combination of public money being made available to local authorities to implement recycling collection schemes and to get the infrastructure set up. A much more imaginative and forceful effort to create markets for recycled products, where the Government has been talking sensible language but has not actually got any action underway yet. A much greater use of producer responsibility, particularly for bulky goods, electronic goods, and so on, which is where a lot of the growth in the waste stream is occurring. And an increase in the Landfill Tax and the money being used and probably the system being radically shaken up and the money being taken, as public spending, to use on public goods, such as recycling schemes.

  377. How would you rate the Government's current proposals, in relation to achieving what you have just put forward?
  (Mr Tindale) They are moving in the right direction, but they are not moving far enough or fast enough.

  378. In that list of things you have just described that need to be done in order to increase the recycling rate, how do we persuade people, as many witnesses have said to us during the course of the inquiry, that they should put the effort into the separation of waste in the first instance; in other words, how do we get the public and local communities involved in this?
  (Mr Tindale) The first thing you do is give them an option, which a lot of people do not have at the moment. And it has always been unclear to me why people think the British are less civic-minded and less capable of separating their waste than people in continental Europe. So that is the first thing. And where household collection of wastes for recycling has been implemented you have seen in many instances some quite good results. I think we also need to look more seriously at the possibility of financial incentives, which means that you actually begin charging people on the basis of how many black sacks they put out; which, of course, has all sorts of difficulties.

  379. How much for a black sack?
  (Mr Tindale) You would need to do some economic modelling and some market testing, I guess, to see what kind of incentives would be—