I remain active in Newcastle Green Party, regularly campaigning since my first report here almost four years ago (Sofia 120). For the past 12 months nearly, Covid-19 has largely driven members indoors, and onto Zoom for fortnightly meetings. Something which has been exercising us recently is the giant new waste incinerator proposed for Redcar, Teesside. Introducing the topic, one colleague recounted a school visit at which she asked the children what they supposed happened to the refuse collected from their homes. 'The bin men take it away,' they said. Many adults might respond similarly. But as my fellow committee member asked next, 'Where is AWAY?'. What actually becomes of everything once your wheelie bin has been emptied into the dustcart? One way or another it generally contributes to further damage to the environment.
UK households generate over 26 million tonnes of waste per year – almost a ton each. We can be thankful that most nowadays make at least some effort to separate out card, paper, glass or plastics for recycling, sub-dividing even these last four (something like 45% of the above). We assume that these distinctions will be followed through effectively, (though I once heard of a council where the bin men threw all recycled materials into a single wagon, thus rather defeating the object). However, what of general waste and any recyclable items that folk can't be bothered to separate out? The majority, it seems, goes to landfill or into an incinerator. Landfill has been much restricted by Legislation.
Incineration is a business venture for operators – undertaken for profit. The intention is that the proposed Teesside plant, for example, will be fed, and thus directly funded, by no less than seven Local Authorities in the region. Councils currently pay large sums to send rubbish overseas. UK waste is exported to Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Incinerator plants do have to pay their way and contracts are long term, up to 30 years for example, and who knows what life will be like 30 years from now? The irony is that as more recycling produces less waste to burn, operators of UK incinerators will turn to importing waste to recoup costs. More problematic perhaps is that, starved of domestic waste, plants will turn to burning more industrial waste, including old tyres and other materials even more injurious to the environment.
Even if confined to domestic waste, emissions straight into the atmosphere can include heavy metals, dioxins, particulates and greenhouse gases. The technology has changed very little in the past 20 years; there are better scrubbers, but emissions are still very significant. All this in an age when promises are being made of a cleaner atmosphere. Additionally, incinerators tend to be sited in areas of social deprivation, rather than leafy suburbs, so that the inhabitants of the former are likely to suffer health consequences to a much greater extent than other communities. Teesside people, for example, have already endured over 100 years of heavy chemical and petrochemical industries.
Lots of what is being burnt are irreplaceable resources. Once burnt, any integral value that waste materials might otherwise have had are lost to us. It is an argument for much more recycling. There is a recycling target of 70% by 2030, only ten years away. Will we meet it?
Economic factors persuade many to replace goods rather than have them repaired; who repairs things nowadays? During the Second World War, perhaps until the sixties, people repaired things – mechanical and electrical goods, clothes even. They darned socks, for example. Until the turn of this century small local firms, mostly now gone, continued the business of repair and maintenance of mechanical or electrical goods. In Newcastle we have run workshops at which goods were mended rather than discarded.
If Covid-19, terrible in its consequences for so many, has done any good at all, it has perhaps forced some of us to reflect on our needs. With shops shut for so much of the past year some of us have been forced to make things last that little bit longer.
By the way, now you have nearly reached the end of another edition of Sofia, please don't just burn it!
John Pearson is editor of Portholes and former chair of SOF trustees.