Are we permitted to comment ?

You may not have picked up on the fact that the Sinfin incineration plant - due to open in September 2017 after a delay due to the technology developer going into administration (fills you with confidence) has applied to the Environment Agency (EA) to burn nearly 18,000 tonnes more rubbish than it was granted to burn.

If your a local person - who may have objected in the past you would have expected the Governments Environment Agency to go out of their way to flag this proposal up to you because you have previously engaged with them on the sites permit.

Obviously there are grave concerns regarding this application to burn more waste - the site next to the air quality management area (AQMA) will have an even greater impact than is already proposed. Derby is now being targeted by DEFRA due to poor air quality and so surely greater scrutiny needs to take place with such applications.

 

Resource Recovery Solutions (RRS) / Shanks Waste claim it will not have a greater impact than was passed by the EA but all that consisted of was models of emissions - nobody will be carrying out real tests at ground level - the Environment Agency will not do so, Derby City Council - responsible for air quality in the city will not do so and the developer RRS / Shanks will not do so even after I requested they take on the example of UBB in Gloucestershire who are building an incineration plant and have agreed to fund air quality monitoring around their site before and after construction. When asked RRS/ Shanks refused.  

The important story here - other than something so controversial burning even more than planned and nobody will monitor the impact at ground level is that

 RESIDENTS HAVE NOT BEEN TOLD THAT THERE IS A CONSULTATION TAKING PLACE ON THIS WHICH RUNS TILL JANUARY 20TH 2017.

When the permit was first applied for a number of years ago - and later granted residents were able to have their say. The EA held local consultations and residents could write in with their views - so the EA should have their addresses which you would hope they would use to write to the residents to advise of this latest proposal. It was also advertised in the local press in the Public Notices etc. PEOPLE WERE AWARE !

Move onto late 2016 and out of the blue I heard from the UK Without Incineration Network (UKWIN) that they had seen an application on a government website.

I looked into this and sure enough found the following

https://consult.environment-agency.gov.uk/psc/de24-9gf-shanks-waste-management-ltd-consultation/

 What became very clear very quickly was that nobody was aware of this application - finalised in early December 2016 BUT ACTUALLY IT TURNS OUT submitted in JUNE as was later admitted by Will Spurr from Shanks Waste via the Community Liaison Group (CLG)

 they didn't even tell the CLG even though the CLG had met between June and December.

When challenged in recent weeks the EA have admitted that the only place the consultation is promoted is on their government website! HOW DOES THAT ENGAGE WITH THE PUBLIC ? hiding important consultations away on a government website that 99.99% of the population would never look at !

It shows that the councils, Shanks Waste / RRS and the Environment Agency have a total disregard for public views and opinions 

 WHY?

 

The councils knew because their contractor is Shanks Waste / RRS - but didn't tell the public!

 

Shanks Waste / RRS  knew because THEY were the applicant - but didn't tell the public!

 

The Environment Agency who knew have done the very least they could to tell the public!

CONSULTATION ANYONE !

 

©SIMON BACON 2017

Educating Derby on rubbish is err RUBBISH!

With the current state of the streets in areas of Derby blighted by fly tipped waste, in the image below it's recyclable waste dumped on Middleton Street, Normanton

 recycling bins being removed because of claims that residents don't use them correctly http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/Rubbish-bins-Derby-s-green-protesters-blues/story-25756604-detail/story.html which has been questioned on this blog before due to a lack of evidence and then the dire spiral downwards of the cities recycling rate from a high of 48% to a new predicted low of 32% covered in this previous blog post http://derby-waste-a-rubbish-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-decay-of-recycling-in-derby.html . It would seem a simple no brainer to spend a healthy amount of the councils waste budget on waste minimisation and education.
Sadly this is not the case as a recent FOI request on the subject put into Derby City Council after I viewed the councils accounts highlighted that in total the council was spending less than £50,000 on waste minimisation and education while paying Resource Recovery Solutions - RRS (a Shanks waste company) over £8.66 million for disposal of waste and operation of the Raynesway HWRC site. Of that £8.66 million less than £34,000 was paid to RRS for minimisation and education and when added to the spend from outside of the waste contract the figure was less than £50,000.
It struck me why are we paying a waste contractor over £8 million to handle waste - much of which will end up landfilled or incinerated via a contract which cost in 2013/14 £118 per tonne when the alternatives being reduction, reuse and recycling cost £10 per tonne or less! The council keep telling us they have no money due to government cuts but they are actually preferring to handle waste via its most expensive route.
Come on its a no brainer isn't it ? every tonne extra recycled costing the council £10 or reduced - costing the council nothing is a tonne the council isn't paying £118 a tonne to dispose of.
On 28th January I went to the Full Council meeting at Derby City Council to put a public question to the council in relation to why the council is spending so much on disposal compared to educating residents.

f. Question from Simon Bacon to Councillor Afzal 

In 2013/14 Derby City Council paid Resource Recovery Solutions - a SHANKS company £8,666,724 to handle 79,995 tonnes of the waste of Derby. Of that just £33,279 was spent on waste minimisation and education and when added to non RRS spend on waste minimisation and education of £13,984 equates to spending less than £50,000 on sustainable waste management education.   
Why is Derby City Council spending so little on waste reduction while spending so much on disposal via landfill and incineration.

The response was a fair bit of waffle about what they are going to do bla bla bla but they also set out that Household waste management costs for 2012/13 published by Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and reported by the Audit Commission, indicate that of £3.3 Billion spent nationally on household waste management, only £25.6 Million was spent of waste minimisation, which is less than 1% of the total national spend on household waste. Derby allocated around 0.5% of its 2013-14 waste spends on recycling and waste reduction initiatives. However, the national average cannot be considered an absolute target for spend and the city is satisfied it has got good value for money from the budget it has spent on educating its residents and young people in waste matters.

What the council is admitting there is that it spends less than the national average on waste education at a time when the streets are in a state, blue bin recycling is being removed and the recycling rate is spirally downwards.
As a follow up question I asked at a time when recycling is going so wrong in Derby is the council spending so little.
The answer came from the leader of the council Ranjit Banwait who indicated they couldn't spend more on waste education due to government cuts. What Councillor Banwait ignores in saying this is the saving that comes from educating residents on waste disposal becomes self financing due to the gulf between recycling costing £10 and residual disposal costing £118 - every tonne diverted via education saves £108 !
Landfilling and incinerating waste is rubbish ! we should be educating residents how to dispose of their waste in the correct way leading to cleaner streets, better, higher recycling rates and reduced disposal costs -
SAVING US MONEY !

©SIMON BACON 2016



The S.S.A.I.N press release - 22nd Aug 2014

DERBY UK 22^ND AUG 2014 – RESPONSE TO DERBY CITY AND COUNTY COUNCIL PRESS RELEASE OF 21^ST AUG 2014

 

SINFIN INEFFICIENT WASTE INCINERATION PLANT BACKED BY SO CALLED GREEN INVESTMENT BANK GETS GO AHEAD

As the recycling rate of Derby City Council enters an ever steeper decline with the implementation of a £40 garden waste tax news broke on 21^st of August that the councils of Derby and Derbyshire have reached closure on a controversial waste incineration plant to be constructed in an area of poor health and deprivation in the heart of Sinfin in the city of Derby.

Sited on an ex tannery and landfill http://derby-waste-a-rubbish-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2014_05_01_archive.html currently subject to local concern regarding anthrax site contamination risking health both on and off site the controversial waste incineration plant has been successfully delayed by campaigners concerned about health impacts from the billion cubic metres of emissions per year from the plant along with the threat of wide spread combustion in the plant of materials which could and should be recycled. This was confirmed in the recent Derbyshire County Council waste draft strategy document on page 16 where it is noted 47% of residual waste in Derbyshire is recyclable waste. http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/images/Dealing%20with%20Derbyshires%20Waste%20Draft%20Strategy_tcm44-234569.pdf

In a bizarre twist supported by Vince Cable the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) has agreed to invest £64 million in the project even though the plant destroys potentially recyclable material and was show at the 2^nd Derby public inquiry to be in its standard electricity only mode an inefficient waste disposal incineration plant which fails to meet the requirements of the R1 formula test of plant efficiency. It is not clear why a green investment bank would invest in such an inefficient plant. The council’s developer – Resource Recovery Solutions has at no point shown any evidence of local customer demand for heat and steam from the plant which would allow the plant to become an R1 compliant recovery facility. It therefore languishes on the bottom tier of the waste hierarchy in disposal.

The council press release implied that any recyclable materials would be extracted at the plant however no documents were put forward at either planning or at either public inquiry showing this to be the case – only that which would not burn would be extracted.

The councils of Derby and Derbyshire are very enthusiastic for the Sinfin plant to go ahead. In the case of Derbyshire County Council this is because they get their rubbish burnt on someone else’s door step and in the case of both councils they will be rewarded for procuring the correct feedstock – as shown in the waste contract with highly lucrative Renewable Obligation Certificates known as ROC’s. It is not clear why such an inefficient plant that sits at the bottom of the waste hierarchy will be rewarded for its failure to be efficient at energy generation and this opens the door for similar inefficient plants to be constructed across the UK. A legacy of the Green Investment Bank will be waste forced down the waste hierarchy with the claims of green energy and sustainable waste management while the reality is large volumes of combustion emissions will be pumped into a poor city community, resources will be destroyed and lives ruined – all in the name of green energy.

SIMON BACON

CHAIRMAN

SINFIN, SPONDON AND ALL AGAINST INCINERATION (S.S.A.I.N)

EMAIL S.S.A.I.N via ssainderby@aol.com

Twitter @ssainderby

END

©SIMON BACON 2016