Stephen Tindale: Speech to the Chartered Institute of Waste Management

Publication date: June 2002

Summary
I note that this part of the agenda could look like a debate between opposing parties but I think the most important point I would make is that we don't actually sit in warring camps. In fact we share some things in common, quite apart from a desire to see waste managed sustainably.

But before we find our common agenda let's just clear the air on the one point where we most often disagree.

Greenpeace thinks waste incineration is a very bad idea indeed and we will take direct action to stop it. Some of you may not agree with us or like our methods but sometimes life's like that.

Greenpeace briefing

Publication date: May 2002

Summary
The entire waste management industry is currently in a state of virtual paralysis with regard to composting.

The Department of the Environment says that composting of municipal organic waste is "a vital component of meeting Waste Strategy targets" and that "The Government supports the composting of waste". (DEFRA Briefing note on compost June 2001). Yet it's regulatory body, the Environment Agency, will not currently permit compost derived from kitchen waste to be used in the open and has made it virtually impossible for new composting initiatives to gain a licence.

As a consequence local authorities and waste companies are turning to incineration to get organic waste out of landfill sites. This is totally nonsensical. Incinerators release many chemicals with potentially severe health impacts in stack gases and in ashes. Food waste, mixed with all manner of other materials is dumped in huge bunkers where it can remain rotting for days. Kitchen waste is a very poor material to burn - it is very wet and has a low calorific value. The organic material should be going back into the soil where it can return nutrients, carbon and improve soil texture. Compost has a high environmental value. It also has a potentially high economic value, but not until the Government sorts out the mess it has made.

As a pollutant, waste demands controls. As an embodiment of accumulated energy and materials it invites an alternative.
(The whole file is 1mb; the report is broken down below for easier download)

Publication date: February 2002

Summary
Waste policy has become one of the most keenly contested areas of environmental politics. At a local level in the UK and abroad, new sites for landfills and incinerators have provoked degrees of civil opposition matched only by proposals for new roads and nuclear power plants. Nationally and internationally, there has been hand-to-hand fighting in the institutions of governance over clauses, targets and definitions of the strategies and regulative regimes that are shaping a new era for waste management.

For those professionally involved in the waste industry in Britain, it is as though a searchlight has suddenly been shone on an activity that for a hundred years was conducted in obscurity. Throughout the twentieth century, waste was the terminus of industrial production. Like night cleaners, the waste industry had the task of removing the debris from the main stage of daily activity. Some of the debris had value and was recycled. Most was deposited in former mines, gravel pits and quarries or, via incinerators, was 'landfilled in the air'. The principle was to keep it out of sight. Whereas consumer industries seek publicity, this post-consumer industry prided itself on its invisibility.

Zero waste report:
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Download part 3
Download part 4

Publication date: November 2001

Summary
On 21 March 2001, the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee, a multi-party group taxed with looking at, amongst other things, waste issues, released their report, Delivering Sustainable Waste Management. The report delivers a stinging analysis of the inadequacies of the Labour Government's current waste strategy. The following material is excerpted from the Select Committee press release announcing publication of the report.

"At times this was a depressing enquiry to undertake. More often than not, we heard the same excuses for limited progress or inaction that were trotted out the last time we looked at waste in 1998.