Waste and Recycling campaigns

Update!

As you know, we now have the twin bin system where out recyclable waste is collected fortnightly in the blue bin. As this service is now being provided Swale Friends of the Earth are no longer campaigning on this issue locally.

Waste & Recycling Questionnaire

We have received losts of signatures from our public stalls and the online questionnaire has allowed people we missed to give their views. We have now stopped collecting signatures and the long process of analyzing the results has begun, ready for presentation to Swale Borough Council as part of our campaign to get full doorstep recycling throughout Swale.

Cartoon reproduced with permission: www.chrismadden.co.uk

As well as campaigning against incineration, Swale FoE has been active in working for alternative methods of dealing with waste. Swale FoE participated in the Faversham Hop Festival in August 2003, at which the FoE street theatre group performed a well-received sketch on incineration over both days of the festival. The Swale, Medway and Canterbury FoE groups provided further information on ways of dealing with waste, including a popular display on composting, on a stall in the centre of the town.

Swale FoE believes that positive alternatives exist to the use of incineration and landfill to deal with waste generated in Swale. Waste needs to be viewed as an opportunity to recover valuable resources, create jobs, save money and reduce pollution rather than as a problem to be buried and burned. Reducing, reusing, recycling and composting are all safer, cleaner and more sustainable ways of dealing with waste in Swale.

As the figure (left) shows, rates of household waste recycling in Swale are exceeded only by two other Kent boroughs. However, with landfill sites in short supply, the recycling rates of all Kent boroughs fall far short of levels necessary to ward off the probable threat of a rash of new incinerators across Kent.

UK Performance is at "the foot of the European recycling league table." said FoE's recycling campaigner Mike Childs. Figures released by FoE show that Britain lags well behind much of the rest of Europe in terms of its recycling rates. Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway all manage to recycle more than 40 per cent of their waste, compared with 12 per cent in England, 7 per cent in Scotland, 5 per cent in Northern Ireland and less than 5 per cent in Wales. We have to improve. Our Waste and Recycling campaign is about getting our Council to do their bit.

Doorstep Recycling

The Household Waste Recycling Bill, originally drafted by Friends of the Earth, was introduced to Parliament as a Private Members Bill by Joan Ruddock MP (Labour, Lewisham Deptford). The new law will mean that every home will have to be given a doorstep collection for at least two recyclable materials by 2010.

"The public has been crying out for an easy way to recycle for many years. Now every home in England will have its recycling collected - something Friends of the Earth has campaigned about for over two years. We're delighted about this powerful new law which should lead to a dramatic increase in the UK's recycling rate, which is still one of the worst in Europe."
Claire Wilton, Friends of the Earth's Senior Waste Campaigner.

Canterbury incinerator

In October 2002 an application was submitted to build a SWERF incinerator at Shelford (Broad Oak) in Canterbury. This design of incinerator has not yet been operated successfully anywhere in the world. Its 'gasification' treatment of waste is known to release harmful pollutants into the air and it will consume resources that should be recycled. Swale FoE has been working with Canterbury FoE and REACT to have the application refused. A public meeting, organised by Kent County Council, was held on 2nd October 2003. On 1st December 2003 Brett Waste Management withdrew the application. A victory for the public!

Ridham incinerator

Swale FoE's main campaign during 2001 and 2002, in collaboration with RAGE (Ridham Action Group for the Environment), was against the application by SITA to build a new incinerator at Ridham, near Sittingbourne. A public enquiry was held in Autumn 2001, at which Swale FoE's waste campaigner, Peter Reid, spoke. SITA's application was turned down in October 2002 on the grounds that the proposal was not the Best Practicable Environmental Option and that there was no need for it. SITA have the option to appeal this decision.

FoE and RAGE are apposed to the incinerator because even the highest standard of incinerator will produce large volumes of dangerous by-products, as more than half the tonnage of waste being burned ends up as airborne pollution, potentially poisoning the atmosphere, soil, and waterways for years to come. These pollutants include:

This proposal would involve the burning over 225,000 tons of household, commercial and industrial waste from Gravesham, the Medway towns, Swale, the North Kent Coast and perhaps farther afield. This will undermine recycling efforts, waste valuable recoverable resources and create massive amounts of hazardous and toxic waste ash, which would still have to be land filled.

Instead of burning the waste we should be committed to recycling in line with EC directives. Incineration would contribute to a build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere adding to global warming and climate change. We should be striving to improve environmental standards in Swale, not creating further pollution in an area where the environment is already overburdened with existing emissions.

To make this incinerator economically viable once built it will operate for a minimum of 25 years. Massive amounts of waste (225,000 tonnes) would be transported through Swale to the plant, with in excess of (60,000 tonnes) of toxic ash being removed for landfill massively increasing heavy traffic on our roads. Large scale municipal recycling & composting schemes running elsewhere should be developed to recover valuable resources and drastically reduce the total amount of waste requiring landfill.

It would be an act of environmental vandalism to build such a plant adjacent to a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) The Swale. Incineration compared to existing waste disposal & recycling would reduce future employment prospects and in the long term cost jobs that could be created by large scale recycling and composting schemes. The proposal does not conform to the Kent Waste Local Plan.

Many other countries in the developed world have stopped constructing incinerators due to significant concerns about public health and the effects such plants have on the environment. Such a development would have a significant effect on the value of property in Swale.