What cheek of the WAG spokesman to claim “the most ambitious recycling plan of all the UK administrations” ! (W
Their Waste Plan started off aiming for 70% recycling levels which Flanders and parts of Germany are already reaching, but set 2025 as the date, the same as Scotland. But then WAG decided to make Wales unique by declaring use of incinerator ash as aggregate could be called recycling.
So the comparison is – Scotland aims for 70% real cycling, 25% cap on incineration; Wales aims for 63% real recycling, 37% cap on incineration.
Far from being ambitious on recycling, WAG has deferred the target past the lifetime of most politicians and sets out to be most ambitious on incineration. You rightly headline it "waste incineration plan".
Evidently, their promotion of Covanta’s plans for Merthyr, for the biggest incinerator in Europe, was not a flash in the pan. Rather it shows the dominance in WAG of those who want to build a generation of incinerators in Wales.
They need a lot of domestic waste as feedstock. Hence they refused the aim for high levels of recycling, set at 80% or more by their consultants (Eunomia). They put off the target date till 2025, instead of the initial and unambitious 2020. And then downgraded the 70% to an effective 63%.
These figures are not in the main consultation documents, but hidden in the small print of the “Future Directions…” auxiliary paper. None of the Consultation questions ask the public if we want more waste treatment (biostabilisation and sorting) and higher recycling targets.
Assembly politicians should be ashamed of what WAG is foisting on Wales in the guise of ‘ambitious recycling’.
Note Worrying promotion of incineration
WAG Approval of the business case and subsidy for Prosiect Gwyrdd, 27 Jan. 2009:
New funding boost for next generation energy-from-waste plant in south Wales
The Minister depicted Prosiect Gwyrdd as "producing much needed energy" that would "use waste in the best possible way", despite the consortium claiming their Business case for procuring a ‘solution’ for residual waste is technology-neutral (www.prosiectgwyrdd.gov.uk)
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