Stroud District Council votes to withhold waste

A motion was passed at a Stroud District Council meeting last week (21 February), agreeing to undertake an investigation into withholding the council’s waste from Gloucestershire County Council (GCC), in opposition to its plans to send the area’s waste to Urbaser Balfour Beatty’s (UBB’s) Javelin Park incinerator.

Proposed by Green Party MP Councillor Martin Whiteside (seconded by Councillor Paul Denney), the motion outlined intent to ‘investigate the legal, financial and practical viability and the benefits of withholding for the purpose of recycling the resources collected and legally owned by the district council for treatment through one or more contracts with recycling providers without the need to use the proposed Javelin Park energy from waste (EfW) mass burn incineration facility.’

The motion passed with 24 for, two against and 18 abstentions. 

A supporting statement read: ‘This council objects to the proposed facility at Javelin Park on planning grounds. However, with falling black bag waste/resource volumes and rising resource values, we should determine whether such an option would benefit both the council tax payers of Stroud District and the environment by providing a lower cost and more flexible approach to processing over the next 25 years. Other neighbouring collection authorities could be invited to join Stroud District Council in this endeavour.’

This follows a similar move by the borough council of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk, which withdrew from Norfolk County Council’s waste strategy (which included incineration) and withheld black bin waste from them in order to process their recycling themselves.

Incinerator background

Gloucestershire County Council awarded UBB the contract to build the EfW plant in September 2012. The 25-year waste contract, estimated to be worth approximately £500 million, will see the site process up to 190,000 tonnes of residual waste a year, with the aim of reducing the amount of refuse sent to landfill.

A public consultation on the Environment Agency’s (EA’s) draft decision to grant an environmental permit to Urbaser Balfour Beatty’s (UBB) Javelin Park EfW incinerator is now open to allow the public a chance to ’raise any relevant matter’ regarding the proposed Gloucestershire plant, before the cut off date of 21 April.

Incinerator will ‘discourage waste reduction’

Speaking to Resource, Councillor Martin Whiteside (Green Party) said: “Stroud District Councillors voted unanimously last year for Gloucestershire County Council to re-consider its plans for incinerating our waste. This has fallen on deaf ears in the Conservative controlled County Council.

“Many of us believe that a massive incinerator will not only blight the landscape of our beautiful Severn Vale and Cotswold escarpment Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, but also be a waste of taxpayers money, discourage waste reduction and recycling, is energy inefficient and a potential health risk. 

“Mass burn is not a modern way to deal with what should no longer be considered 'waste', but rather a resource for recycling and reconstituting into other products.” 

Whiteside has joined a growing number of voices calling for a halt to the UK’s increasing reliance on incineration as a method of dealing with residual waste, after mounting evidence suggests that the UK could soon have to burn recyclable materials to ensure that the growing number of incinerators have enough fuel to burn.

“Recycling technology is advancing very rapidly, and so it is crazy for the county council to lock us citizens of Gloucestershire into an inflexible 25-year contract, especially when all the indications show an overcapacity of incinerators being developed in the region”, Whiteside said. 

Adding that he was “delighted” his motion to investigate withholding waste received “the strong support of Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens and was carried easily”, Whiteside said that the council would now undertake a three-phase investigation into the potential of managing its own waste. 

This would consist of: an officer-led investigation into the legal implications of withholding waste; seeing if any other collection authorities in the county who are opposed to the incinerator wish to join Stroud in its exemption; and collecting further details about costs and potential partners for processing its own waste.

According to Whiteside, the passing of the motion provides the council with the “opportunity… [to ensure] that 'waste' is treated as a resource, and reprocessed by the most cost- and environmentally-efficient technologies, rather than being burnt by the County Council”. 

He concluded: “I hope the withdrawal of one or more authorities form the county's plans will be the last shake that breaks the incinerator's chimney.” 

It is expected that the first phase of the investigation will take weeks, with the rest of the investigation following in the ‘next few months’. 

Read more about Urbaser Balfour Beatty’s Javelin Park incinerator.