The County Council is on the verge of agreeing a 30 year waste management strategy which is almost certain to lead to the building of an incinerator in the county and high levels of waste being produced and burnt for decades to come.

Everyone is familiar with the need to reduce waste and increase recycling. The government is trying to promote waste reduction by increasing the cost of landfill. Landfill is steadily becoming more expensive, with the existing £15 per tonne on waste sent to landfill set to increase by £3 a year until it reaches £35 per tonne. Limits to the amount of waste which can be sent to landfill have also been imposed by the government and councils will be fined for exceeding their landfill allowance at a predicted amount of £150 per tonne.

The council’s strategy, in response to this, seeks to reduce significantly the amount of waste being sent to landfill through an increase in the amount of waste being recycled and the treatment of the un-recycled remainder by a proven and ‘environmentally sound’ method. This method could include incineration, anaerobic digestion, gasification or pyrolysis.

Bizarrely the council has effectively absolved itself of responsibility for the method chosen to deal with the un-recycled remainder and states that: ‘The key to the success of this project is that the Authority is not prescribing what Contractors must do. This process will instead be driven by tenderers coming forward and proposing a range of the most environmentally and economically viable solutions.’

The council, controlled by the Liberal Democrats, is on the brink of awarding a £600 million contract for this work. There are now only two companies in the running, both of which are proposing to use incineration.

For the council, incineration looks like a quick fix, an attractive answer to a big problem. The council will no doubt say that it is too late to pursue a truly sustainable policy of reducing waste and a concerted zero-waste strategy. The council claims that stopping this process could cost between £80 million and £172 million. Private Finance Initiative (PFI) credits given by the government would also be withdrawn if the process is delayed or the remaining bidders pull out.

Cornwall has been poorly served by the County Council in this area. It has done too little too late and has shown no vision or determination. The council’s integrated waste management contract is dependent on high levels of waste. Once the waste hungry incinerator is built and running there will be very few incentives to reduce the amount of waste sent to it. In fact, to work most efficiently the incinerator would presumably need an optimum amount of waste to be fed to it every day. The council is already acknowledging that ‘commercial waste – from shops and offices for example – could be used to make up any shortfall’. The council’s policy is not about waste reduction at all, but waste management – absolute levels of waste will be able to increase as long as a certain percentage is recycled and the rest disposed of without going to landfill.

We need a waste reduction strategy, a real commitment to increasing re-use, recycling and composting. The costs of landfill should act as an incentive to reduce waste and may need to be accepted in the short term. Waste could be collected fortnightly rather that every week and the collection of recyclables increased. The council should be aiming to have too little waste available to ever make an incinerator viable.