YES: Donal Buckley says properly-run incinerators are necessary and are a safe and efficient method of managing waste.
Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam and Lisbon all have incinerators. Capacity is growing across the EU, with rates varying from 9 per cent in the UK to 53 per cent in Denmark.
Only Greece and Ireland are without any municipal incinerators. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has unequivocally stated that modern, well-run incinerators do not impact on the environment nor on human health and can be located in densely populated areas.
If we could recycle everything, then of course we would need neither incinerators nor landfill. Unfortunately, the world is not like that. There is a limit to what we can recycle as some wastes are hazardous, some difficult to use again or no end market exists for the recycled products. Recycling beyond this level becomes either prohibitively expensive or environmentally unsustainable, as the environmental impact of the recycling process exceeds any gains made. Traditional landfill also has a limit: our heavy reliance is no longer possible, as failure to reduce drastically the quantities land-filled will result in very onerous EU financial penalties.
Government policy follows the widely accepted integrated approach where waste generation is minimised, recycling maximised, energy recovered from waste that cannot be recycled and safe disposal for residual waste provided. While recent significant progress on recycling is welcome, much more is required as 65 per cent of waste is still land-filled, losing valuable materials and energy. We need an increased focus on prevention, minimisation, reuse and development of end markets for recycled products. Regional waste plans are, rightly, very ambitious; the 59 per cent recycling target for Dublin is amongst the highest anywhere.
Incineration does not compete with recycling. It is what should happen after all items of value are removed. In fact, German, Dutch and Scandinavian experiences demonstrate that countries with enviably high recycling rates successfully co-exist with incineration as both focus on different elements of the waste stream. Waste planning must ensure incinerators are correctly sized to accommodate only the non-recyclable percentage of the waste stream, preventing competition with recycling.
Once all sustainable recycling has occurred, the objective is to dramatically reduce the volume of the original waste to an inert stable residue. Incineration is the combustion of waste above 850°C under controlled conditions, releasing energy which can be recovered though heat or electricity generation, while reducing original volumes up to 90 per cent. Between 1 and 3 per cent of the original volume is recovered as fly ash, which is deemed hazardous and disposed under strict conditions.
Incinerators, in common with most combustion processes - vehicle engines, domestic fires and cigarettes - emit minute levels of dioxins as byproducts. The crucial difference, however, is that incineration is a controlled process. No process or activity can be risk-free, but advanced engineering, design and operation allow plants to operate safely with emissions well below any tangible levels of concern. Cumulative dioxin emissions from the 72 German plants account for less than 1 per cent of the national total.
Backyard burning of waste is Ireland's major source of dioxins, which form during uncontrolled combustion at low temperature. Over 265,000 Irish households have no waste collection service, not all of whom make alternative arrangements to responsibly manage their waste. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that 60,000 tonnes of waste are burnt annually. Recent surveys show one in ten adults admit to backyard burning and 15 per cent believe it acceptable, even though most understand the environmental and health risks it poses. The quantity of dioxins from backyard and uncontrolled burning is over 40 times greater than that emitted were all the municipal incinerators proposed in the regional waste plans in operation.
The decision-making process for an incinerator is understandably open, rigorous and lengthy. The need for, and the size of, a facility must first be identified in the appropriate regional plan, followed by permission from the planning authorities and an EPA operating licence. Any incinerator must be designed, constructed and operated to the highest international standards and undergo continuous monitoring. Any plant, be it public or private, failing to meet stringent operating conditions, should be shut down.
In Ireland, reliance on cheap and unsophisticated landfill (often poorly sited, operated and regulated) deterred investment and contributed to the vehement opposition to any new waste infrastructure. However, facilities developed in recent years with the advantages of technology and rigorous enforcement, have proved waste infrastructure can successfully co-exist.
We all want a clean, safe and sustainable environment. This current transition from low-grade solutions of the past to a range of new sophisticated options has clear environmental, economic and social benefits. Correctly sized, sited and operated incineration plants are a necessary and safe part of an integrated and sustainable approach to waste management.
Donal Buckley is assistant director of the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (Ibec)
NO: Mary O'Leary says mass incineration is unsafe and wasteful and that there are viable alternatives
Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment (Chase) promotes a wise waste policy for Ireland. Research into international waste practices led us to the view that mass-burn incineration was an avoidable and expensive mistake. For the past six years, we have been pointing out why that is so and how Ireland's policy makers must do much better.
Incineration, we were told, was what we were all missing from our lives. This was the message from the two key proponents of mass-burn incineration - the Government and the incineration lobby group. So hypnotised were successive Ministers by companies who stood to make huge profits from burning waste, that they appointed Laura Burke, then Indaver's project manager for the proposed Meath and Cork incinerators, as a director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
However, all has changed and we now know that the mass incineration debate is over. Government waste plans are a mess and we have to ask "why?" Why is incineration the wrong solution, why not burn our waste and what will we do with it instead?
The most recent waste report, Waste Policy Planning and Regulation in Ireland, states that we need to make room for other technologies that are better, cheaper and more in keeping with the volume of waste that is produced in Ireland.
The author, UK expert Dr Dominic Hogg, warns that there is an over-emphasis on incinerators. He warns that the economics of scale mean that large volumes of waste would have to be created before incineration became economically viable. He warns that this would jeopardise the success of recycling in Ireland's battle to meet EU targets. The report recommends smaller facilities which provide mechanical and biological treatments and states that these should be examined as alternatives to incineration and landfill.
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment and Local Government came to similar conclusions in 2006. It recommends that "the Government undertake a close evaluation of Ireland's waste disposal needs. Particular attention should be paid to the waste management hierarchy, which promotes avoidance, reuse and recycling, over disposal."
The EU member states agree. These recommendations are a clear call for a shift in priority to prevention, reuse and recycling as the primary waste management tools and for a reassessment of the need for incineration in the context of these priorities. The innovation and technology is there for us to deal with our waste in an economic and environmentally sustainable manner.
The public at large will not accept mass incineration as a solution. There are many serious health risks from incineration. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the British Society of Ecological Medicine say so. They state that the use of incineration cannot be justified now that it is clear how toxic and carcinogenic the fine particles produced are.
In the last number of months, the issue of global warming has changed the focus on how we look at our environment. Scientific consensus is that global warming is a reality, that it is caused by humans, and that we must act now in order to reverse the trend.
The Stern report and the United Nations stance on global warming give governments a very severe warning of the dangers of doing nothing. Dr John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth also warned the Government of the same danger and of the threat of severe flooding in Ireland. The EPA also agree.
This year, the Government is to spend €270 million of taxpayers' money to buy their way out of our present situation. Ireland is almost 100 per cent over its Kyoto limit.
We cannot keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Worse still, we shouldn't think of pumping millions of extra tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, which would be the consequence of the Government introducing mass incineration as a way of dealing with our waste.
With the overwhelming scientific agreement on global warming, there can be no justification for increasing our CO2 emissions. Ireland is the worst country in Europe at present at controlling its emissions.
Ireland needs to meet its commitments to prevent dangerous climate change and to stop wasting our money in the form of CO2 taxes with the Government's ill-conceived policies. The benefit of a no-burn policy is that it will conserve global resources, reduce the volume of waste, improve air and water quality and reduce our CO2 footprint. These benefits cannot be ignored.
Ireland is at a crossroads in waste management. If we seize this opportunity, we can enter an era of environmental and health leadership, where Ireland's waste policy does not damage the Irish environment or the health of its communities, and where resources are conserved for future generations, instead of being burnt for the profits of a foreign multinational company.
If the Government is serious about its responsibility to fulfil its Kyoto commitment, mass incineration has no part to play in Ireland's waste management strategy.
Mary O'Leary is chairwoman of the Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment
Online: join the debate @ www.ireland.com/head2head 2 HEAD
Last week, Colm O'Gorman and Fintan O'Toole debated the question: do the Progressive Democrats have a future? Here is an edited version of some of your comments
I don't think that there is much of a constituency for the PDs' policies in Ireland at the present time. Some of their more radical ideas, such as making Ireland like Hong Kong or the "necessity of inequality", are not likely to garner much support and in Government there was little to distinguish them from Fianna Fáil. Perhaps the fact that they are a clean party untarnished by corruption might help them, as this distinguishes them from the two main parties, particularly from FF. However, both the Labour Party and the Green Party are also clean in this respect and the Greens have abolished corporate donations to their party. Maybe the PDs should consider doing the same thing.
- Conor, Ireland
The PDs will have a future so long as they do the right things right. That's a multi-faceted requirement. I'm told that about half their councillors are in Galway. They can't expect to survive with such a narrow base as that. They need to rope in Bobby Molloy, or one of his people, to find out how to go about building a party on the ground. Now that's not going to be easy because the days when Molloy and Neil Blaney built up a base to see them through the slump times are long gone. But it has to be done. You can sit in a studio in Dublin preaching as much sense as you like to Vincent Browne, but it won't turn out the votes in Borrisokane. For that you need a hard-working guy in Borrisokane doing the business. Especially you need a hardworking guy in Borrisokane who hasn't a notion of ever running for office himself.
Politics is not Celebrity Big Brother, but it is a hand-in-glove thing. The local guy in Borrisokane needs to know that his leaders are on the right track too. That he is selling a better product than his competitors, that he has an R&D department working on next year's model. That there are seers in the party looking into the future. So there you have it - a sales force on the ground, articulate voices on Browne selling this year's offering, backroom mavens working on the next big thing, and money. Always money.
Because money is the measure of all things. But the money men will only make an investment based on the price/earnings ratio. Let the Greens commit suicide by refusing corporate donations if they want, but the PDs should announce that they will deal with any and all venture capitalists that want to invest.
There's a very amusing take on this country - elections, Greenies and all - by Jonathan V Last in the American neo-conservative magazine The Weekly Standard: "The sitting prime minister - the Irish call the position the Taoiseach - was a fellow named Bertie Ahern, who led the centre-left Fianna Fáil party. Because Ireland, like many American big cities, has no right wing, the contest was between Fianna Fáil and its smaller centre-left coalition partners and a more radical coalition of Ireland's Fine Gael, Labour, and Green parties." They describe Fianna Fáil as "centre-left" and the PDs as also "centre-left".
Which I reckon is actually calling them about right, since no proper, even "centre-right", party would be pouring wasted billions into public health.
And there's a big gap out there available for the grabbing by a properly focused right-wing party. - Owen, United States
"There is no future for the PDs as Fianna Fáil-lite." I think that sums it up in a nutshell. They need to re-establish themselves as being different from FF.
I would prefer for the party to continue to exist, even if I personally wouldn't vote for them. - Morgor, Vatican City State (Holy See)
There's been much talk of the PDs needing to get into government. I don't hold with that at all. I can see the advantages in terms of profile, but out of office they could hone their vision and offer critical, reasoned support for sensible government policies while offering sensible critical opposition to silliness.
I suspect that they could get an even greater profile doing the latter over the five years to 2012. - Anon