Madam, - Martin Cullen's statements on incineration (The Irish Times, April 6th) exemplify his upside-down approach to waste management. The Minister's primary focus is on end-of-chain solutions - incineration and landfill. Despite much lip-service, he has introduced no serious measures to tackle the problem at source by reducing waste.
The Race Against Waste campaign asks us why we have not stopped "producing" packaging waste. The real question is: Why has the Minister not introduced any measures to encourage manufacturers (the real "producers") to reduce packaging or to use recyclable/reusable materials?
Why also does the Minister insist that we must pay for compost bins when the savings in landfill would repay the cost of giving one to each household in less than a year? Why is there such a lack of uniformity about the type of materials acceptable at recycling centres around the country? If we wanted to guarantee a stream of waste to feed the proposed incinerators, we couldn't have devised better policies.
Contrary to the Minister's assertion that incineration is a must for business, many businesses, particularly agriculture and tourism, will suffer if the incinerators go ahead. While the Minister for Agriculture, Joe Walsh, encourages farmers to market our "green" image, his colleague is intent on building incinerators which will lead to significant increases in dioxin levels in milk.
Mr Cullen is right on one point: the incineration business will suffer if we don't build incinerators. - Yours, etc.,
HUGH BAXTER,
Béal Átha Liag,
Co Roscomáin.
Madam, - Thankfully for keen environmentalists like myself, Martin Cullen is prepared to acknowledge what is now a recognised technological fact: that incineration, be it of hazardous or domestic rubbish, is infinitely the safest way to dispose of our waste. A controlled burn at proper temperatures, with corresponding thermal treatment in the after-burner chamber of the resulting dioxins and furans, keeps emissions to a minimum. To suggest that landfill is a preferable option is about as stupid as to suggest that we can adopt a zero waste strategy.
Not even the Germans, with their five bins under the sink and fiddly rules for compartmentalised street collection, can come up with a re-cycling figure of more than 50 per cent and they have now legislated against allowing any organic waste whatever to enter remaining landfills. Ireland remains the only EU member of the EU which continues to dump 91 per cent of its domestic waste into a series of beautiful valleys, cavities, or just flat, purpose-built tip-heads.
The US may indeed be happy to use landfill, as Linda Fitzgerald points out in her letter of April 8th, but it does have an abundance of available land. Here in Europe we have been forced to develop high-technology alternatives to preserve our dwindling resources of land, air and waterways.
Furthermore it makes absolute sense to re-use the heat produced in incinerators to warm factories and houses which is why, within Britain and mainland Europe, 75 new incinerators came on-line between 1999 and 2002 and a further 166 new plants are projected to come on line across Europe between now and 2009.
The problem with incineration is a problem of local politics. Our voting system encourages representatives to be all things to all people and therefore vulnerable to the local "greenie" lobby. Mr Cullen has rightly switched the power to make county waste from county councillors to managers. At least the way is now open for some semblance of sense as we tackle this mounting problem of rubbish. - Yours, etc.,
SUSAN PHILIPS, Ballinacoola, Glenealy, Co Wicklow.