16th June 2016 - Incineration meltdown on the horizon
Crucial information
All County Councillors have now been served - by recorded delivery - with the full transcripts of the Talking Rubbish seminar chaired by Jonathon Porritt on 29th April. Other interested parties including Javelin Park developers UBB have also received this information.
Why is this important?
Eunomia's presentation [1] made it very clear that, before the Javelin Park incinerator is commissioned and operational, there will already be incineration overcapacity in the UK - too many incinerators, not enough waste. This is a trend emerging across Northern Europe [2], so operators will not easily be able to keep the monsters burning, still less make any money doing it.
Pause for thought
Now is the ideal time for UBB to reconsider what they are offering the County, before construction begins and the County Council, the taxpayer and indeed UBB and their investors are landed with a huge white elephant in the very near future. This is especially true with the alternative R4C plant looking increasingly likely to be up and running sooner [3] and taking commercial, industrial - and potentially local municipal - waste out from under their noses.
Request for meeting
38 Degrees Stroud will this week be contacting Javier Peiro, project director at Urbaser, to request a public meeting about alternative options before he takes his holiday in July. If UBB are to take their own environment policy [4] and their corporate social responsibility seriously, they should welcome this pressure and outside incentive to revisit the Javelin Park situation.
Add your voice!
Please feel free to contact Mr Peiro personally to re-iterate this meeting request - if he receives a few hundred letters and emails it will be a bracing reminder that local opposition to incineration is not about to disappear. See below for contact details [5].
Meantime, what's happening?
Preparatory site work at Javelin Park appears to be going ahead and the public line from UBB/GCC implies a build start in late summer [6]. However you may be interested to know that:
- There is an outstanding planning application from UBB to use farmland south of Javelin Park for a "construction compound" which is as yet undetermined. [7]
- Peaceful but effective delaying/prevention tactics will be taking place if building begins - entertaining ones! [8]
The fat lady has not yet sung, so let's keep UBB on their toes and make a quiet re-think increasingly appealing.
NOTES
[1] See Mike Brown of Eunomia's presentation (as well as the others in the seminar) here: http://communityr4c.com/videos/
[3] Community R4C share offer at over £50K, see http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/trash-to-treasure-community-r4c-3, and business team now in discussion re major plant investment.
[4] http://urbaser.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/HO-HS-PL-008_Environmental-Policy-Statement.pdf
[5] Javier Peiro, Managing Director, Urbaser Ltd, Westmoreland House, 80-86 Bath Road, Cheltenham, GL53 7JT jpeiro@urbaser.co.uk
[7] Enter application number 16/0043 into search box here: http://planning.gloucestershire.gov.uk/publicaccess/search.do?action=simple&searchType=Application
[8] If you are interested in being notified of delaying/preventative action or offering skills in that context - which can be anything, so please don't underestimate your usefulness - please contact 2016GREAN@gmail.com.