Burn baby burn, Dublin's Incinerator a Wasted Opportunity

Nobody now needs to be reminded that money for public services is scarce and wherever public money is spent it is crucial that we get value for money. We also need to do everything we have to preserve jobs and create jobs.

If these two principles are applied to the decision of Dublin City Council to continue with the proposed incinerator in Ringsend then it clearly would be abandoned or seriously scaled down. Much of the coverage of this issue has been about the dispute between the Minister John Gormley and Dublin City Council officials and as a consequence many of the real issues have been lost.

Minister Gormley has been accused of being a NIMBY and of pursuing his own Green agenda in the face of a reasonable solution to Dublin’s waste problem. Recent RTE coverage of the issue on RTE focused on the fact that the City Council had the opportunity to break the contract but with little account of why the contract should be broken. In all of this many of the facts about the operation of this incinerator are being lost.

This project was initiated fourteen years ago and has so far cost €60 million (approx). A lot has happened in those fourteen years. What was originally conceived as a neat engineering solution to Dublin’s waste problem has now been overtaken by market forces and new waste re-cycling technology. What might have made sense then makes no sense now.

First of all the incinerator is designed to take 600,000 tons of waste a year. The Dublin region local authorities are committed to providing 320,000 tons of that and it is rumoured that they will pay Covanta €80 per ton. However at the moment they are only generating approximately 220,000 tons of grey bin waste. Even if they start burning what is currently being re-cycled they will have difficulty reaching the 320,000 ton target and as we all get better and better at being less wasteful and at re-cycling the tonnage of feedstock for the incinerator is declining. So to keep the incinerator working to capacity waste will have to be pulled in from all over the midlands and the eastern region and maybe even imported.

Secondly the deal with Covanta, if it goes ahead, will tie the local authorities into a twenty five year contract. If, as can be expected re-cycling technologies get even better over that time, there will be no incentive for us to use them or to invest in developing them. Already in the United States where large incinerators have been built re-cycling has decreased and in London the advice to the Greater London Authority has been not to enter in to long term contracts because improved re-cycling offers a more economic way of disposing of London’s waste. The Report ‘Where there is Muck there is Brass’ states ‘We welcome the statement by the London Waste and Recycling Board that it will not be investing in incineration projects but, focusing on new energy from waste technologies, which may have a lower impact on air quality and C02 emissions’.

So as re-cycling becomes more efficient incineration becomes less economic. Remember for every one job the incinerator will create (apart from the building period) re-cycling creates eleven. Re-cycled materials become the raw material for all kinds of new products: egg cartons, disposable nappies, plastic products, fleeces and even diesel oil and there are already companies using re-cycled material to manufacture and export.

Current re-cycling techniques are amazingly efficient. Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) can sort grey bin waste into metal, wood, fibre etc for reuse and the remaining waste, solid recoverable fuel or SRF, can be used for incineration. With more efficient systems the level of SRF will decline. The proposed incinerator is a monster that will suck in hundreds of thousands of tons waste and discourage not only re-cycling but also research into more efficient re-cycling methods. It will also put those new businesses that see waste as a raw material out of business as it will deprive them of their source of raw material.

The Ringsend Incinerator is not a local issue. It has the potential to be a huge waste of tax payer’s money and put in serious jeopardy the whole of the recycling industry nationally and thus thousands of jobs. A smart economy is not just about electronics it is also about developing new technologies that can sustain us and bring in foreign investment. We have huge potential to be world leaders in the development of some of those green re-cycling technologies. With a monster incinerator in Ringsend that potential will literally go up in smoke