From Professor Adrian Demaid.
ANY process branded as ‘recycling’ benefits from that word’s status as a privileged term.

The well-meaning, from school-child to educated adult, are conditioned to accept a pro-cess so branded as immune from questioning. Such is the level of privilege enjoyed by the recycling word that a questioner can be termed heretic and abused, so removing the need to deal with any awkward arguments.

However, there are common-sense tests of recycling proposals, because, at heart, we are talking about the collection of raw materials from waste to feed industrial pro-cesses. It doesn’t matter a jot whe-ther those raw materials produce electricity from waste or fleece jumpers from plastic bottles, they can all be tested using these simple questions. Is there a reliable demand for the raw materials? Does the demand match the supply?

Is more energy consumed by manufacturing from waste materials than from raw materials? How much local control of the processes is there? Answering these questions is often harder than asking them, because the whole of an industrial process has to be considered in detail to determine whether a decision made by a community is genuinely good for the environment, or just a token gesture.

The international principle that, if possible, communities should be dealing with their own wastes within their own boundaries makes answering the questions a little easier in Jersey because we have a clear boundary crossed only by boat, or by plane. So there is always a significant transport cost (measured in money or in energy used) when waste is moved out of the Island.

The implication of this, for the concerned citizen, is clear. As we have no glass or plastics factories in the Island, you cannot judge whether collecting raw materials from waste is genuine or false recycling unless you know its ultimate destination. An opinion unsupported by detailed calculations and the consideration of all aspects of the process is, well, just an opinion.

On the whole, most glass recycling is really waste disposal and Jersey’s waste plastic is better reused (burnt) for electricity than shipped out. Because the devil is in the detail, such issues, although vital, are unattractive to politicians in need of a high profile, so our political processes are capable of creating environmental disasters such as the delay in replacing Bellozanne with a new energy-from-waste plant.
Arguably, the filthy old plant should have been shut down, say, ten years ago.

So, what is the fiscal and environmental cost of the Great Bellozanne Disaster? Additional cost of new plant, say tens of millions of pounds. Costs of extra maintenance, including stopping the chimney from falling down (for a while), say millions of pounds.

Cost to Bellozanne’s residents and workers, significant unknown — measured in terms of additional environmental pollution. Cost to the planet, significant unknown — measured in terms of useless carbon dioxide production. Cost of lost energy production, about a year’s worth of Jersey’s total electricity consumption over ten years — measured in gigawatts. How could this happen?

Our politicians are neither malign, nor are they naive, so there must be something in the political process — or the context in which they work — that makes such a blizzard of mistakes possible. Combine this with the emotive, privileged language of faux sustainability, and maybe the failure of such large projects is even promoted by our decision-making processes.

On 24 February the States debate whether to add significantly to these already outrageous costs and risk future escalating environmental and financial costs by rescinding its previous decision to replace the incinerator.

When this saga is over, perhaps our politicians might reflect on how sensible, practical, future decisions about sustainability can be made without repeating past mistakes or falling into the same trap as the mainland, where vast efforts are expended on achieving targets rather than solving environmental problems.

To end on a lighter note, if you are interested in the aesthetics of incinerators, Google ‘Isle of Man incinerator’ and look at the picture in the first hit for a taste of the building ‘designed to be a landmark with a heritage feel’.
4 Clos de la Tour,
La Rocque,
Grouville.