THE recent article on your Environment page by Martin Williams ("Fears waste system will not be ready for Scottish landfill ban", The Herald, December 9) returns to the topic of our letter in August where we predicted correctly that the Scottish Government would put back the date of the ban’s implementation to 2025 and advised against punitive tax measures in the interim which the Government appears to be going ahead with; whilst suggesting the Government shows strategic leadership and ensures Energy from Waste facilities are constructed in time and in the right place, which it is once again leaving to local authorities even though some only require a very small proportion of the overall capacity of an average Scottish plant.
The Scottish Environmental Services Association (Sesa) makes the correct point that the 2025 deadline will be breached unless plans are implemented now for new plant.
Cosla states that improvements in recycling and waste management will be impossible if local authorities do not have funding. This is somewhat disingenuous given (as we stated in our earlier letter) local authorities were given significant funding through the Strategic Waste Fund (from 2001) to put in place recycling schemes.
In fact the fund, which was originally to run from 2001 to 2020, was and remains the single “game-changer” in terms of household recycling across the local authority sector in Scotland. The fund – which was new money – eventually reached a pot of nearly £133 million per year. Approximately half of this was spent annually on recycling schemes up to 2007/8.
The newly-elected government halted the ring-fencing of the funding, meaning councils no longer needed to spend it on recycling projects and, worse, divided up the remaining unspent half amongst the 32 local authorities, so that the block grant included more or less an additional £133m per year for recycling services.
Finally, between 2008-11 the Government created the Zero Waste Fund (£80m) which was a further grant to all local authorities to enhance their recycling services.
All of this funding was in addition to the block grant to councils which incorporates funding for waste and recycling collections and disposal.
Local authority finance managers will argue about whether or not the full amounts of the original Strategic Waste Fund could ever be identified in the block grant. What is unarguable is that local government was given significant additional funding for waste and recycling services but chose in many instances not to spend it on those services; and then to cut the frequency of services or start charging for them.
What is also unarguable is the fact that Government has had the opportunity to introduce policies which would both assist it in meeting its own targets and simultaneously help local government finance.
It has still the opportunity with the introduction of extended producer responsibility where the packaging industry and retailers could be required to pay for local authority recycling collections in full and for the policing of the system. This would help improve recycling rates and its quality and educate the public at the same time.
Had a long-term strategic view of waste been taken a decade and half or so ago when funds were plentiful the landscape of both recycling and of residual waste management would today have been significantly different.
Colin Clark, Inverness; John G Cunningham, Falkirk; Chris Ewing, Fife.
SINCE the SNP came to power in 2007 I have looked on in horror at the exponential rise of waste incineration, which is nothing less than the apotheosis of environmental vandalism.
When the SNP took the helm, less than 150ktpa (kilotonnes per annum) of Scotland's municipal waste was incinerated. That figure has now risen to 1.25 million ktpa; more than eight times higher. There are plans, some at an advanced stage, for a further 1.75 million ktpa capacity.
Most of what is burnt is plastic and paper. Burning one tonne of plastic emits three tonnes of co2 as each carbon atom combines with two heavy oxygen atoms. Burning a tonne of paper emits 1.5 tonnes of co2.
But that is only part of the story. Incineration companies claim to be efficient because they recover energy. In fact waste incineration recovers one-tenth of the energy used to make the products in our rubbish. The energy used to make one tonne of the products in our rubbish generates three tonnes of CO2.
It gets worse. Dumfries and Galloway Council now has no recycling whatsoever (apart from Wigtownshire). From 2021 all biodegradable waste from Clackmannanshire will go to an incinerator in Sweden, even though such waste can easily be recycled and composted.
Claims that waste incineration is necessary to avoid European landfill fines are bogus. Such fines only apply to the biodegradable portion of municipal waste, that is, kitchen scraps and garden waste. Obviously these can be easily segregated and dealt with by composting or anaerobic digestion.
The SNP talks about a "climate crisis". Indeed. It is doing its best to create it.
Michael Gallagher, Coupar Angus.
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