Slugger O'Toole: Waking up to waste... at last?

UTV Internet reported:

Chairman Michael Mates, said some years ago Northern Ireland was the first part of the UK to develop a waste management strategy in response to EU directives setting out how it would deal with the issue of waste.

"Unfortunately, progress in implementing that strategy has been lamentably slow, and there is now a real danger that Northern Ireland will fail to meet its first major EU target in 2010 and could incur substantial financial penalties," he said.

In a damning indictment he added: "The absence of strong leadership by Northern Ireland departments has been a crucial factor in this disappointing result."

He highlighted a failure of government to live up to a commitment to use the substantial purchasing power of the public sector to influence the market for recycled products.

"The Government must now demonstrate a much more proactive stance on waste management to ensure that the major potential difficulties identified in our report are avoided," said Mr Mates.

Tony Clarke, chairman of the sub-committee which carried out the inquiry said it was now a race against time for Northern Ireland to meet its statutory obligations and protect the environment by developing more sustainable waste practices.

Mr Clarke said there were three major challenges which had to be tackled immediately.

:: A crisis in planning which had led to huge delays in reaching decisions on applications for waste management facilities. The Committee had been shocked to learn it could sometimes take up to ten years.

:: Those delays had created the knock on problem of existing landfill capacity rapidly becoming exhausted, a failure to identify replacement sites and alternatives to landfill, and the alienation of potential providers of such facilities.

:: No clear estimate of how much funding would be required to deal with waste over the life of the strategy existed - and there was not clear funding plan for how new infrastructure would be delivered.

Another example of our rudderless statelet drifting aimlessly while we all indulge in our usual neverending tribal battles and our incompetent departments put off any decision that might be tough.

And the silence in Slugger is telling too.

We urgently need to sort this out,

a plastic bag/packaging tax

a financial incentive to recycle, probably by charging by weight for rubbish disposed of

an incinerator

penalties for illegal dumping which are adequate to dissuade people from doing it.

I agree with Lámh Dearg, and would add:

proper functioning wastewater management systems that efficiently collect and treat our waset (rather than requiring 1000's of litres of expensive drinking water to flush away only a small amount of faeces and urine)

support for a recycling based society and economy (rather than only having the same tired old recycled political ideas).

support for a recycling based society and economy

I've nothing against recycling, but a 'recycling based society and economy' is a bit OTT, I think.

The danger with recycling is that one ends up 'recycling' products for which there is no market. Then we create financial incentives for Councils to employ companies to 'recycle' their waste onto a big ship which takes it out to India and dumps it there.

I'm all up for an incinerator, the problem is, as usual, Greenie hysterics who invent dangers around incinerators, NIMBY allies who don't care as long as it happens somewhere else and an irresponsible media which gives their claims sympathetic treatment while abandoning any pretence of fair coverage. Of course, as long as you have Catholic and Protestant Greenie hysterics on the same programme that's OK. As usual, the enivronmental lobby invent problems which have no easy 'solution', beyond abandoning the benefits of a modern, technologically advanced, society which they are no more keen to do that than any of the rest of us.

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