Return to the main incinerator page

Why is NYCC's plan a bad one?

Marton cum Grafton Parish Council has been looking carefully at NYCC's waste management plan. We believe the plan is fatally flawed and should be stopped immediately, pending a thorough review of their central justification. See our county and YC councillors page for detailed reviews of the scheme.

See also a short presentation that explains what is wrong with NYCC decision and outlines a better/much cheaper approach they could still adopt: Presentation: Why is NYCC's waste management plan so wrong?

North Yorkshire County Council (NYCC) is about to commit us (every single taxpayer) to a 25 year deal with AmeyCespa to divert all of our non-recycled waste to a huge centralised facility. NYCC claim we need to do this because it will be more expensive to pay the increasing landfill tax. This would be true if we carried on as we are. However, there are other better options that they are not presenting to the final decision makers - all of our county councillors.

Our county councillors were recently presented with these options as being the only two options by the pro-lobby in county hall:

Option 1: Commit to a £1.44 billion spend over 25 years

Option 2: A 'do the minimum' scenario in which no significant effort is made to reduce waste arising or increase recycling.

NYCC argue this scheme is the best solution and that it will save the county £320 million compared to the 'do nothing' policy. We think this is highly misleading, since the scheme is based on a maximum kerbside rate of 50% only in the next 25 years! We're not far from that figure today, and South Oxfordshire is at 70% now!! (see In the press opposite).

Using some simple arithmetic - if we increased recyling to a more reasonable 60% the amount of non-recylable waste would drop by 20%. Also the amount of waste produced by shops and businesses will fall in the future and not rise. NYCC assumes that household waste will increase by 55% by 2040. This simply won't happen. Government and EU policies are driving down the amount of waste produced - not the opposite.

So, taking higher recycling and less waste being produced together, we think the planned Allerton Park facility is twice the size it needs to be. Smaller volumes of waste could be produced using technologies other than incineration - after all incinerators are springing up all around the county. So why build another one when it isn't needed.

Make no mistake - this is a risky financial deal and a highly skewed picture of it is being presented to our county councillors in order to get them to sign up to it. On these grounds alone we are against this deal.

There are other compelling reasons to oppose the plan:

• This proposal is in opposition to the new government's position on waste management in which they call for a "zero waste" strategy.

• The proposed facility locks us into outdated technology (incineration) for 25 years and the proposed use of incineration is itself about the worst thing you can do for CO₂ emissions, which we're all supposed to be so concerned about.

• We are locked into a 25 year financial deal. We pay regardless of whatever changes occur in the future, such as positive changes in behaviour that result in dramatically reduced amounts of non-recyclable waste.

• The deal acts as a massive disincentive to do the things that society is now really in favour of - namely reducing waste (less packaging for example) and increasing recycling.

• The deal does nothing or little to benefit the local Yorkshire economy.

• The deal centralises waste disposal when we should be de-centralising and dealing with the waste in smaller facilities, run by local companies that can react quickly to changing waste management technologies.