Waste Management Strategy - Question and Answer session - ONYX - Transcript - 7 February 2005

STATES OF JERSEY

SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

BLAMPIED ROOM, STATES BUILDING

WASTE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

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Present: Deputy Phil Rondel (Review Chairman)

Senator Ted Vibert

Senator Jean Le Maistre

Deputy Rob Duhamel

Deputy Bob Hill

Deputy Gerard Baudains

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWER SESSION FOLLOWING PRESENTATION BY M

CHRISTOPHE BELLYNCK

AND MR FABIEN COX (ONYX UK LIMITED)

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on

Monday, 7th February 2005 _  _  _  _  _  _

(Digital Transcription by Marten Walsh Cherer Limited, Midway House, 27/29 Cursitor St., London, EC4A 1LT. Telephone: 020 7405 5010.  Fax:  020 7405 5026)

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DEPUTY RONDEL: Go o d morning, gentlemen. Before we start, I have to read to you the

following notification because this is an official hearing. It is important that you fully understand the

conditions under which you are appearing at this hearing. You will find a printed copy of the statement that I am about to read to you on the table in front of you.

S h a d ow Scrutiny Panels have been established by the States to create opportunities for

training States Members and Officers in developing new skills in advance of the proposed changes of government. During the shadow period, the Panel has no statutory powers and the proceedings at public hearings are not covered by Parliamentary privilege. This means that anybody participating, whether a Panel Member or a person giving evidence, is not protected from being sued or prosecuted for anything said during hearings. The Panel would like you to bear this in mind when answering questions and to ensure that you understand that you are fully responsible for any comments that you make.

Ge n tl emen, could you please give us your names and also the company you represent? MR BELLYNCK: C h r is tophe Bellynck. I am representing Onyx UK Limited.

MR COX: F a b ie n Cox, also working for Onyx UK

DEPUTY RONDEL: T h a n k you. If you would like to start with your presentation and the

questions will be taken at the end of your presentation, so if you could give yourself approximately 30 minutes or thereabouts over your presentation because the meeting in total is one hour.

MR COX: Ok a y . I will take you through the presentation. All we intend to do really today is to

tell you who we are as Onyx and how we approached a similar project and how we would approach Jersey really just to trigger discussion and exchanges more than presenting a proposal, which would definitely be premature at this stage.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   Ye s .

SENATOR LE MAISTRE: C o u ld you explain that this part is not being taped?

DEPUTY RONDEL: It i s b eing taped, but it will not be transcribed. The questions and answers

will be transcribed.

MR COX: Al l r i ght.

Mr Cox gave the presentation on behalf of Onyx UK Limited

DEPUTY RONDEL: I wo u ld like to thank you very much for the presentation and I would like

to put the first question. If we could have the light put on. (Same done) Thank you, Senator. You mentioned disposal and the technical innovations. Amongst your disposal methods, are any of them, or would any of them, provide for shipping off-Island?

MR BELLYNCK: Ye s , it is the type of thing that we like to explore because we know that some

experiments have been set up between, you know, Jersey and Guernsey with the Continent. It is one of the things that has to be explored.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   R ig h t .   Deputy Duhamel?

DEPUTY DUHAMEL: T h a n k you. We have been given details of communities who manage to

divert getting on for 75% of their waste production away from incineration or other thermal treatments. What difficulties would your company foresee in replicating or even improving on this record of recycling diversion in Jersey?

MR BELLYNCK: On e h as to consider what is reasonable to achieve because obviously what you have to start to do is to go through waste minimisation first. That is a first step. Once you have achieved some results in terms of waste minimisation, then you have to contemplate recycling

and composting. In our experience in the UK, we do well to achieve 20/25% to go through 30%. We know as well how to achieve 40/45% and we have some experiments where we are achieving 25% and those where we are doing 45%. You have, in order to achieve 45% of diversion, just recycling and composting, you need to start to enforce it a little bit. As an example, you have to go through containerisation. You have to limit the size of the containers to 120 litres and even to go through fortnightly collection as well of refuse. Then it starts to be a question of public acceptability of having its refuse collected every other week. Once you do a collection every fortnight, what you can do is to do far more recycling, so you end up having two recycling runs, two different ones -- say one the first week on paper, say, and the second one on glass, plastic and cans and composting -- and every other week only you have the refuse collection. If you do that -- again, some local authorities in the UK are very keen to do that and have done it for the last two or three years -- then you achieve 40/45% of diversion. Then you are left with 55/60% of the waste arisings that you have to dispose of. Then you can elect. You

know, you can decide yourself that you are going to landfill part of it and then you are left with only

35/40% of the waste streams that has to be disposed of ultimately through gasification, pyrolysis or an energy from waste plant.

An o t her alternative is to go away from any type of incineration capacity and to work

through composting or digestion or even an MBT.  Then what one has to consider is what you do with the end product because you have always, you know, an end product out of technology such as digestion, composting or MBT.

Wi t h digestion, you are ending up with a digester that you will have to export, I think. In

any case, it will be very difficult to find an outlet on the Island.

Wi t h composting, then it is another problem altogether because you would have to find a

network or farmers or different outlets in order to get rid of the product. The difficulty then is you can do all sort of things with composting and even composting from raw waste. The difficulty is if you want to achieve a particular standard, you are going to produce less of it because you will be more picky on the quality and then you are going to end up with some fuel or a type of product that you will have to export or you will have to find a landfill somewhere.

M B T is even more complicating in a way because MBT is not a new technology as such.

It is a new word for things that have been in existence for the last 30 or 40 years. What an MBT facility does in a way is to take raw materials and then to split it into as many as three different streams, so you can only have one stream, two or three, but in a sort of academic way you have three different streams. One is high quality fuel that you can export and sell to you will have to pay something similar to burn it, so you have high quality fuel. The second stream could be composting, but, again, if you want a quality of a particular standard you will have very little of composting out of an MBT. The third stream is what technology suppliers are calling digested, which is a product that is not compost. It is not a fuel with an high calorific value, but somehow you have achieved a degree of stabilisation. Through your planned legislation what you can then contemplate to do is to landfill it because the biodegradability content is quite low and you could end up in a position where you are in compliance with European law. Those are the three sort of technologies available if you want to avoid incineration or gasification.

Ha v i ng said all of that, I think that what is important is if you look at what others have

been doing either on the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Man etc, you always end up somehow, you

know, having incineration as part of your overall strategy. But, to repeat my response, I think

that what is important is to contemplate the overall strategy coming from waste minimisation,

recycling and what you think is something you can achieve on the Island and then look at the

options in terms of the final recovery, but all sorts of technologies are available indeed. DEPUTY DUHAMEL: S o i n broad terms, European best practice could be achievable in Jersey if

the political will allow it?

MR BELLYNCK: Ye s , y es, definitely.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   S e n at or Vibert .  Sorry?

MR COX: On e comment on the recycling. You may read or hear in the UK recycling targets

being very high, well in excess of 50%. At the moment we look at contracts in the UK where the medium term targets would be 55/56%, say, within six, seven or eight years. They would be very difficult to achieve. It is not necessarily an economic optimum and they are often as result of a political decision not to go down any thermal treatment. So basically everybody goes for recycling and hopes it will be achieved, but it would be expensive. It is important to see that. The optimum balance may not be with these very high targets which we see coming out at the moment.

DEPUTY RONDEL:   S e n at or Vibert , please?

SENATOR VIBERT: T h a n k you. I take it from what you have told us in fact that there is not

just one solution to a waste problem; it would appear from the evidence that we've heard that

that is how it used to be. In other words, you would decide you're going to burn it, so you burnt

everything. The modern technique seems to be that you look at your waste management as an

overall project and you start by trying to minimise the waste and you move down through that

cycle until you get to the point where you are left with what you can do nothing else with other

than now dispose of it by using incineration or gasification pyrolysis or a plasma technique or

whatever. But it actually has to be a complete package rather than just say there is one solution. It wo uld appear from what you have said to us that the proper way of doing this, and how

you would be doing it if you were charged to do it, would be that you would start with waste

minimisation, so you would be reducing the amount; you would look at in-vessel composting to deal with the green waste and produce compost; and then you would then look at what is left and how you then have to deal with it.  Now, I have summed up your position just in that way?

MR COX: Ye s , e  xactly.

MR BELLYNCK: Ye s , y es.

MR COX: It i s a bit academic, but the Government has come up with this pyramid, which I think

is a European notion, and one element is after you minimise, recycle and reuse, you try and recover, which is basically through thermal treatment or any energy recovery, then at the end you ----

SENATOR VIBERT: Yo u t hen dispose, yes.

MR COX: Ye s .

SENATOR VIBERT: F in e , t hank you.

DEPUTY RONDEL: An y m ore questions, gentlemen? No?

SENATOR VIBERT: S o rr y , there was one other one. Have you actually been approached at any

time by the Pubic Services Department in Jersey to put forward a proposal as a company of Onyx to look at our waste position?

MR BELLYNCK: I d o n't think we have ever been. Obviously we met with you on 13th

November, but prior to that I don't think so.

MR COX: I w il l check with our French colleagues. I think they have been involved in some

paper recycling in the old days, but it may be Guernsey. They weren't too sure, but may be going back in time there is something.

SENATOR VIBERT: I m e a nt within the last couple of years.

MR COX: No , a ll right.

DEPUTY RONDEL: If t h e re are no more questions, gentlemen, and if you have nothing further

to add, we would like to thank you for giving your time and giving the presentation this morning and can I also thank you on behalf of the Members here, because I understand you are going to give the presentation along with your colleague this afternoon to the Island at the Museum.

MR COX: Ok a y .

DEPUTY RONDEL:   T h a n k you.  We will now take a short break.

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