Waste Recycling - Transport and Technical Services - Transcipt - 17 September 2007

STATES OF JERSEY

Environment Scrutiny Panel

MONDAY, 17th SEPTEMBER 2007

Panel:

Deputy R.C. Duhamel of St. Saviour (Chairman) Connétable K.A. Le Brun of St. Mary Connétable A.S. Crowcroft of St. Helier

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire of St. Helier

Witnesses:

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye of St. Helier (Minister for Transport and Technical Services) Mr. J. Richardson (Chief Officer, Transport and Technical Services)

Deputy R.C. Duhamel (Chairman):

Hello, good evening and welcome. We are the Environment Scrutiny Panel. I am Deputy Duhamel. Deputy Le Claire, Connétable Crowcroft and Connétable Le Brun. We are here tonight to ask questions of the Minister and his Chief Officer, the Minister being Deputy de Faye, and the Chief Officer of Transport and Technical Services being John Richardson. I will start off with the questions. On 3rd July 2007, the Scrutiny Panel presented to the States its Waste Recycling Review. The terms of reference were to quantify the composition of waste within the residential and commercial collections; to investigate the practicality and cost implications of re- using or recycling in excess of 32 per cent of the waste stream; to investigate European and international markets for recycled goods and recyclable materials; to examine existing technology for the treatment of food waste with the green waste and the composting facility; and to examine systems or policies to encourage the public to play a more active role in recycling. There was quite an extended review and it lasted for a number of months. During that time there were substantial changes within the UK (United Kingdom) and other jurisdictions, so much so that they were material in some of the recommendations that were put forward. Just to remind the public and the Ministers, we recommended in the chairman's foreword to the report that over the last few years there had been such an enormous shift in the public and political understanding of the environmental issues that policies previously reserved for environmental do-gooders had been enthusiastically adopted by mainstream political parties. The public had been urged by the media on a daily basis to green their lifestyles and to limit their carbon footprints, and this rapid growth in environmental awareness had led to major changes in waste management policy. The major significance to Jersey in May 2007 was the UK government issuing a revised national waste strategy, and the development of the UK report was described as follows: "Waste Strategy 2007 was developed against a background of increasing public and political awareness, with a need to consider waste management and resource efficiency within the context of sustainable development and impact upon climate change. Waste Strategy 2007 therefore set out a broad programme which requires action at all levels of society, not just government down, but from the public up, to recognise that behaviour change will be the key to achieving the objectives. The aim in implementing the Waste Strategy 2007 was to prioritise the waste prevention and actions towards the top of the waste hierarchy; i.e., towards waste prevention and aspiration of driving increasingly to a resource-efficient, zero-waste society." In recognising that most of our goods are imported from the UK and the UK provides markets for our recyclable materials, our performance as a government will often be judged against UK standards. With this in mind the Scrutiny Report made extensive references to policies set out by the UK Government. Our main recommendation was that the Scrutiny Panel strongly recommended that TTS (Transport and Technical Services) took the opportunity to review the estimates of both waste horizons and recycling rates for the period of the strategy. 2005 is already a number of years ago, and the panel believes that the residual waste horizons estimated then for the next 25 years are seriously overstated in that recycling rates are seriously underestimated, and that this combination leads to an estimate for residual waste that is unjustifiably high. The residual waste is the amount of waste that is left in the waste stream after the recycling has taken place. It is intended that the department will put forward proposals at a later stage, probably next year, for equipment to deal with this residual waste and their favoured option at the moment is a large-scale mass-burning incinerator. Minister, first question - and it has taken a while - you have stated in your criticisms to our report that all 3 elements of the main recommendation of the Environment Scrutiny Report were fundamentally wrong. In starting off, you suggest that the waste arisings have not been overstated, and in fact you go on to say that your department has conducted regular compositional analyses into the 2 types of streams

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye (The Minister for Transport and Technical Services): One of the reasons that I have not ordered specific types of compositional analysis is because they are essentially not necessary. I am very resistant, and I take on board the public's view that we should use consultants imported from abroad as little as possible and rely on our own resources as well as our own initiative. If one is looking at household waste - in other words, what the average domestic household puts in the black bag that ends up going to the waste stream - the reality is that it has been shown time and again that it is, effectively, very similar to a black bag as found in the United Kingdom. Therefore, I have been quite happy that in respect of domestic household waste we can use in Jersey the compositional details that are easily available from United Kingdom analysis. Experience has shown they can be satisfactorily applied here. So, I see no serious reason to go to the extra time and expense of having our own personalised and tailored compositional analysis of that aspect of the waste stream. However, it is a fact that the department has conducted 2 specific analyses on bulky waste, for the very specific reason that the type of bulky waste we process here in the Island is tangibly different from UK waste. Therefore, UK statistics would not have been as helpful. That is the position.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

If UK figures would not have been as helpful because Jersey does have a unique composition to its waste, could you tell us why then the department has predominantly used UK household composition figures rather than a detailed knowledge of the contents of the Jersey waste?

Mr. J. Richardson (Chief Officer, Transport and Technical Services):

Sir, I think you misunderstood. What the Minister was saying is that his department maintained that the black bag waste, which is the parish collection waste for the public, does not differ significantly between Jersey and the UK. Certainly, figures we have recently had - I will raise it up for members of the public to see it - shows the compositional analysis of various products, and if you can see just one of these little blocks showing one product, in different regions they are all very much about the same. So, effectively, what we are saying is that black bag waste, that is the domestic waste from  your bin each week, does not differ significantly  from household to household in a similar society to the one in which we live in Jersey. So, if you take a similar society in the UK, an affluent society as we live in predominantly in Jersey, with the volumes that we produce, the black bag weekly waste does not change very much. Where it does change is the bulky commercial waste, and the reason for that is the UK does not publish those figures in the same way as we do. They do not count it in the same way, because the majority of that waste does not form part of the waste statistic that goes straight into landfill sites. That is not counted. We count it. We always have counted it, and we have undertaken 2 reviews to the Ministers. One was in 2000 when we undertook the first waste strategy study; the other one was in 2006, which was a more detailed review. Both of them compared the amount of bulky waste - that is tyres, mattresses, carpet, furniture, large packing cases - which are not part of the domestic waste stream. There is a significant difference between the 2. It is the second bulky waste that we have done a compositional analysis on.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

For housekeeping purposes, could address comments to the panel, please? The public will have an opportunity in the public part of the meeting at 7.30 p.m. or thereabouts for you to address their questions directly. I do not think the question has been answered. The commercial crushed bulky waste at the moment has been analysed once. There was a small survey undertaken by the department consultants. The consultants recommended to the department that there be a continuation of those surveying analyses mechanisms in order to properly determine the materials within the commercial waste limit, as they were not able to do on a short survey.

Mr. J. Richardson:

That is not correct, I am sorry. It has been done twice. You have had both reports.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

When was the second report sent to the department?

Mr. J. Richardson:

2006. You have had both reports.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

The consultants were stipulating that this would be done on a regular yearly basis. If 2 reports have been sent to the department, when is the next one due?

Mr. J. Richardson:

We are not planning another one at the moment.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So, as far as the department is concerned, and the Minister is concerned, he is in full knowledge of the absolute compositional analysis of the crushed bulky waste stream, and it is of such a nature that it is going to be fixed at the percentages that the 2 surveys that have been undertaken have determined?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

No. But I am satisfied that the department has acquired adequate information to proceed with the policies as laid down by the States.

Mr. J. Richardson:

It is quite important to add to that, that the reason that we did the compositional analysis was to understand, obviously, the nature of the waste of course and the calorific value of the waste. What we have also identified, which was clearly in the waste strategy which was the document debated by the States in 2005, was that there were several commodity items in the bulky waste that we were looking to recycle that we are now doing. The compositional analysis gave us a good indicator of the quantity of materials that we could expect to extract from that waste stream, which is what we are now doing.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Our figures are figures for the amounts of materials that do have a commodity value within the crushed bulky stream recorded on a weekly basis at the department.

Mr. J. Richardson:

They are recorded as they are extracted from the waste stream. So, palletfuls have been recorded, the numbers removed, bulky timber if it is removed and reused. The most important recent introduction has been electrical electronic goods and the numbers of items that are removed - not valued - the number of items removed.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Percentage-wise, has that made an enormous difference to the volume, to the tonnage, to the weight and to the calorific value of the commercial bulky waste stream? Because this was the point that the consultant was making; if materials, indeed, were going to be taken out of any particular waste stream, then obviously those measurements will change into the future.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Yes, and clearly, every time we do remove a commodity we reassess that level. But certainly the most recent one, which was the  important one for us in the waste strategy, was the electrical electronic goods. The tonnages are very, very low, but the impact on the environment is high because of the level of contaminants that have been contained within electrical electronic goods.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

It is important, I believe, to have a clear separation between the difference in comparing tonnages to calorific value and quality of waste.

Mr. J. Richardson: Absolutely.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

For example, as the Chief Officer has indicated, computers, televisions, various other electrical items contain significant amounts of heavy metal components, and that is something we would wish to take out of any incinerated burn process, while it is financially viable to do so. Similarly, there may be items that have high calorific value that we can dispose of via other routes - paper and cardboard are one of those elements. But, if you look at tonnages, you need enormous amounts of plastic to hit high tonnages. Therefore, it is important that we understand how these comparisons are made.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

You commented that the operatives had a detailed knowledge of the content of the Jersey waste through hands-on experience. Could you explain what you meant by that?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Yes. I think it should be recognised that obviously working for the department over the years, those of our workforce who work directly in the hands-on capacity have developed quite a level of experience, and this ranges right across their work responsibilities. There are elements where people who would be working at the reuse and recycling facility where an alert workforce will be, of itself, able to encourage more reuse and recycling, as opposed to dumping. Similarly, to take a specific example, our crane operators working over the bunker at Bellozanne have developed over time an understanding of the appropriate mix of materials. For example, they work the crane to ensure that elements of the bunker do not get too liquid because of the mixture of the waste, and that a relatively uniform refuse disposal takes place as the feed goes into the incinerator. These are people who see, on a daily basis, precisely what the rubbish and waste is coming into the plant. They see by virtue of visual inspection, how quality of rubbish changes on a day-to-day basis, and we highly value their input.

Mr. J. Richardson:

It is also important to note that, certainly when you look at the bulky waste facility, which is the old area that the general public accessed at weekends. It was very evident on that pile, just looking at the face of the pile, you could see televisions, you could see the number coming in each weekend. You could see the number of pallet boards before we removed the pallet boards. You could see the amount of cardboard before we removed the cardboard. It is the operators' experience that is so important, and it is as we remove those individual commodities that you can start to see the difference. Certainly, the 3 examples I have just given you, pallet boards, cardboard and electrical electronic goods, televisions, et cetera, are very, very evident. That is purely down to the operatives being able to identify the item, work with us and work with the public as they are delivering material to segregate and remove it, and that is when you get a really good understanding of the nature of the waste.

Connétable A.S. Crowcroft : Could I come in here?

Male Speaker:

Sorry, Mr. Chairman, can I just say that at the back we cannot hear. Could I ask the speakers to move the microphones a little closer?

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Could I just push this issue about compositional analysis a bit further? I do not think anyone is asking for a team of UK consultants necessarily to be brought over to conduct this work, but it does seem to me that leaving it to the point of view of somebody operating a crane above the waste is a little bit, how shall I say, unscientific?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, that is why we do not do that.

The Connétable of St. Helier : If I can finish my question?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

We do not do that. It is wrong for you to say we do that when we do not. We do not do that.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So, the materials are properly weighed?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

I have explained earlier, I thought clearly, that our understanding of what is generally the composition of black bags, household waste, comes from thorough documentation carried out in the United Kingdom that we have no reason to suspect is inaccurate.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

No. We are not talking about black bags. We are talking about commercial waste.

Mr. J. Richardson:

What we do analyse is commercial waste, which is the bulky waste that goes to the waste reception facility at Bellozanne.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel: Can you speak to the mic?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, that is what I am trying to do. That material has been analysed on 2 occasions in 2000 by the first consultants undertaking a waste strategy review, and 2006 has given us that analysis of material coming into the site in bulky waste terms. That input is used for 2 purposes: one, to understand the composition of the bulky waste, and, second, to determine the calorific value of that material. It is very easy then, as we remove another commodity to (1) recalculate the calorific value of the residual waste and (2) understand from the tonnage we withdraw on that particular commodity what the residual waste will be. So, it is absolutely correct that we do that work, we have done it and we will continue to do it as we see fit.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So, to be clear, the department are keeping statistics of all the individual components of the crushed bulky commercial waste stream that, due to a change in working practices at Bellozanne, those materials that do have a commodity value or an extreme hazardous value, are being taken out of that particular stream; and if the Scrutiny Panel ask for those statistics, they will be forthcoming?

Mr. J. Richardson:

No, that is not what I said. I think I need to repeat myself again, and also, for the record, I need to say tonight exactly what I said at previous Scrutiny Panel meetings, because of the way the transcription machines work for Scrutiny is imperative that we do not interrupt each other, otherwise the transcription for future reference is void. So, I think we just need to respect each other's position on that, in terms of interrupting each other. The point with bulky waste has been made on a number of occasions. In 2000 we did a compositional analysis, which was undertaken by the first consultants.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel: Of household waste?

Mr. J. Richardson:

No. Of commercial bulky waste. I think I am going to go back again and explain so that the audience here understand what we are talking about. There are 2 main elements to our waste stream that we deal with at Bellozanne. The first is the parish waste. That is very clearly the waste that we all, as individual members of the public and society, put out each week in our bin. The parish authorities collect that waste. When it is delivered to Bellozanne, it is weighed and it goes into the incinerator bunker for disposal. The Minister has referred to the compositional analysis of that waste. That waste has been considered by a number of consultants, and the document I held up before, the Isle of Mann equally, has identified that the composition of that waste does not vary significantly between households and locations, as long as you take the society and you take a representative sample of society. We have always been confident with using that compositional analysis for domestic waste. The second form of waste that we deal with, which is different to the way the UK report their figures, is the bulky waste that is delivered to what we call the refuse handling plant and that again, for the audience present tonight, is the material that goes up to the top where previously you have all delivered your waste at weekends. That material consists of bulky waste such as carpets, tyres, mattresses, demolition timber,

large packing items, waste paint, et cetera, that you would not normally put out with your domestic waste. It is the industrial waste that the Island produces, the demolition of buildings and the incoming packaging waste. When we undertook the first analysis in 2000, that was done through a series of interviews of each driver, a visual inspection of the constituents of each load, and the tonnages that were delivered by each load, and that information was provided to Shadow Scrutiny Panel as a full document of sheets back in 2004, I think it was. We then undertook a second review by different consultants, independent of the first group, in 2006, which again did a similar exercise in analysing the waste that was coming in. It was then able to provide us with a recognition of the waste streams that were coming in - so, as I have already said tyres, mattress, carpets, bulky waste, et cetera - with an indicative quantity of each as they were being delivered, and the residual was then calculated - or, to put it in simple terms, what was left was then used to calculate the calorific value of that waste. So, we have a breakdown of that waste as it was coming in. We now have the opportunity of saying as we remove televisions or electronic equipment et cetera, we know the amount we remove, because clearly we have got to package that up and send it off to the UK for recycling. It is the difference between the 2, effectively, that we are using. So, to ask us if we have got today a compositional analysis of today's input, the answer is: "No". But to say: "What difference is being made by the removal of electrical electronic goods, cardboard, timber?" we can give you quite accurate figures on the amount we remove of each commodity each week.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

I have not asked my question yet, because I was interrupted when I was asking it. We are not going to get through the session and the range of questions we answer unless, with all due respect, John, I think you can keep your answers a bit shorter, because we have got an awful lot to get through. My curiosity here is that you have had a survey done in 2004 and 2006. It would seem to me sensible to do one in 2008, because what we need to show, surely, is not only that you have taken televisions out of the waste stream, but that the public have responded to all of the press about recycling and waste reduction. Surely it would be useful to know next year whether domestic waste, as you call it, has shown a decrease in certain things being put in the black bag. That is my first question. My second question is, you talk about the composition of Jersey's black bag waste, domestic waste, as not varying very much from similar parts

of the UK, which seems curious to me, given that we do have an enormous hospitality industry. I accept that tourism has downsized in recent years, but I am aware that most tourism premises, restaurants, hotels and so on in the urban area are collected and that rubbish is mixed in with what you call domestic waste. Elsewhere that might be called commercial. So, surely it is important to have this compositional analysis, so that we can work out what the split is between domestic and, for example, tourism- generated waste? So, the 2 questions.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, the second question I think just sums up why it is different between some areas in Jersey and some areas in the UK, is that glass is one item. So, glass has been separated here and not in the UK. So, we have got those figures. In terms of your question to do with the hotel industry, or the hospitality industry, yes, I am sure that is true. But equally if you take an area in the UK with a similar population and similar sort of societal makeup, there will be establishments in there, some of them much bigger than ours and the general view is the same. Certainly, if you then take it down from an incineration point of view, determining the calorific value, if you look at the range of our waste compared to that which we would expect in the UK, it is exactly the same, or certainly within an envelope which is very, very similar. So, we do not believe there is significant difference in it.

The Connétable of St. Helier : What about the survey next year?

Mr. J. Richardson:

The survey next year would be something for the Minister to decide. But certainly there are no plans to. We keep now a very close eye on the commodities we remove. They are in line with what is in the strategy, the tonnages are very similar to what we predicted in the strategy, and it is very easy to interpret the 2006 review to see what impact that would have on residual waste and the net calorific value range after that.

Connétable K.A. Le Brun of St. Mary :

Mr. Chairman, if I could come in here? I think lots of the people, I am sure the audience here and certainly out into the normal household, all we have heard so far this evening is the breakdown and the weight and the structure and such like for putting into incineration or so it seems. Why can you not have ways and means there, for surely now is the time to have even less consideration and do more recycling, and what to be able to do with the stuff once it is recycled? Because everybody out there wants to recycle, but it seems we are dragging our feet and we are still going on from the incineration part. I am sure this is what people want to know. They do not want to know what is going into the incinerator, and we have got the workforce over the experience of many  years, and such like, picking it up  and throwing it into the furnace. People do not want to know that. That is not what they want to know. We are too set in our ways, I feel, and we should be looking to recycling, looking for separating everything. This is what the people want to know. What are we going to do about that side of things?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Constable, that is exactly what we are doing. That is exactly why I have described to you tonight why we are doing it, and that we are removing the material so that we can calculate the tonnage that we are removing for recycling. It is not about incineration, it is about calculating the quantity that we remove for recycling. The quantities are significant. I have mentioned pallet boards, I have mentioned timber, I have mentioned paper, I have mentioned cardboard, green waste. They are all for recycling. So, we are doing exactly what you say.

The Connétable of St. Mary : Glass, plastics?

Mr. J. Richardson:

All for recycling, Constable.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes, but surely you have gone back on what was being said, in order to make those calculations, and for those calculations to have any validity, you should really be operating by taking proper measurements by weighing the materials that are coming out, and not doing it by sight. The comment that the Minister makes in his rebuttal of our report suggests, on page 2 I think it is, that only 60 per cent of Jersey's waste is similar to the UK household and commercial waste. Now, we have just heard comments that perhaps all of it is comparable, but I would like to know in this particular context, what the other 40 per cent represents.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Could you just refer me to the page, Deputy ?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

It is page 2, I think it is. Page 2.8, bullet point 5.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, while we are looking for that information, can I reiterate what I always said about recycling? From the day I walked into the Transport and Technical Services Department I said to my Chief Officer, in regards to waste disposal, recycling is my number one priority. It is something that we have to do because reaching a target of 32 per cent is already worked into our figures for the future capacity for an energy from waste plant. Recycling is a good idea. Reuse is, in fact, even better. We encourage both those. We support educational programmes in the schools. The department's stand won the prize for the best stand at this year's Fort Regent open day exhibition, and I do not think the department can be accused of backtracking in this respect. However, it is absolutely vital to point out that "where there is muck there is brass" is a well-coined phrase that does not necessarily apply to all elements of the recycling stream. If I want to send a tonne of fridges, for example, or waste electrical components, to a destination, not necessarily in the UK, to be properly reprocessed and recycled, it costs hundreds of pounds per tonne. There comes a time when one has to balance the costs of recycling, the budgets that I have available, and a practical and appropriate way to deal with waste in a small island. That is the difficulty that we face. There are 2 essential points of view. Do we proceed on a wing and a prayer, hoping we can recycle our way out of committing ourselves to what is perceived as an expensive waste disposal plant, and that we think that we can do that? As I say, I think that is the wing and a prayer approach. I believe in a belt and braces approach. I do not want to have this Island at the mercy of ferry freight operators, or indeed anyone who may be handling waste reprocessing facilities, because if, at any stage, Jersey is not able to deal with its own waste in a satisfactory way this Island's economy is potentially at the mercy of other people who would take advantage of it. It is a fine balance, but I think those of us in the room who want to understand the 2 different points of view, in my opinion one is a belt and braces approach and the other is a wing and a prayer.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Chairman, before we go on to recycling, we were going to talk about the trends in waste arising. That is to say, in particular, the volume of waste. I would like to ask the Minister if we can go on to that, Chairman, whether he believes the volume of waste in Jersey is going to increase, whether it can be pegged at the level that it is at the moment? I would remind him of 2 comments. Well, of one comment made on 3rd July in the States when he said, and I quote: "It is yet more spin designed to indicate that we should pack up any ideas of having an efficient incinerator, that somehow we are going to reduce the amount of waste disposal that occurs on this Island, even though the amount of waste in Jersey went up by 6 per cent last year, and looks as though it is going to be increasing due to consumer demand." I would also, before handing over to the Minister, ask him if he is aware of the comments of the Jersey Environment Forum in October 2004 where the third of their summary bullet points is that the committee of the day, Environment and Public Services, should vigorously pursue the waste hierarchy and take every opportunity to reduce the volume of waste that enters the waste stream and that reaches the final disposal stage? They go on to say on the second page: "It would be irresponsible not to act to counter the growth in waste arising, particularly given the growth in population projected in the Strategic Plan." So, to recap my question, what does the Minister think is going to happen to the volume of waste being produced in Jersey?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, in brief, I think it will increase. But my Chief Officer has dug into the information you asked about previously, so I think I will let him explain what he found.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, I think it is important that we take the comments in the context of the full comment, rather than just part of it. What the bullet point said on page 4, and I will read it: "Only 60 per cent of Jersey waste is similar to UK household waste and commercial waste. The remaining waste, which has been subject to specific waste analysis in Jersey, is the result of other commercial, industrial economic activity, and is not expected to fall in Jersey." Absolutely critical. What we have said is, 60 per cent is similar to UK, which goes back on the black bag argument yet again tonight. The remaining 40 per cent is the bulky commercial waste which we have done the analysis on.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Can I ask some questions, please?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Perhaps I could just now expand a little. Why do I think the volume of waste is going to increase? First of all, we have immediate evidence from last year's figures, where our estimates were wrong. We have estimated that waste in the Island in terms of tonnages we thought would go up by roughly 2.6 per cent per year. 2006 they went up by 6 per cent. Well, that is twice our estimate. If that is a trend, that is a very serious development. If it is a blip, and it may turn out to be so, that still does not mean that we are out of the woods. I see no clear indications that the level of population in the Island is likely to stay steady, and certainly see no indications that it will decrease. I see no indications that level of consumer demand is likely to drop off. There may indeed be a blip with the introduction of GST at 3 per cent, but I think that an affluent society will continue its general consumption level. I see no slowdown in construction of new developments. This is a flourishing economy, and flourishing economies produce increasing amounts of waste product.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Can I ask some questions, please?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes. Before you do that, for the waste arisings to grow by 6 per cent, bearing in mind that over the previous 2, 3 years they had gone down or stayed roughly level, the point that the Scrutiny Panel was trying to get to is to understand what constituted that 6 per cent rise. If it is a blip, was it a miscalculation on behalf of departmental officers assessing things by size but not weighing them, or was it a legitimate increase in a significant component of the waste stream? In which case, you know, if paper grew by the major part of that figure, or if waste metals grew, no specific extra information has been given in terms of that 6 per cent overall increase as far as we can see? There may by a large element of it which is glass, and glass is non-combustible, and in the overall view of things that would not pose as great a problem as the production of maybe more combustible materials, or indeed more putrescible materials. The department has not substantiated where that 6 per cent increase has come from at this stage.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, I can do that quite easily now for you. The bulk of the increase has come from the bulky waste which is predominantly from the construction industry. That is where the bulk has come from. There was a slight error which I think we highlighted to you some months ago in our green waste figures. The green waste went up from 11,900 to 12,900 tonnes. That was the main increase. Certainly, the majority of the increase was in the bulky waste deliveries, which indicates it is mostly from the construction industry.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

It is Deputy Le Claire talking, for the purposes of the transcription. Can I ask a number of quite relatively succinct questions? The figures calculated by the department show that there has been a doubling in relation to the waste arising, as has been quite clearly stated by yourself, Mr. Richardson, predominantly from the construction industry. Given that it has been evidenced this year that immigration has grown to the 900 number rather than the state-set 500 number, would that not indicate that there is clear evidence that immigration is having an effect?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, first of all, can I just ask you to clarify where I said "doubling" the waste arising?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Well, I think the Minister said that your department had expected a 2.6 or roughly 3 per cent growth, and in fact we have a 6 per cent growth, which is roughly double.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

That is double the rate, not double the amount. Yes. Doubling the waste arisings would be a very significant figure.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

No. I am not suggesting that we have doubled the waste arisings. I am not suggesting either that we have doubled the population. What I am suggesting is that there is a direct correlation between the fact that we projected 3 per cent on a 500 net immigration figure, and given that we have got a 900 plus immigration figure, we have evidence that the construction predominantly which would be affected by immigration, has given us a doubling of that number. But rather than going backwards and forwards with semantics, I would rather ask, if I could, some of the more fundamental questions that need to be asked. That is in relation to solving what you identify, Minister, as your number one priority: the necessity to recycle as much as possible. Getting back to the compositional analysis which the panel has spoken about and you have spoken about, it has been made clear by the panel this evening that there are 2 elements: the bulky waste and the parish or black bag waste. Can I ask some questions about them, in terms of the analysis and the figures that were presented to the parish, it has been clearly stated that the analysis was conducted by measuring what was delivered in the bulky waste stream, and those surveys were done by 2 separate firms - this is the first question - one in 2000, and the other in 2006? Right, because the Connétable said 2004. So, the first was conducted in 2000, and the second was conducted in 2006, by different companies. Two different firms conducted the analysis on the bulky waste, which, if I am correct, unlike the United Kingdom, is an attributable percentage of our overall recycling rate, am I correct?

Mr. J. Richardson:

It is a significant quantity of our total waste arisings.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Is it a percentage of our recycling target?

Mr. J. Richardson:

The total of our black bag and bulky is then used as a total waste arisings and from that we subtract the recycled element which then gives us our recycled percentage.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

So, in the recycled rate that we are achieving, we are including the bulky waste combined with the black bag waste in assessing an overall arising figure we have determined what we recycle - unlike the UK which leaves out the bulky waste. Can I ask where, in specific terms, have you made this identical comparison to a similar society, to analyse the black bag content? Because if it was done in the United Kingdom, I am scratching my head as to where you could find a society that has as limited options as we have, in terms of their black bag option. If we have made a determination that we are just going to take the black bag as granted, produced from the UK, which towns, which areas, did we make that comparison, and in what years and who made the comparison?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Right. I have not got the precise information here tonight, but if you back through your own Scrutiny records, you will see that when we gave evidence some time ago, there is reference to a document issued by the UK National Audit Office, and that document contained the sites that we used.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Okay. I was not a member of the panel then, but it does seem to me that the whole argument is based upon the fact that we have taken the black bag as a given, and that the Jersey black bag is identical to the United Kingdom bag, without any scientific or independent consultative analysis. I have not heard anything yet to tell me that the black bag has been analysed prior to the point that the crane drivers decide how much of it to mix with the bulky waste.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, I am not sure that this is a particularly useful avenue of exploration. It does seem to me that any reasonable person looking, for example, at the type of shops that we have available in this Island, an enormous number of them have their equivalent in the United Kingdom. In fact, they bear the same names as UK chains. Therefore, the reality of the sort of things that are bought and end up in the domestic black bin are coming from supermarkets, retail outlets that are replicated right across the United Kingdom. We could sit here and discuss perhaps the size of the townships. Is it Croydon? Is it Milton Keynes? The general basic answer is, we have just about the same sort of domestic rubbish as they do in the United Kingdom. I see no value in spending expensive departmental time on analysing what exactly is in the Jersey black bag.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Well, I would suggest to you, Minister, that the departmental money which is provided by the States' budgets needs to be spent in analysing the black bag content, not the High Street content or what goes into the consumers' bag, because it is absolutely relevant to the UK analysis and UK figures when many black bags that contain recyclable materials are not picked up for collection, but are left on the doorstep, and in some cases are placed away from the doorstep, returned, and fines are levied. If we do not understand what the black bag contains, we will spend a greater deal of the taxpayers' money, excessive amounts, in perhaps putting into

Jersey the wrong technology. An incinerator to deal with the wrong analysis will cost considerably more than any of your officers' time in determining what the actual contents of the Jersey black bag is.

Mr. J. Richardson:

I think we need to answer that question, because I think it is very inaccurate what has just been said. The black bag waste is the normal waste stream from each household, and as members of society we all know -- it is very clear what we all throw away each week. There are many recycling opportunities that exist now in Jersey as well as in the UK. It is very clear and fairly easy to analyse through the individual recycling components, paper, cardboard, et cetera, the tonnage which we are extracting which would normally - or prior to the recycling initiative - have been in the domestic waste stream. It is very easy to analyse that figure. The residual amount which is still going into the parish wagon each week outside our house, is then taken straight to the incinerator where it is weighed, so we know the weight coming in, and that is incinerated.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Can I ask, no component analysis is done other than the weight of that black bag? Being that it is a black bag, it is very difficult to look inside and see what is in it. But there are predominantly some things in St. Helier that householders are not including in recycling systems that will be entering the black bag system. St. Helier stopped its glass recycling scheme over a year ago. A number of black bags end up in the rubbish and waste stream, which need analysis - not an analysis in 2006, not an analysis in 2000, in the wrong sector of the analysis - but an analysis in this sector. You have 2 sectors that you pick up in. The question would be, then, why did you determine that it was worthwhile for 2 separate UK consultants over the course of the last 10 years to analyse the bulky waste, when there was no actual comparison other than drawing from UK statistics, and overall compositions - this is a succinct question - why has there not been a compositional analysis in reality on the black bag itself?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, if I had been able to finish the answer to the first question, I would have been able to tell you. I am now going to tell you. The waste coming in from the back of the parish refuse truck, which is the black bag waste, we have the annual tonnage going back many, many years. As we extract the recyclable product which does not form part of the bulky waste, we can see the reduction in the tonnage being delivered. What we then do is we analyse the residual calorific value - that is the heat energy left in that waste. So, we analyse it in order, admittedly, for incineration purposes, but in doing that analysis it gives us an indicator of what is in that bag from a composition point of view. If you go back to the figures that we have used many times that you have had from the national officers, one set. That compositional analysis does not change significantly from household to household as long as you analyse it in a similar location. As the Minister has said, given the constituents that we all throw away because we are buying it in a High Street supermarket and High Street shop, the amount of comparison is very, very similar. As the Minister said, we have on many occasions considered it, but not considered it necessary to do that analysis. The calorific value remains the same as in UK where --

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Chairman, can I just come in quickly with 2 points. One just to correct my colleagues. St. Helier did not stop its recycling of glass a year ago, it changed from a doorstep collection of glass to a communal bring system, which I understand from dialogue between my officers and the Minister's officers, it has not led to an enormous amount of glass in domestic waste. The other point I would like to correct you on, John, is you keep talking about black bag and domestic waste as if it is just household waste but in St. Helier it does include a great deal of commercial waste, particularly from hotels, guesthouses, restaurants and so on. So it is not really strictly comparable with domestic waste in the UK. Having said that I would like to just go back quickly to the issue about the volume of waste. The Minister does seem to be resigned to waste increasing and he has given us reasons why he thinks that is going to happen. But is the department concerned that the amount or volume of waste in Jersey may be affected by English and European legislation and government initiatives on waste reduction. In other words, as an Island we will be forced to take this matter perhaps as seriously as we should be taking it, that we simply cannot hold up our hands and say we cannot stop the volume of waste going up.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

I am quite certain that a number of initiatives in the UK (United Kingdom) and Europe will have an impact on the Island. Indeed I hope they do. Certainly we will see impacts from the European land fill directive. There will be also impacts on new rules about the recycling of cars and I very much hope we will see the impact of tighter regulations on packaging, which currently accounts for a very significant amount of paper, plastic and cardboard. Nevertheless, those will firstly take time to cut in and, secondly, as I have indicated, the number of households in the Island, the size of the population and the inevitable waste that both those are creating have shown consistent growth over time and unless we see our population expectations revised downwards, when currently they are being revised upwards, I do not see that there is a likelihood that the total amount of waste that this Island will be obliged to deal with is going to reduce.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Not even a change in public behaviour?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

I think that a change in public behaviour will have impact but we need to understand what impacts can play through the entire system. After all domestic waste is, of itself, only a percentage of the total amount of waste that one has to deal with. While I applaud and I am very encouraged by the public approach to recycling, I think that it would be misleading the public to imply that somehow, just by recycling, we are going to be able to explore that of itself as an initiative. It needs to be clearly understood that when you begin the recycling processes there is, very early, initial enthusiasm, initial demand, and you can get a lot of things done quickly and efficiently in the early phase. But the more you do, the more difficult it becomes to organise and the more expensive it gets. Now, I would dearly like to recycle all sorts of things but as I have indicated once we start moving into trickier items, waste electricals, fridges, we start to talk in terms of having to spend in the order of hundreds of pounds per tonne in order to deal with that type of recycling. It just becomes prohibitive. I have pushed recycling to the limits of my budgets, I have no more money to push it out any further. I would dearly like to expand what we are doing but I do not have the cash, and it is expensive.

Mr. J. Richardson:

But I think also in recognition of the English and European legislation and government initiatives, there are many UK and European government initiatives which put a lot of money into obligations to encourage, and there are a number of landfill avoidance taxes, renewal obligations, package and recovery notes, waste electronics, which all have funding in them to encourage these reductions from waste, landfill tax being another one. Without those in Jersey some of those UK/European legislations perhaps are not quite as appropriate, as the Minister said, from a government funding point of view in Jersey because we are putting money into recycling already. We would like to put a lot more into it but it becomes very expensive when we are recycling some of the more difficult elements.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

If I can pursue that. As an example, it is probably worth pointing out that in France, for example, some types of commodity, cans, plastic bottles, have special signs on them that indicate that they have been subject to a packaging tax. Now, that is unquestionably a useful way of raising funds for recycling and galvanises, to some extent, the French public. But I am not sure how ready the population of Jersey are to pay more in terms of tax - whether it is a packaging tax or any other tax - to pursue these types of initiative.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Will it be put forward as an alternative to an incineration route?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye: No.

Connétable K.A. Le Brun of St. Mary :

Mr. Chairman, could I just ask one question of the --

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

No, because it is not an alternative.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

John,  you did say that  after the black bag tonnage, and  you have taken out the different things on it "the energy left in the bag". Could you explain a bit more about that? Do you mean that therefore from the incineration it is then -- the money is accumulated from the JEC (Jersey Electric Company), that money goes into it and you get a certain of it back? Could you more or less tell us to what equivalent worth electricity wise that you recuperate? Because you did say "energy left in the bag", once all the recyclables had gone out.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, the Chief Officer can give specific detail but clearly we should be more specific and not talk about an incinerator. An incinerator simply burns things. What Jersey has developed at Bellozanne was relatively trailblazing at the time, it was an energy from waste plant, which is effectively a furnace or incinerator, it creates heat which is then harnessed by a boiler to produce high pressure steam which then runs an electrical generator. The proposals are to continue in that vein except, thanks to the advancement of technology, we anticipate running a much more efficient generator off high pressure steam than the one we have at the moment. The current system does net us significant funds from the JEC in terms of the power production that is made as it will be running -- the plans are to run a much more substantial generator, clearly we would also be generating much more funding from that particular area and I expect the Chief Officer can tell you broadly speaking how much that is worth.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Sorry, he cannot tonight because he did not bring his budget. But I think from memory we generate about £750,000 --

The Connétable of St. Mary : Sorry?

Mr. J. Richardson:

I think from memory we sell about £750,000 worth of electricity a year to the equity company, but I would need to confirm that because I have not brought my budget book with me, I am afraid.

The Connétable of St. Mary : £750,000?

Mr. J. Richardson:

I will confirm that to you tomorrow. I will just look and see if I have it here. No, I will confirm it to you tomorrow but I think from the budget --

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Therefore, if there was less incineration there would be less income coming through?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Not necessarily because we get into a very complicated argument about heat values and comparative values which I do not think we should go into tonight because it becomes too complicated. But at the moment that is the order that we generate. If we had a bigger generator at Bellozanne we would generate more income because we waste a lot of the heat.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

How much did the department spend on recycling this year? It is number one priority, you have got £750,000 in electricity from burning black bags and everything else. How much money did the department spend on recycling?

Mr. J. Richardson:

This year I think it is about £200,000 probably.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire: £200,000?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Just for the record let us be absolutely clear, let us please not confuse £750,000 income of electricity sales to £200,000 a year expenditure on recycling. They are totally different.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire: No, just --

Mr. J. Richardson:

Please can I finish? For clarity, they are completely different budgets and if you look in the budget book it is very clear where those expenditures are. Please do not confuse £750,000 income by burning to £200,000 on recycling. That is a very false --

The Connétable of St. Helier :

It certainly does not sound very good, does it? Could I just pursue this because I would be interested to know how much we spend on waste disposal incineration at present, and we compare that to the budget that we are putting into recycling. I assume it is very much David and Goliath at the moment?

Mr. J. Richardson:

We have had those figures, I will give them to you now so that everyone is aware of them. If you bear with me a second while I turn them up.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Perhaps could I just put a question to the Minister while John is looking? The Minister said a few moments ago that one of his early priorities, his top priority, was more recycling but can I quote from a speech made in the States on 3rd July, Minister, when you said, and I quote: "A number of key individuals insist on pursuing this nirvana of higher recycling targets, alternative technologies, which is simply not going to happen." It does seem to me important that we can square this. You seem to be very committed to recycling but at the same time you seem despondent about whether Jersey can achieve a recycling limit that is higher than the one adopted in the strategy of 32 per cent. Have you been persuaded by the public's growing interest in recycling and your department's successes in working in schools and with the community, that Jersey can and should be setting its target higher than 32 per cent.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

I am very optimistic about recycling and very encouraged about its potential. I am enthused that the public is showing this willingness to take it on board. Where I am despondent is that I think the public are being misled, very seriously, about what the full implications of recycling are. They are being sold, I believe, a falsehood that somehow reuse and recollecting is going to save us from having an efficient energy from waste plant. Simply, in my view, it is not the case. Therein lies my disappointment. I think the individuals are well known. I think that we have already heard of concepts of 100 per cent recycling. That I will grant was probably an interesting spin to curry public relations interest. But I think it is misleading and confusing. Frankly, in some cases, bordering on the irresponsible to suggest that simply by reusing and recycling everything to the tune of 100 per cent that we can avoid our commitments to properly disposing of waste in the most practical and efficient manner in the public interests of the Island.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Right, can I just give you the figures. First of all just to correct the recycling figure, out total expenditure this year is about £450,000. The figure I mentioned was additional funding we had found within our budget to increase the recycling rate. Now, I would also draw your attention to an extremely important point in the waste strategy which I think has been overlooked on many occasions and it is under the financial appraisal, this was the strategy debated by the States and agreed by the States in 2005. What it said was: "Additional revenue expenditure will also be required" this is under recycling. "The total annual cost of recycling initiatives is estimated at £687,000, with additional collection costs of £150,000. Some of this can be met from existing revenue budgets but an additional revenue expenditure of £450,000 will be required by 2009 to achieve the proposed recycling targets. This additional revenue expenditure will be the subject of a bid in the fundamental spending review process concluded in 2007. In the interim the initiatives will be rolled out subject to the availability of funds." An important point there is the bid for additional funds which was not successful. We did not get that additional funding. We have not got that additional funding in our budget. What we have done is cut services in other areas of Transport and Technical Services to put more money into recycling, which is the figure I mentioned earlier, which we will continue to do where we can but until more funds are available for recycling we are now severely restricted in how we can roll it from here. In answer to the Constable's question concerning the cost of incineration, the total running costs for the incinerator was a net review cost of £1.797 million in 2006, with £350,000 additional expenditure in minor capital for boiler replacement. In 2007 the cost would be similar, about £1.83 million revenue as forecast for 2008 but the cost of additional tubes will be £540,000. So effectively the cost of running the incinerator now is going up rapidly because it ages and it is breaking down more regularly. It is only available about 60 per cent of the time and the requirement for recycling has clearly been laid out in the waste strategy. It is subject to additional funds.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

Can I ask some questions of the Minister, please, in regards to the failure to secure the additional funding. What happened there? Why is the Council of Ministers not supportive of additional funds for recycling? Surely it would have been something you argued for strongly and it is something that the States of Jersey has signed up to.

What happened there and if we are unable to get the money will there be new charges introduced in the future to meet these targets? Where would you expect those new charges to come from?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

The hope was that the money might come from an environment taxation. The latest proposition that came forward to draw a variant of environmental taxation which was an exhaust emission tax to replace VRT (Vehicle Registration Tax) has been withdrawn. Now, in respect of not having the funds, as I am sure the Deputy well knows, there are enormous constraints currently placed upon the entire States' budget. Every single department is asking for more money and there are proposals that we will be debating in the States this week to reduce the available funds. Now, in the light of that, it would have been sheer folly for the Council of Ministers to agree to award to my department nearly £500,000 of extra funding when the States had already -- and you will be familiar with what the States previously had given its backing to, which were third party appeals to planning applications, winter fuel allowance, I could go on. It is not my fault, it is not the department's fault and it is not really the Council of Ministers' fault that we end up with a position that is agreed by other states. The upshot of that was this funding did not happen.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

So where will the funding come from to meet this -- we are all aware of the fact that Jersey is under pressure. You stated earlier in the meeting that the public are not going to be happy with new taxes to met recycling levels and yet we are hearing that the Council of Ministers is not going to provide the funds. So how will those monies be met? Or will the targets be abandoned? Where will the new monies come from to meet this if we have dropped those taxes? What is the thinking of the council, you must know?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, Deputy , you may have a better idea than me about how the Back-Benchers are thinking on overseas aid,  I  am sure it will continue to have millions of pounds invested. Do we go down supporting free nursery education and all the other various issues that are before us? I see no immediate prospect of being able to secure those additional monies for recycling as I see no immediate prospect for getting more money for road workings and half a dozen other things that my department would like to get on with but is being constrained by funding. I am still in the process of cutting budgets, parks and gardens are being affected and people are beginning to see the impacts for themselves. It is -- I have argued now for probably at least 4 years that it is time we had a serious review of priorities and I regarded what my department does in terms of infrastructure should be more highly prioritised than it is. But as long as, I am afraid, States' Members and enthusiastic members of the public think it is important that third parties can appeal against planning application at a cost of about a third of a million a year, well that is the way we will go.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

So you are putting it down to the third party planning?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

No, not singly but that is one example.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

One example. So in the future do you envisage with the never-ending appeals from the public for support in various areas - including an ongoing commitment to overseas aid, which we have a moral obligation to continue with, I would put to you - where do we think we are going to be able to get the money from to meet these -- will a gate fee be introduced, for example, at a new facility or will those charges - as they are looking to do in the United Kingdom - be done on an introduction of a levy according to what the individual household produces, and escalation fee? How do we plan to do that? Are we going to do it by -- I do not see where the money is coming from for this. You are telling me and I am hearing there is no money, there is no taxes but yet you want the incinerator and we want the recycling rate. So who is going to pay for the recycling rate? The incinerator is going to cost a lot of money.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, let me make it quite clear, the money that will be required for an energy from waste plant has already been planned into future estimates. The reason this Island desperately needs a new energy from waste plant of a significant proportion is the one that is currently operating is gradually becoming obsolete and inoperative and is costing an increasing amount of money every year to run. The second feature is that a significant expenditure on a state of the art energy from waste plant with a life span of something like 25 to 30 years will be a sensible investment for this Island to be able to dispose of its waste arisings at a reasonable price and that price needs to be balanced against the increasingly high costs of recycling.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

So the capital has been identified but the operational costs of running an incinerating Island and a 32 per cent recycling Island has not been identified within the foreseeable future? We have identified the capital costs, how far into the future of those 25 years of operating this machine, have we identified the operational costs? If we have not how do we anticipate we are going to pay for that?

Mr. J. Richardson:

The operating costs for the new plant are envisaged to be very similar to the operating costs of the existing plant given the inefficiency of the existing plant. The main issue is the additional funding required to fund the additional recycling we want, which, as I have read out from the waste strategy, was identified in 2005 and subject to an additional funding stream. That was identified hopefully through the environment taxes but clearly that is something not for me to comment on. It is a political decision as to whether we have them or not and if we do then clearly we would want to make a bid for that £450,000 in order to achieve the targets we set in the strategy and beyond if we can.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

I was not going to talk about incinerators because I do not really like the things but it does strike me that these high maintenance costs that are being spoken about all the time in respect of our current piece of kit which, presumably, a generation ago was billed as a state of the art piece of equipment, what is to say that the same problems are not going to beset the new - state of the art was the phrase that was just used then - state of the art piece of kit and that in a number of years -- hopefully one would hope not in a guaranteed period, but as we all know when we buy a new fridge or a new car, when are the bills going to start rolling in and really hike up the cost of this new plant?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

One of the reasons when we look effectively at the throughput, the plant capacity, is to bear in mind the ongoing increasing maintenance requirements so that we can shut down one stream while we attend to it and run another one and that has the impact on the capacity and we also know from experience that over time the capacity of the plant will progressively decrease. This is not rocket science at all. This is just the same as running a motor car, motor cars run fine but if you keep running them for 30 years bits start to fall off and the same happens with energy from waste plants.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Can I add to that because I think the Minister's identified a very good analogy. The existing incinerator at Bellozanne is a 1979 model, designed in the mid 1970s, if you turn your mind back to the cars we were driving in the mid 1970s and you think about driving that car 360 days a year up and down a motorway at full blast, it will be a very different type of motor car to the one you buy today and drive up and down a motorway 360 days a year. Effectively technology has moved on significantly, whether it is an incinerator or any other form of technology, current technologies are very different and very much more reliable and certain far more robust in terms of revenue cost estimates for operating them at this end.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Can I pursue the analogy a little further of the motor car. Granted you have dealt with my question about the maintenance costs but can I paint a scenario which might qualify for being what the Minister called in the States "nirvana" but I will paint it anyway. If we have a situation where the parishes perhaps, or private sector companies, are beginning to recognise the value in waste, they are beginning to come to the Island and say: "We will take it off you for nothing, maybe in some cases we will pay you for it" what is this car going to run on if the fuel, which is the waste, dries up in say 5 years' time? How are you going to run the incinerator if, for example - and it is only an example - St. Helier were to take all of its waste out of the waste stream, what would happen to the incinerator?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, I will leave the Chief Officer to answer the detail there but I do think that it is important to comment on the idea of recycled products having value. Yes, they do. There is no doubt that recycled aluminium can be melted down and reused and achieves a very high price per clean ingot. Similar applies to scrap metal. Less so as you start to move across the other products. In most cases it is not a question of are we being paid per tonne, it is how much are we being charged at the gate to have something properly reprocessed. Now, I am very concerned at the idea that somehow all sorts of recyclable items are going to have value that they do not seem to have now but will somehow miraculously appear in the future. The sheer reality of market forces and economics is that the more people start recycling things the more of those things will be available and that will have a tendency to drive the value of those items down. So  I  think  it  would  be  extremely  dangerous  to  fund,  or  rather  found,  a philosophy of waste disposal on this Island on the idea that somehow reused and recyclable items are going to accrue in value. I do not think there is any current evidence to show that. Indeed the evidence of the metals market is that it goes up and down wildly. I may be wrong but I think we have to found a lot of our decision making on things we can be certain about as opposed to speculation. But the Chief Officer will come back on the details.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Certainly when we reviewed technology, only 2 years ago, we produced a report which was a public document, available on our website, which is where we reviewed 60 different technologies. It was not just incineration, we reviewed a whole range of them and if you or any member of the public wants to look at them they are a freely available document. None of those technologies provided a waste stream which generated a value which would effectively sell your waste to generate value. I am aware that there are claims that there are new technologies emerging or being put forward for trial, certainly there is no evidence being provided that that will deal with waste, whether it is an island situation or in the UK or Europe and generate value. I think to speculate on an island where we do not have an alternative if that goes wrong or does not work or produces problems, for the Island not to have a robust method of disposing of its residual waste after recycling would be a highly dangerous route to take, certainly not one that the department, previous committee or at the moment the Minister has advocated.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Could I just say specifically to the Constable of St. Helier, if he has a scheme to export all St. Helier 's waste somewhere else, I would be absolutely delighted. I do not believe it would have a significant impact. The reality is if we were in a position to reduce the capacity loading on an energy from waste plant, it simply means we do not have to work the plant as hard as we would have worked it otherwise. In other words you will simply have an extended life.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

But does it not mean that you could get by with a smaller plant if you reduced the volume of waste that you needed to treat?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

If we could rely on St. Helier doing that, guaranteed, and prepared to underwrite any extra costs that we would encounter, I suppose one would have to say it would be only reasonable to consider that but I think it is highly speculative.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Could I ask then, through the Chair, in a nutshell are you saying to the people: "Yes, keep sorting it out, keep recycling, but on the other hand I do not see the point of it really because it is still going to cost the same for a nice big incinerator, whether it is big or even smaller, but it is still going to cost the same amount for you in the end." Do you not think, therefore, that, coming from the people and through the Council of Ministers and the Government, there should really be a serious thought to get the balance between what is good for the environment and the actual cost? Do you not think that there can be a balance where if one has a cheaper brand incinerator and doing the recycling, would you not think that the people would be more in favour of that, so at least there is good for the environment coming out of it and not necessarily cheaper in the long run but there would be the balance that would still be a similar amount of cost? Because otherwise it gives -- if you are not careful you are going to give the people out there the thought that why should we therefore bother to recycle if you are going to suggest we still need a big one, we still need the amount of money and we are still going to have to burn half of it?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

If anybody thinks that I, someone who relies on votes, enjoys telling people they are going to have to spend 10s of millions of pounds, let me make it quite clear, I do not relish being in that position. However, I do think it is my responsibility to act in the public interest. Now, having said that I broadly agree with the position that you are putting forward. I do welcome recycling. Recycling is a good thing and there is a proper balance that can be struck in the amount of reuse and recycling that we do in this Island and how we deal with the waste that does not necessarily conform to reuse and recycling. I think it would be sheer folly for myself or anyone else in this position as Minister, particularly in light of the solid waste strategy that was approved now some time ago by the States, not to offer to the Island a robust and utterly reliable means of disposing of the Island's waste. Now, recycling is a vital component of the plan capacity from the energy from waste plant. If I fail to hit the target set out of 32 per cent recycling and reuse in Jersey it will mean that the current plans for the capacity of the plant will be too small. We will not be recycling enough. The 32 per cent has already been plumbed into the figures. So, clearly, I am going to sit here and encourage recycling because we have got to do it, and we have got to do more. At the moment we are bouncing around the 28 per cent mark. So that is 4 per cent to go. But let me remind both the panel and anyone listening, as I said earlier, recycling and reuse gets harder and more expensive the more you try to raise the percentage. So it is a balance. I am not going to sit here and say do not recycle, I want to encourage it. But I am not going to sit here and say that if you think -- it will be utterly misleading to give the impression to the public that they can somehow reuse and recycle their way out of spending an appropriate amount of money on a significant energy from waste plant with a large capacity.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Is the Minister happy that by maintaining the target of 32 per cent Jersey is now adopting a target that is below the UK commitment of 50 per cent? Are there other areas of public service in which the Jersey public is expected to accept a lower target than the UK?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Yes, there are. I think, for example, just look at vehicle testing, we do not have MOTs (Ministry of Transport) so that is probably an area you can say we are not as tough as the UK. But let us not forget our experience of our current operation. We started off with the trail blazing kit, before long we had to add a second stream and then way down the line we had to, as it turns out, unsuccessfully add a third stream that made everything extremely difficult to run because capacity increased. I think it would utterly irresponsible for me to leave this Island in the position where we simply repeated that mistake over again because we had got the capacity wrong at the beginning. Now, there is 2 approaches, as I said, you can make. You can either go belt and braces and go for a substantial capacity or can you wing and a prayer and start on something small. But, by heavens, if you then have to add something else because you got your calculations wrong, the costs suddenly escalate very, very dramatically. I simply think it would be irresponsible of someone to get that calculation wrong. The one way you do not get it wrong is by getting an over estimate as opposed to an under estimate. That is the facts of the matter. In terms of the percentages, yes, I would be delighted if we worked up towards the UK level but let us not forget that the UK level of 50 per cent is including, as I understand it, food waste. Now, if we decided, and it is not ruled out in the solid waste strategy, to start composting food waste, that would significantly alter our figures, as I am sure the panel are well familiar with. It is simply not that easy to distribute the end product of all the various sorts of composting that we do around a small island. We have to accept we are different from everywhere else. We do not have vast landfill sites as they do in France and England, we have different sets of rules and regulations and we have limited areas where we can dispose of end product. I simply cannot just chuck stuff in the sea.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Can I add to that with one very important point which is the Minister has touched on food waste in terms of we could easily increase our 32 per cent by 12, 14, maybe 15 per cent if we put food waste in. Our problem is disposal of that composting material to land, the current food and mouth crisis in the UK, which we all hope does not affect Jersey, is absolute paramount in the reason why we are not doing it and not

recommending it. In addition to that we are also faced, and this comes back to the argument about the capacity of the plant, with the problem of disposing of our sewage sludge. We have relied in Jersey for many years on the disposal of sewage sludge to agricultural land. That route is drying up on us, rapidly. We are now faced with the position where we anticipate in the next few years that the whole residual or the whole amount of sewage sludge will end up going to incineration. We cannot dispose of it on land anymore. That can add another 10,000 tonnes to the requirement for an energy from waste plant. Our land bank is very, very difficult and the way in which the land bank is now managed is very different to how it was 20 years ago. So the probability is green waste will be okay as long as it is good quality clean green waste. Composted food will not be accepted and, equally, we now find that sewage sludge is not acceptable. So that will have to go to the incineration stream.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Well, I think, bearing in mind the time, we did say this was going to be a split meeting and the members of the public who have turned up to patiently listen are wanting to have their turn so I think I would ask that we finish this at this point. Quite clearly there will have to be another meeting but I am sure the Minister will be happy to attend on another occasion. So at this point I would like to thank everybody for the first part of the meeting and the second part, the public part, will be chaired by the Constable and it is open to questions from the floor to either members of the Scrutiny Panel or indeed the Minister and perhaps his officers on any issues to do with recycling and waste management. If I could ask you to identify yourselves because we will still be running the transcription.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I hope those of you who arrived late got the message that we were not ignoring you, this was a scrutiny hearing which is being taped and it seems to me, as the most recent member on the panel, to have gone really well. Apologies if you could not hear it at the back. We are now moving into an open public meeting which, as it is in the Town Hall , I have offered to chair in the normal way. We do have a roving microphone, I hope, somewhere so when I ask you to speak please could you give your name because the media are present and they like to know who asked the questions and then members of the panel and the Minister and his Chief Officer will do their best to answer succinctly because we all want to be away by 9.00 p.m., if not before. So can I have the first question, please? Yes, the lady there in glasses.

Ms. A. Muirhead:

Thank you, good evening everyone, my name is Ada Muirhead and I have just arrived in Jersey from Scotland. I am a resident of St. Helier . I am just wondering when the council or whatever organisation, municipality, in Jersey is going to be providing a recycling bin? I have come from Scotland and South Lanarkshire Council in Scotland recycles over 50 per cent of their waste and I am concerned about the environment. I do not like putting everything in the one bin when I used to put over half of my rubbish for recycling. I used to also live in Edinburgh and we were unable to recycle in the part of Edinburgh I was in because of world heritage site rules. So I am just wondering when I am going to get this recycling bin because I do not like having to throw out all my rubbish in one bin. If someone could answer my question that would be great.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

As the leader of the council, I suppose you would have to call me, I can certainly tell you something about that and you might like to take one of these booklets on your way out about the zero waste trial that the Parish of St. Helier has been conducting. I did not get a chance to come back to the Minister who did refer obliquely to it earlier on in the meeting. It is called a zero waste trial. That does not mean that the Parish claims to have found a way of recycling 100 per cent, in fact it says on the first page: "Zero waste has been adopted by some communities around the world to indicate that they wish to pursue the highest standards of waste minimisation and recycling." That is why we call this project - it has been going now for nearly a year in the Havre des Pas area, if you do not live in this area then you will not be part of that. It is the Parish's wish to extend recycling trials in other parts of the Parish and hopefully you will benefit from that. It is also fair to say that subject to the budget constraints that the Minister has referred to, the States or the Department of Transport and Technical Services are also doing their best to encourage, through a system of bring banks, the public to take their separated waste to certain locations. But it would be the Parish responsibility, that is who we call the council here, to provide you with a way of doing that. Or indeed any other way that we can come up with of pursuing a higher recycling target.

Mr. J. Richardson:

Can I just add to that that we represent the Government, my Minister represents the Government and I am a civil servant and the Constable is the council. From the Government side we run a system of bring banks and if you are not familiar with them we already run paper, aluminium, tin cans, which are located around St. Helier. Those commodities are available for recycling now. In the future we certainly want to have those bring banks to include plastic bottles and other materials around the Island. At the weekends we have a recycling centre open which you can take materials to and the aim certainly is that each Parish should have at least one, if not more, recycling centres in it as opposed to the individual domestic separation kerbside from the household.

Ms. A. Muirhead:

(7:37:31 several inaudible words)

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Yes, thank you for that. In fact I did answer that part of your question which is the doorstep or kerbside collections at the moment are only happening in a small part of St. Helier but certainly it is the Parish's desire to - subject to our being able to afford it - spread that across the Parish.

Ms. A. Muirhead:

(7:37:58 several inaudible words)

The Connétable of St. Helier :

If you would not mind giving me or leaving your name and email or phone number, I will certainly let you know what is happening in your neck of the woods. There is a question behind you, I think. Yes?

Lady Jane Marks:

This is directed to Constable Le Brun. I completely agree when you were saying we did not need all the figures and all that but why then, as the smallest Parish, do you not have kerbside collection in St. Mary ?

The Connétable of St. Mary :

At the present time we have been asking -- I have been asking the Transport and Technical Services, because we have got in the smallest Parish the bring bank which is for paper and tin cans and clothing and that, and aluminium, and we do have a monthly collection of glass. But I have been asking now for over a year to do on the same situation as St. John but I have been told frequently that there is no money so they cannot supply the bags and boxes and the such like to do it. That is the reasoning why I have not been doing it. But I have been looking to try and incorporate that at the same time as the St. John trial. But as you heard from the Minister there is no money to go towards that recycling side of things. So I am very interested in the prospect of St. Helier who is going to be looking towards that, our rubbish might go to St. Helier in the future.

Mr. J. Richardson:

If I can add to it. I am not sure that is quite the position. We work very closely with the Parish of St. John who do have a kerbside recycling operation in place. We are working with a number of other Parishes to establish it. Very happy to work with the Parish of St. Mary . So we are very happy to work, Constable, if your Parish is prepared to put the funding in to operate the kerbside collection service.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

I have been inquiring and I have been told that there has not been any facility yet. Ourselves and St. Lawrence , I think, have been inquiring and we have been told that there has not been anything in place yet, so that is news to me.

Mr. J. Richardson: Very happy to talk to you.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

You did hear what he said about funding, did you not? Yes, okay, Deputy Fox.

Deputy J.B. Fox of St. Helier :

Yes, the municipal authority in St. Helier at the moment is slowly removing the Eurobins. The reason being the abuse from everybody else piling them up with commercial and all sorts of rubbish. Clearly the problem for the residents of St. Helier is that that here has not been an alternative bring bank at a local scale to compensate for the increasing number of rubbish that has been left, not only where the bins were but in other places now. There is beds and doors and all sorts of things being left around St. Helier. Could the Constable indicate to me if we have a timescale for having the alternative set up for the removal of these things or what alternative action he is considering to be able to compensate for this? It is starting to get a bit messy, to say the least.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Thank you, Deputy . You say it is getting messy but it has got a lot better. When we had Eurobin sites on every corner -- one of the best ones was where the new Magistrates Court is currently situated, right there exposed. I remember taking pictures of a 3-piece suite that was left there by somebody and we used that in quite a lot of our literature. The Eurobin sites were originally introduced to help people living in bedsits who did not have refuse disposal facilities. The roads committee has certainly over the last decade been insisting when it comments on planning applications that all new housing developments have refuse storage facilities because clearly that is one important part of tackling this problem. You have to make sure that every householder in every business has an opportunity to store their refuse for at least a period of time between collections. So that has been happening and so there are far fewer people today than there used to be who do not have any refuse storage facilities. What certainly has got worse is that as the Eurobin sites have been decreasing those people who do abuse them, and they drive in from all over the Island because it is easier than going to Bellozanne, have been dumping more stuff in the remaining sites. So Snow Hill, if you pass it on Friday evening or over the weekend is really atrocious. The Director of Municipal Services is working with residents and traders to make sure that before any Eurobins are taken away that everybody is consulted. There is always an extensive consultation of local businesses and residents to make sure that the people do have refuse collection and refuse storage opportunities. He is also looking at a number of sites around the town where we can have managed recycling centres. This is what you will see in many French towns where people can bring their glass and their newspaper and so on, and indeed DTS - as they are now called - are running a couple of centres for us in St. Helier but we think we need to have more and so we are working on those. A timescale for those I am not sure of at the moment, I would expect to see a new one starting up in the next 6 months or so. But I am absolutely convinced that Eurobins have been a disaster for St. Helier , they have encouraged seagulls and rats, they have encouraged fly tipping and often when you go to a Eurobin and there are bags left around it, if you open the bin you will find the bin is empty. People are not looking in the bin, they are simply dumping their stuff by the side of the bin. So the final thing to say is that the Parish is also going to be looking at trying to get some prosecutions. We have tried in the past and my predecessor tried to prosecute. It is difficult but I have met with the magistrate and the magistrate is quite comfortable with the process that we are using and I think there will be prosecutions also within the same timescale of people who continue to flout it.

Deputy J.B. Fox:

Can I just ask 2 things then? Could I ask that the Parish have a telephone number that can be publicly known where, if there is a problem, that they can ring into which will help to remove a problem quicker than it has been doing? The other thing is can I suggest, it might be constructive, that if the press is here tonight and your subsequent publications in your Parish Assemblies if we could not encourage the public to tell us if they can identify suitable areas, some of which the Parish or the States may have to purchase, that would make ideal sites to replace those that are being lost in a more constructive way. So that the residents who do not have cars are able to dispose properly of their rubbish in the way that you just described.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Yes, thank you, Deputy . We do publish a telephone number. It is certainly available in the phone book and I am not aware of problems with that number. Certainly whenever I see rubbish I phone the number and pretty soon one of our staff sweeps by and collects the rubbish. So, if there are problems I need to know about them but we do publish a number.

Deputy J.B. Fox:

I do not think it is well known.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Well, we can always -- I think every organisation can improve its communication and I will certainly look to doing that. You talk about having a more constructive approach to Eurobins, well my view is that consulting all the nearby residents and traders about their refuse disposal needs before we remove a Eurobin is very constructive but one always wants to improve and certainly your idea of asking the public for their views on where we could put a recycling centre has merit and I am happy to do that. Now, another question, perhaps one for the Minister or Deputy Duhamel. Yes, we will go over to Craig there.

Mr. C. Hage(?):

Yes, one for the Minister. There is nothing like pricing like the user pays policy to change behaviour and you mentioned sewage earlier on, I think Jersey is one of the few places in the world where there is not charging for sewage. But generally the user pays pricing policies, does it have any role in Jersey, is any work going into where charging might play a constructive role?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

I think you will recall how popular the so-called toilet tax was when it was attempted to be introduced by a former president of the Environment and Public Services and the States simply would not wear it. I think it is an interesting concept in terms of applying a user pays principle to it but the -- it is also a delicate area. I think, therefore, you have to be careful about where you apply the levy or a charge or let us just call it by its familiar name, the tax, because if you get it wrong, gate fees are too high, for example, you run the risk of fly tipping as one element of this. Clearly you might end up with a worse position of the considerable expense of clearing up fly tipping and all the unpleasant potential environmental damage you might cause. If people are throwing hazardous substances around the Island you could cause damage that could last for 10s of years. So it is a question of balance. But my personal view on this is that one should really look at the difference between, as it were, the carrot and the stick. I would far rather find a system that takes money away at a front end position and effectively rewards people who are responsible with disposing of their waste. It seems to me that is right. If you want a very simplistic idea of how that used to work, many years ago when I was a schoolboy it was a very popular thing to collect glass bottles that had a deposit on them. Many young schoolboys made a considerable amount of pocket money going around collecting glass bottles and returning them to the shops that sold the original product. Now, that is a model that I think merits a level of consideration. You refer to sewage. I am currently very exercised over the plight of a significant and growing number of people in this Island who, because they have made extensions to their homes, become subject to new planning stipulations that insist that they may no longer have cesspits and soakaways but must go on to what are called "tight tanks" which my department and a private contractor empty. Clearly there is cost to this. It is going to be one of the issues that I will be looking at in a liquid waste strategy. But what is also clear is that a number of people are finding the costs very hard to bear. How we find equity in this position I have no answer to give you at this stage but it is something that I will be reviewing and studying and I hope may provide some sort of solution. Whether it is we go down the path, for example, as they do in many areas in the United Kingdom where the waterworks company operates the sewage process as well, there may be some potential solutions lying in that area. I do not know, I do not want to pre-empt any judgments that may be made in the future. You are right, user pays and certainly polluter pays I think is a correct concept, but I think we have to be very careful about how we apply it.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Thank you very much. Any other questions? The gentleman over there.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

Steve Reynolds. I would like to direct this to the Minister for TTS (Transport and Technology Services). Why do you not charge a commercial gate fee at Bellozanne?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Well, for 2 reasons I think, the Minister just outlined that there is no mechanism at the moment, certainly the States have not considered and approved any charging which is this carrot and stick approach, and that is not something which is -- the Minister just outlined as being considered. There is also the issue of a very old covenant that sits on the Bellozanne land. That is something that clearly has some restrictions on it, not necessarily all that people might think, but it is one that maybe if the States were to consider some form of charging in the future then we clearly we need to address it.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

It just seems to me that you have got a problem with commercial waste going up there, as you said before it is mixed in there and the bigger stuff is the problem, that is what has increased you misunderstanding of the figures, as it were. You charge for commercial waste down at La Collette but you do not charge there and anyone dumps up there and you can get away with dumping stuff up there.

Mr. J. Richardson:

There certainly is no misunderstanding of figures from our part. But in terms of the quantity of waste going up to Bellozanne, yes, you are absolutely right, it is the Island's main site. We do not have landfill so what we see at Bellozanne is the total amount coming into the Island and if in future there was to be some form of consideration for charging, clearly there would have to be very clear guidelines laid out for which commodities were charges, is it all waste or is it just bulky waste.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

So, within the studies that you have done, I assume you weigh commercial waste against public waste going up there, i.e. a waste lorry gets weighed and then a commercial van gets weighed, how do you determine between the 2, to say how much was in your review?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Every vehicle coming over the weighbridge at Bellozanne is weighed, if it is commercial waste it then goes up to the bulky waste area then it is coded appropriately. If it is parish waste going straight to the incinerator, again it is coded. We have a coding system and we have big chart which we produce which shows where the waste arisings come from and where they go.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

So you are saying no commercial waste goes in the incinerator?

Mr. J. Richardson:

If it does then it is coded and we log that waste.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

All right. You can read that, that is all set out?

Mr. J. Richardson: Absolutely.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

So from that I assume that you can work out a charge for it compared to down at La Collette?

Mr. J. Richardson:

If charges can be introduced it would be relatively simple from the analysis and data we have got to introduce a charging mechanism.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

So therefore you have got a forum to try and see how much waste commercially has gone up there, therefore you could put that into your funding, therefore not using the incinerator?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Can you repeat that, I did not quite understand what you said then?

Mr. S. Reynolds:

Well, if you have got a way of working out how much waste you have got going up there commercially, you have got a gate fee, you can determine what is going in because you said you analyse what goes in? Yes? Because at the moment you just mix, like you said, the black bag scenario, that is all part of the waste that goes up there. If you broke it down into commercial waste and residential waste and also took into account commercial waste that goes in the black bag, i.e. from hotels, which you do not separate because that goes into the St. Helier bins so you are burning commercial waste, so you cannot determine what the figure is anyway. If you had a gate fee on it, i.e. if you had hotels taking their waste in there separately, you could fund the waste problem because you said you are short of funds. Correct or not?

Mr. J. Richardson:

No, I think we are getting very confused about numbers and tonnages and locations. I think it would be very easy perhaps, Sir, if you would like after the meeting I am happy to go through the figures.

Mr. S. Reynolds:

Yes, please, if you could, that would be wonderful.

Mr. J. Richardson:

I think if we do it here, in this forum it would be very difficult.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Yes and thank you, John for mentioning that there is an old, but I would say, still very robust covenant in place on Bellozanne. Bob Le Brocq wanted to ask a question.

Mr. R. Le Brocq:

Thank you very much. Looking very, very quickly through your small pamphlet that you produced on the waste down at Hobday Park, it says quite clearly on page 20 that many countries have enthusiastically embraced the concept of recycling and it appears sensible to preserve the earth's limited resources. I think we all want to do that, that is as far as practicably possible. My question to the Minister is why are we copying the UK? I saw a programme quite recently on television where Austria is in the dire position of not having anywhere to get rid of their waste. So they decided to go into recycling. They have managed to achieve 60 per cent. Why are we not having a target of 60 per cent? Our target, surely over the years should be 5 per cent a year more than the previous year. That is what we need to achieve. Now 10, 12 years ago I did not recycle glass bottles. I started to then I found out in actual fact when they went down to La Collette they were just being crushed like the rest of the waste. Also 10, 12 years ago I did not recycle waste papers; I do now. I recycle all my green waste. I recycle all my tin cans. I am only an ordinary person in the street, what we need is a lead from the States to get on and get this thing underway and then we can see what we can achieve. I am pretty sure we can achieve, if we wanted, 60 per cent without any problem at all. It is just the will has to be there and it has to be put across to the general public. [Applause]

Mr. J. Richardson:

I think we agree with you, Mr. Le Brocq. The position though is with Austria and a number of other countries what you find is that the 60 per cent figure they quote includes energy from waste. So I think you have got to be very careful, do not mislead, the 60 per cent that Austria and a number of other European countries quote are very high figures including energy from waste. If we included energy from waste in our figures today we would be up at 80-odd per cent. So, let us just be absolutely clear about where figures are and get them correct. The second point which is about glass, we have always said and we do accept that the way in which we recycle glass at the moment is fairly crude, in fact very crude. We have had in the past many problems with it, we now have a very good aggregate recycling contractor operating on our behalf or on the States' behalf and anyone who may have seen the media recently, where we have had an open day for the industry, will see we are now able to produce very good products. We hope we will be able to increase that, but, yes, in the past glass recycling has proved to be difficult.

Mr. R. Le Brocq:

When I was on Public Services I had to go on a trip to America on holiday. In America they recycle glass and use it in tarmac for highways. I brought all the information back to Public Services. The impression I got was: "We do not want to know, they do not do it in England so we are not going to do it here."

Mr. J. Richardson:

There are a number of products, there is one called "glassphalt" which has been tried, it has featured quite regularly in the various magazines. It is one that we certainly do not object to, but as I say, in the past we have had difficulty in getting the process right to get it from the raw virgin glass, as that would be, into a product which is capable of being recycled and meeting all the standards. As I say, things have moved on a lot recently with the introduction of a new contractor and new equipment and it is an avenue we are keeping open. Certainly we have got some very good products now available from glass.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

As a corollary, I should also emphasise that by no means do either myself or the department slavishly follow what is done in the UK. We are extremely open-minded and we are happy to accept bright ideas from any source. The references you hear to UK is simply we will use their statistics where we feel they are applicable locally.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Thank you. The lady at the back there again, please.

Female Speaker:

I was wanting to ask the Minister why do we appear not to be going down the road of in house composting? In house composting, you know where you use food material and you get the energy out of it but it is a lot more environmentally friendly.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Why are we not doing enclosed composting?

Female Speaker:

In house composting. Why do you appear to have rejected that?

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

No, we want to do it. Regrettably though, we have been deviated from getting on with the project but I was very hopeful of having up and running by this summer because my political colleagues asked me to investigate whether there were other locations other than the proposed site at La Collette to site an enclosed composting plant. We are just coming to the end of that process now and we will make a determination.

Female Speaker:

I am sorry, I think you misunderstand what I am saying.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye: You mean home composting?

Female Speaker:

No, I do not. I know in Somerset, for example, they will collect all the food waste that people have cooked and all the rest of it, the things you cannot put in your compost heap at home. What they do is they take it to what I believe is called the in house composter and from that they get the energy. Do you know what I am talking about?

Mr. J. Richardson:

Yes. Effectively the food waste can be treated in many different ways. One of them, in terms of food waste, is what we call anaerobic digestion where you get the energy out of the food waste and you then end up with a product that can be applied to land. That is practical, it does work, we do it with all the sewage on the Island. The down side is how do you dispose of the end product? Also food waste is a notoriously difficult product to process to put it into a consistency which will allow it to be processed properly. There are many schemes that operate but effectively it is doing nothing other than producing energy from waste and certainly the view that we have always taken when we have analysed all the different technologies that are on the market is that if we have got to have a plant to deal with it, we would rather have one plant rather than many different ones.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Surely, John, one of the differences is that energy from waste produces toxic ash which has to be dealt with, whereas the process that the questioner was asking about produces compost which, subject to landfill directives, can be put on land.

Mr. J. Richardson:

If you have heavy metals going in you have heavy metals coming out. So wherever you dispose of it -- yes, food waste might not have them in it so the food waste would not, but the other materials will have and you have still got to deal with them. But it

means you will have 2 separate processes both of which will be extremely expensive to build and operate.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

It is also important to understand that not all the ash is toxic; in fact it is a small percentage of the ash and it is the ash that contains every -- most ash is no different from what you get out of the grate of your fire.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Thank you. Any other questions? Derek Mason --

Mr. D. Mason:

Yes, just not so much a question as a bit of advice to the Minister and his officers, you should get out a bit and see what is going on in the rest of the world. I led the Environmental Panel's visit last week to Sweden, it was a sustainability conference but during the course of the week we went out and about and saw what is going on. One of the schemes was a 1940s model Housing Scheme, huge, 1,800 people there, Sink(?) Estate and they were now going to make this - you have to listen - housing scheme sustainable as far as recycling is concerned. Each section of the development had a building designed for recycling and people filled the Eurobins and one person 12 hour a day, 7 days a week they recycled the waste from that Housing Scheme and it was a mass compost system and it was taken away and reused. The word you are using - recycling - is wrong it should be sustainability when it is not just the waste system, you should be looking at the water systems. The water system in this estate was surface water, rainwater, surface gulleys, surface channels and all used to support the biodiversity system. Seeding routes everywhere so that rain water could evaporate and you hear of a sink estate turning a sustainable development as good as the thing called City of Tomorrow, which is the new version of it. So I see no reason at all why the recycling should not be 100 per cent, Bob is right, Vienna is 60 per cent. We should get as close as we get to 100 per cent with the Malmo figures, 270,000 people but 60,000 cars in a big city, there is so much to be learned by going out and seeing what is going on. I would like to ask, I think they should come back, Paul and Robert who were there what sort of reaction they have got to the new ideas that are out there, certainly in sustainability. If we get the sustainability right, recycling comes as part of the package. Sorry, not so much a question as advice.

Deputy G.W.J. de Faye:

Well, perhaps if I can pick up on that first by saying contrary to your suspicion I am extremely well travelled. I have even lived on the Continent and I have been studying sustainable housing for at least 10 to 15 years, so I do not really need a lecture on that subject, I am entirely on board and I think it is the right way to go. But the difficulty we have is that our current energy from waste plant is falling down and it is falling down now and we need a solution now. In fact we should have come up with a solution some time ago. Time is not on our side and I entirely agree about sustainable housing, that would be great but it will take decades before it has a serious impact on our difficulties and we have not got the time to spare, regrettably.

Mr. J. Richardson:

In addition I think we hear a lot of comments about Northern European countries who have very, very high recycling rates and very much at the forefront of waste management in a different way to how we might manage ours in Jersey or manage it in the UK. The important point, I think, is that virtually all of those countries, Sweden in particular, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Holland all of who have very high reputations for waste management, all include as we have in the waste strategy, waste hierarchy, reduce what you create in the first place, reuse and recycle then recover energy, energy from waste. So we are following the model of Northern European highly valued and highly reputable sustainable waste management processes. I do agree with you, there are models which are coming out which have gone a bit further and I think the example you have raised is one which is very valid. But I think is it is important to recognise that the waste strategy which was put forward there follows that European model. I am not aware of any countries which are held up in high regard for waste management practices that do not include energy from waste as part of their overall package.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Derek also asked the Environment Panel members who are lucky enough to go on this delegation to Sweden to talk about their experiences, so over to Deputies Duhamel and Le Claire.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

I think I could perhaps speak for quite a long time on this, but I will not. I think the main points I am picking up are what John is talking about is that there is a waste hierarchy. It does include at the bottom end energy from waste plants and we must have a mix. But the question is what is the mix? As far as I am concerned and as far as the panel are concerned, we think that we have got the mix wrong at the moment, 32 per cent recycling rates for the next 30 years is not high enough and the rate should go up. By what amount, we have not assessed as yet. But it is quite clear that if we compare our experiences with the experiences of Europeans and best practice elsewhere, 32 per cent is no longer good enough by the UK, it is no longer good enough by Guernsey, our sister Island, who committed earlier in the year to 50 per cent recycling and if they can do it, then so can we.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Can I just first let Deputy Le Claire respond to Derek's question first, then I will come on to you, John?

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

I just think the reality is that so many people in Jersey have given up on most of the systems in Jersey, whether it be our political system or our recycling system or our transportation system, purely because as evidenced by this trip, we live in a "cannot do" society whereas other people around the world have embraced the "can do" attitude. I have seen evidence of these new innovative buildings with developers, 16 developers working collectively to drive down costs. In Copenhagen they are recycling 98 per cent of their buildings that they demolish, 90 per cent of the buildings they demolish are reused, 6 per cent of the building material is recycled and with new initiatives coming forward, with plasterboard manufacturers in the United Kingdom, for example, taking up a voluntary waste recycling agreement, Jersey has to review what it has agreed to from the States' perspective. It has to be upfront about how it is going to pay for it and just like we are doing now currently with the Island Plan, we cannot afford to sit on our laurels and agree to do what we agreed to do before we became aware of new issues. New numbers, new technologies, new demands, new pressures need new answers. The new answers are "can do" answers, they are not "cannot do" answers or in 25 years' time we will be sitting back in this room talking about the need for something else.