Open Hearing at the Town Hall

STATES OF JERSEY

Environment Panel Waste Recycling Review

THURSDAY, 21st February 2008

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:

Mr. M. Tadier Mr. N. Palmer Ms. C. Beech

Mr. P. Robinson Mr. T. Pitman Mr. A. Le Gallais Mr. K. Shaw

Mr. D. Rotherham Mr. D. Moody

Deputy R.C. Duhamel of St. Saviour (Chairman):

This is the third meeting out of 5 meetings and the final meeting will be on 14th or 15th March at the Town Hall . So if a number of your colleagues have not managed to turn up this evening but they would still nevertheless like to convey to the Environment Scrutiny Panel their views and opinions on the Island's burning issue (pun intended) then please invite them along to the meeting at the Town Hall , or indeed to the next meeting on 28th February at the St. Brelade Parish Hall . A few words of introduction. For those who do not know the panel, we have the Constable of St. Mary on my right, we have the Constable of St. Helier , we have myself the Deputy of this district, and we have Deputy Paul Le Claire. We have apologies this evening as well from our fifth member who is Deputy Celia Scott Warr en of St. Saviour . She is unable to make the meeting this evening as she is somewhere else and sends her sincerest apologies. What is this evening all about? Basically we thought it was a good idea, on the basis that a number of reports have been written about the Island's waste management strategy, and indeed the final solution has not yet been found or ascertained. That will happen in July, we think, when the Transport and Technical Services Minister will come to the House outlining his preferred course of action. We have been given a few indicators and pointers as to what it might well be and it is some of those issues that we would wish to discuss with members of the public this evening. This is a 2-way function. It is not just for us to come and spout off and to give you our viewpoints, although we are quite happy to do that and to fill you in on some of the technical details that we have been privy to. The idea of this evening's meeting is really to find out whether the waste strategy at the moment is a burning issue among the public and whether or not you think that all options are being suitably explored; whether or not you think certain emphasis or over emphasis is being placed in certain directions; or indeed whether or not you have a certain pet theory or piece of plant or kit or whatever which you think would make an even bigger impact to how the Island discharges its sustainability credibilities. It is true to say - and a lot of people do not really realise this - that the Island's waste is not the States' problem until we give it to the States to sort out. That seems a bit of a surprising remark to make but I make it nonetheless. Under the parochial system we have 12 parishes, and as you all know because we all are ratepayers we all put our hands in our pocket once a year and instruct our Constable to spend monies on a collection service. Some of those collection services are run in-house by the individual parishes; other parishes take the opportunity to combine to provide co-ordinated, if you like, collection services in a different fashion. But in essence the waste materials - because they do not become waste until they hit a certain point in the waste hierarchy - that we all purchase in the shops, whether it be bottled water, which is top of the pops at the moment for some people, there is a container. We pay our good money for that container and then we dispose of it in our bins in some shape or form. We instruct the Constables through the parish assemblies to spend some of our parish rates on collecting those materials in various ways. There are some innovative collection methods that are operated on the Island but they are not as widespread as perhaps they should be. Thereafter we instruct, indirectly or otherwise, the Constable to get rid of those materials. A number of years ago the Department of Transport and Technical Services was Public Services and before that it was the Resources Recovery Board in part. Fundamentally, where the Environment Panel are

hoping to come from is to maybe not necessarily turn the clocks way back to the days when we were all running around in sackcloth and ashes or whatever, spouting our green principles, but certainly to look at the philosophy behind the naming of the department in those days. It was resource recovery. We feel that if some materials within the waste stream can be recovered and put to further good use - and there is a whole multitude of uses that these materials can be turned in to - then in fact we will be adopting the best practice in terms of the waste hierarchy which says: "Try and use less if you can or switch to different ways of dealings with things but if you cannot, cut down a little bit." If you cannot do that go ahead and generate materials for further use but think about how you are going to dispose of them and follow a design hierarchy which says at the top end try and get some further better use out of it or some added value, and that could be something as simple as taking these plastic bottles and turning them into fleece garments or whatever. Indeed we have read in the national newspapers just recently over Christmas where plastic bottles, I think it is something like 30-odd or maybe a few more, are converted into a fleece material. Some people think that is astounding and had not really thought about it before, until you look at the labels inside your clothing. There is a little label there that tells you the materials that your clothing is made out of. Not everything comes from sheep or cotton plants these days; we do have synthetic materials and polyesters are one of those synthetic materials. To cut a long story short, these bottles can find a reuse back into the textile trade. Some people might say: "Yes, so what but why can we not just burn them or put them in a hole in the ground or find other uses for them which are not maybe as exciting as turning them back into another garment?" There is a whole host of value adding schemes that we feel from the scrutiny panel should be looked at at least as an alternative, to get to the position whereby the Island can properly address how much material is there in the waste stream once we have adopted "sensible" because it is a qualitative and subjective judgment as to what that level should be -- but how much can we usefully take out of those materials from the waste stream to be left with what is termed residual waste, residual waste that we cannot, despite thinking, find any use for it other than having to dispose of it in some shape or form? Even then if we could get to a position whereby we have reduced the quantities within the waste stream that need the final treatment method, whatever it is, there are a whole host of other methods or alternative methods that could again usefully be applied to gain extra value out of something which most people think is useless and should be disposed of without thinking about it. We have amassed a huge amount of evidence to show that there are cost-effective alternatives if the Island would wish to espouse that. We feel generally at this point in time that the Island committing itself to a 32 per cent recycling rate or thereabouts for the next 25 to 30 years would represent  a  substantial  under  performance  in  terms  of  Jersey's  green  credentials, especially so when the Island of Guernsey, our next door neighbour, early on last year told the world that they were going to espouse a 50 per cent recycling rate by the end of this year or the next. Other communities are managing to achieve substantially higher rates and basically it is, as the proverb goes, where there is a will, there is probably a way. The Island when it comes to debate these issues, in July hopefully, will have to determine whether or not we are being told things by a bunch of cranks who are all sporting green socks and green hats and wearing sandals and having beards - although the Constable and I are in good company here, so we will probably be tarred with the brush - or whether or not we are reflecting what seems to be a worldwide move to become socially environmentally conscious. We think that the Island, if it does wish to play its part, and we hear from the Council of Ministers and others that as an Island jurisdiction we continually manage to punch above our weight (that is a common phrase) suggesting that the Island, albeit its small size, is able to do things which smaller islands would not normally be expected to do. I think there should be an element of consideration across the board to see whether or not some of these things can change our thinking, not necessarily to come forward and suggest that 100 per cent recycling should be the ultimate goal. In some communities they are aspiring to that; it is called zero waste. Although they know that the holy grail will never be obtained by and large, or maybe perhaps it will, there nevertheless is a general aspiration to try and move things in that direction as far as they are able. I think the Island can do substantially better than 32 per cent; we are not even there at the moment. I think it would represent a huge waste of resources, if you like, if that was indeed the best that the Island could aspire to for the next 25, 30 years. So that is probably enough. I have given you more than my allotted time. I have been told by my other Members that I tend to go on a bit and if you see people's eyelids drooping then you know you have probably said 10 times as much. But the evening is for you. We are happy to answer any questions as far as we are able to do and to give you the benefit of our experience so far and some of the evidence that we have been amassing. On a housekeeping note, I think we have to say something about the fire instructions.

If a bell goes or siren then we all have to make our way to the set of steps and get out of the building as quickly as possible. What we are doing, which none of the other panels have done, is to adopt a roving microphone. So we have one of our officers who will be coming around with a microphone and if you could just briefly introduce yourself, because we are transcribing all of the things that you are telling us because we are genuinely interested in what you have to say, and we will be analysing the comments that you give us at a later date. Without further ado, I open the proceedings to the full house. The intention is to run to 9.00 p.m. but we will see how we go. If we fizzle out even earlier then fine, probably all go home and watch the football if there is any on tonight. But other than that I hope you get as much out of the meeting as we have done on previous occasions. I will take the first question. Do not be shy or otherwise I will have to speak for the next 2 hours.

Mr. M. Tadier :

Hi, my name is Molfor Tadier . I will start the ball rolling tonight seeing as nobody else wants to open the questions. I have had the privilege of living abroad for a few months in different locations when I was a student. I know that most places in the world seem to be more advanced in terms of recycling than Jersey, which is perhaps not surprising, but it is good that we are taking these steps, I think. When it comes to recycling, be it plastic bags or bottles, I found that if you start to hit people in the wallets, even if it is just a nominal amount, then that often makes people think. Whether it is one penny on a plastic bag or 5 or 10 pence for returning a bottle, it does give people the incentive. It is fair enough to say we will recycle these bottles but you have to get the bottles in the first place to be able to recycle them. I know that is something they operated in Germany for quite a long time and I know even in the U.S. (United States) they have a system where they reward people if they bring their own bags to the supermarket. For example, if you turn up with your bag they will give  you an extra 10 cents, which is not a lot but it does provide an incentive. Alternatively there is the stick option where you say: "We are going to charge you a penny or 5 pence for that plastic bag." While it is not going to break the bank it does make people think: "I do not really need the plastic bag because I have one at home that I can reuse or I have a backpack that I can put it in." I do think it is a question of education. But it really is up to the Government to try and put in the system so that it will encourage people. I know that people would be really keen to recycle if they just

had the opportunity to do it. One more point, in Germany for the last 7 or 8 years they have had multiple bins on the street. If you want to get rid of a plastic bottle or banana skin there is a choice of 4 bins in a railway station or on the street and then that obviously facilitates recycling and separation of rubbish. So, just a couple of ideas.

Deputy R. C. Duhamel:

Thank you for that. I think that is a valuable point. It is obviously one of the things we have in our armoury to encourage changes in social behaviour. That said, I think we should also consider that we are already paying for the materials that we throw away to be collected through our parish rate and at a parish assembly we would have the authority, acting as parishioners, to instruct the Constable not to take the materials to be burnt, for example. If we preferentially had a collection of mixed recyclables, it would be within our remit to instruct the Constable to deliver those materials to a third party recycler in order to make some monies. What I find particularly galling is that there is an intrinsic value to a lot of the materials. They are not worthless, they are not something that the States absolutely has to spend further taxpayers' money on in disposing of; they do have a value in themselves. The key issue really is in determining whether or not the Island wishes to move in that direction to release some of those funds. We have had some evidence to suggest that the total collection cost for the whole of the Island could almost be covered by the value within the rubbish that is being burnt at the moment. So you ask yourself a sustainability question: is it better to burn it or is it better to recycle it? I think the answer is probably clear to a lot of people. But we take your point, education is absolutely key. Any comments from the other members?

Connétable A.S. Crowcroft of St. Helier :

I think the suggestion of fiscal measures is clearly not within the scrutiny panel's remit. Only the Treasury Minister can bring in a new tax, as we know from G.S.T. (Goods and Services Tax), and certainly the option of environmental taxes is not being pursued as enthusiastically as it was by the Council of Ministers. One suspects that is partly because they have recently introduced G.S.T. and so the option for introducing further taxes has possibly been affected by that. I know that the plastic bag issue is being addressed by the Planning Minister and some of you may have seen the director of the Co-op tonight on the television talking about the unintended consequences of putting, for example, 10 pence on a carrier bag. Certainly Jim Hopley has explained to me that a lot of people re-use their carrier bags for domestic waste and for their domestic litter bins. If we take that option away from them they then have to go out and buy a roll of bags from the same place. It may be that we should be looking at different ways of discouraging the use of plastic bags and encouraging the use of multi-use bags and so on. It is within the States' ability, and it is certainly within the retailer's ability, to simply stop providing their customers with carrier bags or to replace the carrier bags with ones that carry the logo of the shop but are re-usable and which they possibly sell to their customers. I think there are going to be a suite of options which the Planning Minister will look at in his attempt to get rid of plastic bags but there is no doubt that we use a huge amount of carrier bags. Somebody quoted a number to me recently, it is in the millions.

Deputy R. C. Duhamel: It is 30 million.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Thirty million a year as an island. There is no doubt that we should be tackling that item. I was also interested in your comment about litter bins because one of my priorities for the urban area is to provide more litter bins. Sometimes if you are the sort of person who picks up litter because it is blowing in front of you you may find you have to walk for hundreds of yards before you find a litter bin in which to put it. So we do need to review the provision of litter bins in the urban area. Also you may have noticed there are about a dozen different types of litter bin, ranging from the almost totally rusted away thing with a door flapping open to extremely ugly modern litter bins which have a very large capacity. I think we probably also need to investigate the composition of litter bins in the urban area before we splash out. If we go for the German model and we buy litter bins that separate, obviously they will hold less, they will need to be visited more often. The current litter bin that is being favoured by my staff is the large thing that looks like a small phone box in grey. They are not very attractive but they do hold a lot. If most of the waste that is being collected is dry, paper and plastic, then that may call into question the need to have separate areas for other things. Clearly we also need to step up the recycling of drink

cans as well. That is currently being done a private company. No accident; that is the area of recycling which is worth the most money. The aluminium can is worth a great deal of money when it is bulked up and bailed. I think it is a useful comment and I am certainly looking into it for the parish of St. Helier .

Deputy R. C. Duhamel:

Anything further? Second question please.

Mr. N. Palmer:

Hello, my name is Nick Palmer. I used to run the local branch of Friends of the Earth for about 8 years and I still maintain contacts with their headquarters in England. The Friends of the Earth position is that the adoption of a mass burn incinerator is directly contrary to achieving the best possible recycling rates because in effect they need to burn material that can be recycled. Would the panel agree with this point?

Deputy R. C. Duhamel:

Yes, I think that is possibly a very easy one to agree with, yes. I would wholeheartedly endorse your comments. It is just the energy from waste plants, which is a generic term for burning things in different ways, encompasses not just one method but a whole host of different methods. I think we have to be a little bit careful if we are talking about burning issues to say whether or not we disagree with burning issues per se or whether or not we just disagree with burning with oxygen, which is the normal combustion method, but we would perhaps support pyrolysis systems, which is in the absence of oxygen, or gasification processes, which is a similar system which drive off gases from material and leave you with chars which can be further processed. I think broadly speaking the idea of just putting your unsorted material into an open fireplace, by and large, and bolting on equipment to clean up the gases that you know are going to be difficult to deal with - because we generate the problem, basically, by not sorting things out that cause the problems - I would agree that it is possibly at the bottom end of the methods for dealing with whatever is considered to be a waste. That said, I would like to make one other comment. We have recently been looking at some other equipment which is tied into pyrolysis and gasification, and a number of U.K. (United Kingdom) jurisdictions are also looking at it, and some of this equipment, for example, could take the 6,500 tonnes of plastic that

we produce. At the moment there is a recycling value to P.E.T. (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles, whatever, which ranges between £100 a tonne and £300 a tonne. Basically anything that is above the shipping costs to take it to further recycling centres must be deemed to be a sensible thing to be considering. But if we did not do that then what we have been looking at recently is a number of suggestions that are being looked at more closely, as I said, in the U.K. to take the plastic components of the waste stream and to break them down into their constituent molecules and then to recombine them to make a synthetic diesel. This is quite an interesting process because we could be getting a fuel from the plastic. It begs the question whether or not a fuel with which we could be running our car fleet on and displacing the petrol that is being imported would represent a betterment than taking the materials and just putting them into an open incinerator and generating small quantities of electricity at a low resale cost and displacing the nuclear power which is generally seen to be a more carbon-free way of producing electricity than incineration is. I think we have to be a little bit careful. If we look at the figures, one thing to toss out is that the 6,500 tonnes of plastics, if dealt with with this particular type of plant, could generate 6.5 million litres of a synthetic fuel to be displacing fuel imports, and that must be good in the long term. The price of diesel - I had a look just recently - is of the order of £1 a litre. So that 6,500 tonnes of plastic, dealt with in a particularly creative way, could represent an income to the Island of some £6.5 million. That is the type of figures that really have to be considered properly when we come [Interruption] -- sorry? That is per year, yes. The Island generates around about 6,500 tonnes of plastic. From the figures we have, the resale cost, if you converted that plastic into synthetic fuel would be of the order of £6.5 million. It is not just a simple case of saying, right, out of sight is out of mind, let us burn it all and that is the best. There are other better methods. This is one of the reasons that the scrutiny panel has taken a number of years. We have done 2 reports so far. There is a final report being presented to States Members in March, around about 14th and 15th. We are hoping from the work that has been done that some of these questions will be settled in a way that could represent substantial savings to the Island in the long term. Any other comments?

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

I think it is the whole issue, is it not, really. That is the whole issue about whether or not we incinerate our waste and whether or not we take large amounts of our taxpayers' money and build a plant to incinerate, and whether or not incineration is good for the environment, taking on board global warming and everything, the pressures that we are going to be facing, and whether or not we are recognising that we need to address this issue. If we do not address it in 2008 do we really think we are going to get around to addressing it in 2058 when the plant has had its day? There are issue about emissions; there is issue about build costs; there is issue about operation costs; there is issue about dismantling costs. At the end of the day I think the most important factor is that we need to break down our waste to the smallest possible amount before we decide what kind of plant it is we need to build to burn that amount. That is really the key issue. I am personally convinced that the type and size of energy from waste plant that is currently being discussed, and probably going to be recommended to the States, is far too large for Jersey. It does not address our environmental obligations. Just one issue, for example: you tie in emissions from an incinerator. I have been asking recently about our carbon emissions and whether or not we have an obligation, and it comes through from Kyoto and obviously future sons of Kyoto protocols and agreements. While we do not have any limits per se because we come under the U.K. limits, there is already discussion in the energy policy, for example. If you read the Energy Consultation Policy within carbon trading, page 89, we are talking about an annual cost of offsetting the Island's emissions of £3 million. So, there are issues about the waste from the incineration, the ash from the incineration. How are you going to deal with that? There are issues about the emissions. There is issue about the cost. What else will you need if you build a plant there of that magnitude? A new road? You will have to probably move some of the fuel farm. Some of the costs that we are looking at at the moment are huge, huge costs, in excess of £100 million. I just wonder at a time when we are telling all of the Islanders that they are going to have to save harder to buy their houses, and if they are going to have less money in their pockets to save for those houses because of new taxes and the introduction of environmental taxes, whether or not it is time for us to be stepping out and purchasing this kind of kit at that kind of price tag. So personally I am convinced we are heading in the wrong direction. We need to break down the waste into its smallest possible component and then see what we do with that remaining component. It certainly is not the kind of size that we are being told it is. To be honest with you, I feel personally saddened that the process has got to this stage where the Transport and Technical Services Minister and his department have got to try and convince the States this is what we want, whereas we have to try and convince the States that it is not what we want. It is unfortunate that we could not have been working more closely together and removed a lot of these things in the first place and saved the Island, over the years, millions of tonnes going into an incinerator, which has not been good for anybody.

Deputy R. C. Duhamel:  

Thank you. Another question at the back?

Ms. C. Beech:

Hello, I am Caroline Beech. I live in St. Lawrence . I have been speaking to our Connétable in St. Lawrence for the last 3 years, sort of annually, to say when are we going to have roadside collections, like St. John have been having for the past 18 months. In my most recent conversation he said that there was a new system that St. Helier were going to try - I do not know whether Mr. Crowcroft can advise on that - which was a system where you do not have to separate everything and everything would be taken together by an English company. I said: "Was it going to be burnt or what?" I thought the idea was to separate things out. I agree with Mr. Le Claire about that, that is a better way to go. I wondered if you know what this system is that St. Helier is supposed to be going to try or might be trying or what exactly is going on there?

The Connétable of St. Helier :

The parish has been speaking to a local company who want to trial a new system which effectively takes your bag of rubbish and sorts it so you do not have to sort it. It sorts it using what is called a materials recycling facility (M.R.F.) being used extensively in the U.K. When they have the valuable bits out, the tin, the paper and so on, they then process the rest of it - including the food waste, which is a bit surprising but that is the system - and out of it comes a sort of fibrous material that can be used in making various kinds of plastic and composite board and so on. That was a system, a trial plant they wanted to start up in St. Helier . We got quite a long way down the road with them but they are now starting their trial plant in America because they are getting so much interest across the world and different countries are signing up for it, which is a disappointment to me. They are still interested in doing something in St. Helier but it is not going to happen as soon as I wanted it to, or indeed the other Constables wanted it to. There certainly are a number of technologies around that can make things out of waste. So there is nothing revolutionary about what is being suggested. I think the key question for all the Constables though is whether it is better to get the householder to do the separation or whether it should be done back at the base, back at the depot. Certainly, if you look around the U.K. all the local authorities in the U.K. are well advanced with their recycling. Some of them are giving the parishioners lots of boxes, as is happening in St. John and also in Havre des Pas where we have our own kerbside recycling trial going on. Other authorities are trying to reduce the number of boxes and to do more of the separation once the waste gets back to the depot. There are arguments for both sorts. Certainly in St. Helier we are finding that where people have the space for a number of boxes they like doing the separating themselves. But in some areas where you have flats and there is not much space on the pavement, it is quite difficult to ask a householder to put out a variety of boxes on a narrow street pavement. I think things are moving ahead, certainly St. Helier is now. After our trial in Havre des Pas we want to extend our kerbside recycling across the parish. That was one of my election pledges and it is something I have to deliver in St. Helier in the next 3 years. I would expect to see all the parishes coming up with some kind of kerbside collection, probably in a combination of that and the bring banks where you take the stuff yourself and put it into skips and so on.

Ms. C. Beech:

Can I ask about the funding because the Constable was saying that that will cost more and not keen to add anything to the rates. But someone I know who lives in Switzerland said that - you obviously have looked at other countries to see what they do - they pay 50 pence for a bag and you are given -- maybe you have a certain size for a certain sized family or family unit or whatever. Of course, they have a lot of flats in Switzerland, and maybe Germany I expect as well. I do not know if they use that system. What do other countries do or other areas in the U.K. that we could emulate that would suit our needs?

Connétable K.A. Le Brun of St. Mary :

Can I come in here because as Constable of St. Mary I have had obviously parishioners asking me the very same question, the same as the St. Lawrence one, and saying: "Well, come on, get on with it, because St. John have been doing it." We wanted to make sure ourselves that once you do the kerbside collection that it all goes into the correct way in the correct manner and does not just get incinerated as well. Also, there is always a cost to things and to do the kerbside one there is a cost and would be an extra cost that would have to be found by the parishioners or by somebody else to get it sponsored, as such, because I looked into it as well. It was only the other day that I had somebody from Trinity saying: "Well, come on, get on with it, they do the weekly collection with all the recycling and that." But this is the point that has to be pointed out in that respect that they do their weekly refuse collection but the papers and the tins that they are doing at the moment only gets collected once a month. I know for a fact that the boxes are not very big, and some people by the time the month is up, in fact by the time a fortnight is up or 3 weeks is up, the boxes that they put their papers and that in gets full and therefore they then put it straight away into their normal weekly refuse just to get rid of it again.

Ms. C. Beech:

Can I just say about newspapers. There are collection points for newspapers for people, so people could take newspapers themselves. I think the problem with not having it weekly is --

The Connétable of St. Mary :

I understand that fully but what I am saying, you have to appreciate as well the difference between that. Generally I think everybody would agree the majority of people and the majority of us take the easy option. If you have a bring back or if you have a kerbside collection, you are going to do your kerbside collection. You will put it into your box and you will put your papers into your box and you will put your tins, and if that box gets filled, unless you are really conscientious about the fact and you will then get into your car and take all the other things to the bring back, you will then just automatically throw it into your refuse bin again. You are not going to gain in that respect. This is what I am looking at at the moment with my refuse collector because St. John hope to introduce a plastic bottle collection as well, at the same time. But then you have to bear in mind that then is going to create another collection. We in St. Mary s have the smallest amount of households, as you are well aware, and so far I have priced it as such because the 2 boxes would cost £3 each. If you say give them to the customer, give them to the parishioners, give them to the household, they are £3 each if you have to. That £3 has to be found from somewhere. Also the bags - they are not the plastic ones but they are big ones and hessian made ones - would be just £1 each. So, doing the mathematics it would be about £7 per household. We have got approximately 600 households in St. Mary , so that takes it to just over £4,000 that we would have to find just for getting that amount there. On top of that to do a further collection, that my refuse collector would do, extra fortnightly, would of course be another £5,000 as well. He would do one with his glass which he does one a month and then he would have to do another, shall we say, monthly one or fortnightly collection, another monthly one which would cost another £5,000. So immediately we are talking about £4,000 for supplying the boxes and such like, then another £5,000 for doing the extra collection. So we are now talking about £9,000 or £10,000 extra on the small community. So I will be calling a meeting either next month, or certainly the beginning of April, before we have to look into the coming year's expenditure to see whether the parishioners wish to do that. It is a cost. I think one has to bear in mind that recycling and everything is very good, nobody is going to go against that, but as long as the people are prepared to. That is the kerbside. The alternative to kerbside is to do the bring back one, which means to say everybody then has to go, but then everybody does not go. Therefore there would be a very small minority. That is just to put the idea of the figures for St. Mary which is the smallest populated one. That would be the extra cost that we would have to find for those. I think St. John managed, with the help of Transport and Technical Services, to initially get it sponsored on their things, but that sponsorship was just for a year. I believe that now if they want more they are going to have to find the extra money themselves. So there is only one way really and that is to go back to the parishioners and those who particularly want it. I think one just has to bear in mind that there is a cost to all of this; it is not just freely done or freely given. One has to bear that in mind as well. This is why I think you will find that not everybody -- you know, we have been running over ourselves to try and get it. We want to do it and want to make sure that at the end of the procedures that it is all done correctly and in the right manner. Just going quickly on to that, as you are most probably all aware as well, it is always the

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

This is the trouble I have been having trying to convince other people in Jersey as to what the argument could be. In 1999 I joined the Public Services Committee and told them about my experience in Canada in 1990-1991, which is 17 years ago. I woke up and found a blue box on my doorstep with a leaflet in it and noticed that all of the street every house was the same, blue boxes in front of their doorsteps with little leaflets in. In the leaflet it explained that the Government was going to be doing recycling, kerbside collection, and on one day of the week you were to put tins and glass and on the other day of the week you were to put plastic and paper, or a combination of those 2. So it was a very immediate change. It was at no cost to us, because the Government in Toronto recognised that it needed to be environmentally responsible and it needed to invest in recycling so that it could get away from the huge capital costs. We all think that the Constables are doing us a favour if they do not put the rates up but I think they will be doing us a disservice if they do not try to do this and tell us that they are doing it to keep the rates down, because we still pay taxes. If this is not tackled at the doorstep it is going to be tackled at the Income Tax Department when they need the money to build the £120 million facility. If you take £120 million and you divvy that up among the parishes what kind of recycling system can you have? Let us say we give £10 million to St. Mary , does that cover your £5,000 in boxes? Does that cover your £5,000 in collection charges? Can we go further, can we do more with £120 million? The problem is that we are not working in a joined-up manner. The Constable of St. Mary is working in isolation. He is doing his best and he is doing a good job. St. John is working in isolation, it is doing its best, it is trying its hardest but it is not working because the Constables are trying to scrimp and be penny wise and pound stupid. Let us get them, like they do in France, with composting, for example, they give them compost boxes, and they say: "There you are for free. Here is your compost box, here is your leaflet on how to do it. You may have trouble with it, sure. We will come along and show you how to do it" but they give it to them for free so they can reduce the amount of green waste arriving that they have to deal with with taxpayers' money. If we really want to reduce the amount of money that is being spent in the long run some people can afford taxes more than others, some people cannot. If we want to reduce the impact of this huge expenditure we need to invest in recycling at the doorstep and not just purchase the big machines.

Ms. C. Beech:

I quite agree. All the Constables need to work together. That is what I have heard that some Constables want to do one thing, some another. It is the same with other problems. You need to work together because we are only a small island. If we do not work together as a whole then everybody is doing their own thing and it is too small and piecemeal. I have heard the arguments against anaerobic digesters, that there is too much compost produced and that kind of thing. I think that the food waste being burnt, though we say it could be with this particular system, is there not any thought of doing something of that sort which would surely get rid of an awful lot of food waste? As has been reported, a third of people's food bill apparently goes in the bin, not mine I hasten to add, but something to be done about the food waste there must be from hotels and that kind of thing. Are  you deadset against anaerobic digesters because of the surplus of compost?

The Connétable of St. Mary :

I would just like to come in quickly with my colleague on the end there saying that the parishes are penny wise and pound foolish. I certainly would like to object to that situation. It has not just been purely up to the parishes' decision that has to be made. We - and I am saying we as the 12 parishes and you as parishioners and you as all ratepayers - have been dependent upon the States for getting rid of our rubbish over the years. If suddenly there is going to be a mind change, we say: "Right the parish would get together and form their own" then all of you are going to have to go to your parishes come June and July and say: "We want to take over the rubbish and we want to take over everything." Then you are going to have to do it because it has been dependent upon the States. We feel possibly as a body that the States have not looked into further details, have not looked into the situations, but you cannot just blame the

parishes for that because generally the parishes have had the rubbish, collected it from you and given it to the States, from their point of view, to get rid of it. Now, if they can make money out of it or such like, so be it, but they are paying an awful lot of money to move the rubbish off this Island as well. So I certainly take exception to my colleague there that we are penny wise and pound foolish.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

That is why they are sitting apart. I have noticed there there are 2 people who have been trying to get questions. There is a gentleman here in the red. We will come back to that. It is for everybody. We have not forgotten you but we will come back if we may.

Mr. P. Robinson:

There has been a lot of interesting issues that have been raised. I am not quite sure where to start. But the one thing I do agree with that you seem to be talking of and that is the financial side of it. In terms of the quantity of waste that comes in every week, what proportion would you think it is viable to recycle?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

That is an interesting one. From the department's statistics themselves they have published on a number of occasions that they think that of the household bin that is collected - and there is some 40,000 tonnes of household waste collected by the parishes - they have estimated that theoretically 85 per cent of that material could be recycled. They do suggest that there might be problems with collection, there may be problems with people not wanting to have their material recycled within it, but they do wholeheartedly endorse that from a theoretical point of view up to 85 per cent of the household waste is recyclable. If you apply the figures that means that of the 40,000-odd tonnes coming in for the household, if we could just be left with 15 per cent that is a massive reduction.

Mr. P. Robinson:

The 85 per cent is that recyclable? Do you make money out of it?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

This is certainly our viewpoint. For the second time we have had French contractors over having a look at what is termed to be the crushed bulky waste and this is basically commercial waste or waste delivered by our householders, like mattresses, obsolete furniture, things like that. What happens with those materials in other places is that an element of them can be recycled or put to further good use. In Jersey, although we would like the department to be moving more strongly in that direction, a large proportion of those materials are crushed by a giant crane and squashed into smaller pieces and then those pieces are put in as extra fill to offset the watery waste that comes from trying to burn the kitchen waste that we are quite happily putting into an unsorted bin. We have had suggestions from our French advisors that of the 30,000-odd tonnes of crushed bulky waste they do think that not quite as high as 85 per cent but certainly of the order of 50-60 per cent of that material could also be recycled. If you add the 2 approaches together, the Island at the moment is presently burning some 70,000-odd tonnes of material, some of which is not combustible, some of it is wet and water weighs an enormous amount. The crushed bulky waste is stored outside so when it rains water gets into the pile and adds to the weight and there is difficulties in measuring how much dry material you do have. But the Island is burning 70,000 tonnes and if you applied the reduction figures that people are talking about, we could find ourselves down to 15,000, 20,000 or even less.

Mr. P. Robinson:

I find that very hard to believe, that sort of reduction. If you are looking at the materials that could be recycled, we have cardboard, newspaper, plastics, I think the plastics are all sorts of different sorts of plastic, so those have got to be separated again to get good value.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

They do have to be separated and that is the key to deriving extra value to the materials.

Mr. P. Robinson:

So how much does it cost to -- starting at the beginning, the quantity of plastic you are talking, was it 6,000 tonnes?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

 6,000 tonnes or thereabouts.

Mr. P. Robinson:

That all has to be sorted, it has got to be packaged, got to be shipped at £50 a tonne.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

The Environment Scrutiny Panel will be publishing a full set of figures as to what it thinks is the intrinsic value of the material that we are presently burning. We will be doing an assessment of the departmental figures to give a comparison as to whether or not it is more cost effective to be recycling as opposed to just burning. From the figures we are seeing at the moment we think that there is a case to be made for recycling at a higher rate and what we are being told is that theoretically a higher recycling rate is economically feasible and possible.

Mr. P. Robinson:

I think you are right, there could be more recycling but the quantity you are talking of sounds phenomenal. When you think that 1,500 tonnes of rubbish comes in a week, can you imagine the space that that takes up and that is going to be sorted.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Think the figures through. At the moment the Island is producing some 17,000 tonnes of food waste. That is not just food plate scrapings or whatever from your Sunday lunch; that includes food items that are coming from supermarkets and restaurants, some of it in tins. If they are packaging materials that are out of date that is delivered to the incinerator to be burnt. If you have ever tried to set fire to your kitchen waste bin you have a problem trying to get the thing to burn.

Mr. P. Robinson:

I think these things do burn.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

They do burn but you have to drive off prodigious quantities of water first of all.

Mr. P. Robinson:

But all this quantity of food, what is the product at the end of it?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

The product at the end of the day, as the lady at the back was suggesting, is there is more than one route. The materials can be co-composted, food waste can be co- composted with the green waste which is the woody materials from our garden contractors. The 2 go particularly well together. Wood waste, just compost on its own, does not generate compost.

Mr. P. Robinson:

There is a lot of green waste that goes in as well and that is pretty successful.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

So that is one route. The second route is anaerobic digestion which is a similar process to what is run at the existing sewage plant. At the moment there are a number of countries who are investing in the generation of bio-gas from anaerobic digestion plants and again that bio-gas can be used as a proper fuel. It is a gas fuel but nevertheless it is in a form that can be used in some kind of energy from waste process.

Mr. P. Robinson:

Yes, that used to be done down at the R.R.B. (Resources Recovery Board).

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes, and it still is to an extent.

Mr. P. Robinson:

One thing I do not understand is the feeling that an incinerator kills recycling. I do not agree with that at all.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Although we are being shown very, very good examples of other societies taking the time and trouble to maybe put their recyclables into a mixed recyclable collection or putting out their food waste separately or doing a whole multitude of other things, the fear that has been expressed, not just from this panel's point of view but certainly from the other publications that we have been relying upon, is that if the public are not actively encouraged to recycle, and perhaps discouraged up to a point, they will continue to think out of sight is out of mind, continue to generate the problem. The problem of waste is not in the waste itself, it is in the mixing process, it is in the absence of thinking, that we are all a party to, in saying: "Right, okay, fine, put this in the bin."

Mr. P. Robinson:

That is the beauty of the mass burn really, is it not?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Not necessarily. There is different kit for different things. As you will know, as an incinerator man or whatever, you have a general piece of kit which is designed to take a whole host of other bits and pieces and at the end of the day there has to be gas cleaning equipment to cope with whatever is going to be thrown at it.

Mr. P. Robinson: That is not a problem.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

But in terms of the costing there is an alternative argument which suggests that if an element of sorting goes into the process prior to disposing of any of the materials then you can choose a different kit which will be optimised to run on that particular element of the waste stream. For example, if you are putting in plaster boards or whatever, which do not generally burn very well, into your mix, or indeed if we are continuing to not dispose of all of our glass by putting it into glass collections or bring systems and the glass goes into the mix bin, then these quite clearly should be seen to be contaminants in terms of the process and they do cause problems. A lot of the difficulties that the existing incinerator kit have had have been by burning particular things that generally, had it been that they were not burned, those problems might not have existed. For example, we are burning rubber tyres still, at the moment. The rubber tyres cannot go through the existing incinerator whole because that is not the

way to do it and you need a proper calorific mix of different materials to try and ensure as far as possible under the processes that the crane driver is putting the materials together to try and get an even burn. If you put rubber tyres in too large a quantity within the mix they do not burn particularly well and there is evidence on file to suggest that the materials come out unburnt at the end or they do not burn particularly well and they cause fouling of the grate which causes other problems. The key issue is that everybody knows we could burn if we wanted to. If you are going to take a decision to burn why not have a particular piece of burning kit that is designed to run exclusively on that particular waste stream, and that could be done.

Mr. P. Robinson:

Plants are designed to run over a range of calorific values and materials.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes. You are shifting to calorific values. The key issue for rubber tyres is in that they come in too big a piece of kit so the --

Mr. P. Robinson:

As long as they are shredded and they are mixed in, no problem.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Yes, but the point is if the Island were to invest in shredding of the rubber tyres, then there are at least half a dozen different markets for that shredded material to go back into a recycling route.

Mr. P. Robinson:

I would not disagree with bringing in economic recycling for a lot of the things. As far as the plant is concerned the idea of having a real small one and running it flat out, it is wrong. You really want something that you are going to conserve. It does not matter if it is shut down for a week every now and then because the rubbish is not there.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

You are talking about over capacity?

Mr. P. Robinson:

No, not at all. I am talking of increasing the length of the life of the plants. If you run it too hard [Interruption] I am sorry. Is that better? I have never used one of these before. In general I would say that the idea that having an incinerator of a suitable size is going to kill recycling, it should not do.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

The incinerators of the type that are being spoken about only become efficient when you are dealing with quantities that the Island is not producing at the moment. We have advice to that effect. 250,000 tonnes is about the right size for a medium to large size incinerator. As I said earlier, the Island at the moment is producing full burning around 70,000 tonnes; 17,000 tonnes of that material are food waste which could quite clearly be tackled in a different route. A large percentage of the remainder consists of materials that again could be taken out of the waste stream. We have had offers for people to come to the Island, for example, to bring their own shredding equipment to shred tyres on the basis that they would then be wanting to pay whoever is delivering the tyres to that particular piece of kit to export the material to further recycling plants on the coast of France. So the key issue --

Mr. P. Robinson:

What is stopping them from doing this then?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Well, what is stopping this is back to your original point. At the moment the department are not particularly encouraging that way forward. What is being suggested is that the sizing of the plant has to be of such an order which requires all of the 70,000 tonnes as a minimum. The plant that is being spoken about is of 126,000 tonnes. That is almost twice as much as what we are producing at the moment, so when you are talking about: "Where is the incentive to encourage recycling or where is the disincentive to squeeze out recycling?" if the plant that is being recommended is twice as large as you need, what are the public going to do?

Mr. P. Robinson:

I would not agree it is twice as large as is needed. [Interruption]

Mr. T. Pitman:

I am not giving this back now, by the way, I am keeping it. [Laughter] Trevor Pitman, Chairman of the J.D.A. (Jersey Democratic Alliance). I have one point, really, and one question for the panel. Firstly, I would like to endorse what Mr. Tadier said about the German system. Having taken a group of young people to Madeira not so long ago, the same system in operation there, and we did a survey with young people afterwards: only 100, just under 140 young people, but 98 per cent of them who would support it. So it has to be a consideration. My question to you is, yes, 53 States Members; what about your responsibility? If we had a party system like most western democracies, the person appointed to be a Minister would probably be expected to have some degree of skill and hopefully would be able to do that job in the interests of the party. You all had a vote, and I know hindsight is a wonderful thing so I do not know who voted for this present Minister, but to sit here and listen to what the Deputy said about a Minister who appears to have his mind made up, he does not really seem to consider the interests of the Islanders and what is best for us and our children. You all have power: what about a vote of no confidence? Because, really, if you appoint a buffoon to a job, the results are not going to be very good, so could you not bring a vote of no confidence? Thank you.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

I think we probably could bring a vote of no confidence, but I think the more mature way to respond is to present, as scrutiny have been doing on a number of occasions, the evidence for the argument and against the argument to States Members, and that is what we have done and are doing, and allow States Members to decide.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Can I come in as well, Chairman, because my name has been connected with a vote of no confidence in a T.T.S. (Transport and Technical Services) Minister. I do not think there is anything immature about bringing a vote of no confidence, but I think the scrutiny panel's job, and certainly our job at the moment, is to conduct this review of the current technology that is being proposed and whether the recycling rate has been set too low. It is not our job this evening to discuss the sort of politics of it and what would happen, but clearly if our report convinces the States that the direction in which the Minister is set is completely wrong, then I think that will be one more reason why the States might want to remove the Minister from office. It would be untenable for the Minister to perhaps continue on his current course if the findings of our review suggest that the direction is wrong. Then I think that will certainly make life very difficult for the Minister. I would just like to pick up one other point. There has been a long exchange between a member of the public and the Chairman about the incinerator. I think there is no doubt that the incinerator technology has been around a long time, it is well proven, it is a safe option for a number of societies that are currently investing in incinerators. If we wanted to do the safe thing maybe we should build an incinerator which is sufficient for an Island which does not really tackle waste reduction and may be producing over 100,000 tonnes in 20 years' time. I believe that Jersey people want to be at the forefront of environmental progress. They do not want to be bringing up the rear ignominiously. It is true the Isle of Man built an incinerator not that many years ago and I have spoken to Isle of Man politicians who are still convinced they made the right decision, but certainly we have been to other places like Cardiff, for example, which have a lot more waste to dispose of than we do and they are doing everything they can first in terms of recycling, reusing and even reducing the amount of waste that is coming into the system in the first place before they decide on incinerator technology and before they size up for their incinerator, if indeed they need one. So I think that Jersey, if it wants to have environmental credentials, if our Chief Minister wants to go to the British and Irish Council and hold his head up for the Island as an environmental place, then I think we need to be very, very careful before we spend a lot of money. There is a huge financial cost involved in this. No one has mentioned yet the opportunity cost, which is the value of the land that will be occupied by the new incinerator at La Collette if it was used for something else. So there is a huge financial cost. There is certainly an environmental cost in terms of our reputation, and that is why I think the panel is right in having these meetings, in really examining very closely whether the Council of Ministers have got it right in endorsing the incinerator.

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for giving us all the opportunity to come and debate this issue, which is, I think, going in a very constructive vein. I was particularly pleased to hear the comments of the Connétable of St. Mary and I was a little bit disappointed to see the body language of his colleagues as he was expressing them, but that is a personal view. I think what the Constable of St. Mary made very clear was there is a cost to doing a lot of great things in terms of recycling waste. The other thing that I think struck me about what he said as the Connétable of the smallest parish in the Island - I do not mean that in any derogatory way at all - it is about scale. I think we are having a very interesting and very valuable but somewhat very aspirational debate tonight about what could be done. I think you and your panel are being a little bit hesitant, if I might say that, in terms of really putting the flesh on the bones of why we should be recycling more and where the real value of this 85 per cent of 70,000 tonnes a year lies. Perhaps you know all these figures and you are not prepared to release them yet, but you have accused the Transport Minister of rushing things through and one of my questions would be: when are you going to tell us about what the true business plan is to the aspirations that you have alluded to because, quite clearly, a lot of them have a very exciting future. But I hope they have a future in Jersey in the scale of what we have to deal with. I was disappointed to hear the Constable of St. Helier say or suggest that we were taking a somewhat ignominious attitude to dealing with our waste. I think the Island has had a very strong history of dealing with waste quite effectively. It was my understanding that when we started to incinerate and do the A.D. (anaerobic digestion) at Bellozanne we were at the cutting edge. Quite clearly, we need to remain at the cutting edge. The issue about incineration, though, and the new incinerator is one where I see it as being a simple one-stop-shop where our waste can be collected by one vehicle, delivered to one location and at that location it can be burnt, the gases can be dealt with in a modern piece of equipment so they do not pose a danger to the Island and, most importantly of all, we can get some electricity out of it, which seems a pretty valuable sort of thing to have in this day and age. Now, that is the simplistic route and your scrutiny panel seems to be suggesting a different but more complex route and I think we need to hear the business plan behind it. While you are presenting that, please do not lose sight of the fact that I believe in my own humble way that a vast majority of people in the Island want to recycle. I went with my wife to Bellozanne the other day to dump a whole load of rubbish that had been sitting in a farm shed, and the place was absolutely buzzing. There were small vehicle and large vehicles; there were commercial vehicles in there; there was a skip for computer parts; there was a skip for

an old microwave we were dumping; there was wooden waste; there was brass; there were all sorts of things out there. It was well manned. The people up there were doing a really good job. They were helpful, and I think we should applaud that. If I want to get rid of my waste, I can go down to Rue des Prés, I can go to all sorts of sites round the Island which are regularly being used by the people of this Island to help the recycling process. But in concluding I want to say this. The problem with this Island, like a lot of issues that we are grappling with nowadays, is that we have had it too easy for too long. Again, the Constable of St. Mary highlighted this. We consume what we want to consume; we buy what we want to buy; we eat what we want to eat; and if there is some left over we simply dump it in a dustbin. We put it at the end of the road or outside our houses or whatever on one day a week and off it goes. Yes, we all pay rates and suggestions have been made as to the power of the people within the Parish Hall to effect change, but that change at the parochial level can only come about if it is done cost effectively. I believe the responsibility of this is not with the States, it is not with the parish, it is with the individual. If waste has a value, then let us have a value on a dustbin, on the weight of a dustbin. At the Le Gallais family lunchtime conference on this, our conclusion was that there should be, dare I say it (smiling face from my Connétable over there in an expectant fashion), that  there  should  be  a  charge.   We  should  weigh  these  dustbins.   I  believe  the technology exists in Holland and each person can have a licence for a certain weight and if it goes over that then you get charged for it. Well, I do not think you do because we live in quite a small island and I was surprised to be told by my wife when I thought that was going to be the outcome of it that the fine for fly tipping in this Island, the maximum fine, is £10,000. There are a lot of eyes in this Island and they are pretty good on snitching on a neighbour if they are doing something wrong. I think that could be a way, but until you get this down to the individual level I think we have a steep hill to climb. Thank you very much for listening.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

If I can answer some parts of what you said, which I think was a very valuable contribution, there is no doubt that there is an issue about convenience. We buy what we want; we eat what we want; we put it at the end of the garden and it is gone. There is in an island a cost to doing everything, as you say. What I am saying and criticising of the Constable of St. Mary 's costs argument is that the States of Jersey

through the taxpayers should be assisting the Constables in enabling them to achieve what they ... well, you may disagree but this is what I believe and I am allowed to believe what I am allowed to believe, what I want to believe. I believe what they should be doing is assisting the parishes. Now, Transport and Technical Services does assist other parishes at the moment and it subsidises the collection of these services in other parishes with taxpayers' money. Now, there are facts and figures that need to be brought before the public and on 14th and 15th March we will be bringing those facts and figures to the fore for people to see what we are speaking about. But the issue is not so much about convenience; it is about responsibility and also, as pointed out earlier this evening, it is about whether or not the emerging population wants to do something for the environment. I believe the vast majority of people do want to recycle, as you said. The vast majority of people do but not only are there people that do not have vehicles to bob around the Island recycling at Bellozanne ... I was there yesterday myself doing the same thing with my wife. We applaud, we have done and I have done on a number of occasions, the operation of the recycling at Bellozanne and the staff and the facilities and everything else. But what we are saying is that more of that needs to happen in a variety of ways and you have to take on board (I will shut up after this) as well that there are people that do not have cars and there are elderly that cannot move too far away from their doorsteps with their rubbish because it is too heavy, so we need a door collection. I firmly believe - disagreed at the back there by one of my colleagues - that the States should be assisting all of the parishes, not just some of them that find favour with the Transport and Technical Services Department. It is taxpayers' money helping to subsidise St. John 's recycling service. Why is it not helping St. Mary's?

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Can I come in there? I do not believe it is taxpayers' money that is subsidising St. John . St. John is subsidising it themselves and they found the people to initially sponsor to buy the boxes. Taxpayers' money is not sponsoring St. John . They have taken it upon themselves to go down this route, but I do not believe at this moment in time that it is fully covered and I think this is where a lot of the other parishes are finding ... we want to make sure that if we are going to do something it is going to cover all of the rubbish and all the possibilities of recycling as well. I agree with the gentleman regarding that Transport and Technical are doing very good with their

recycling and that, but I do not feel they are doing enough yet. I think what you have to bear in mind, and all of you when I say bear in mind, there are virtually 3 different recycling or 3 different sections of rubbish. You have the inert waste, which is getting put back into the ... for the building community and such like. You have the household rubbish. Now, I am sure all of you, and the same with my refuse collector, if you put a chair out or a bed out or your fridge outside, he is not going to pick it up. My chap will not pick up any of those in St. Mary because he is not paid to do that. He is only paid for the household refuse and, therefore, you then had - and the figures were given, the Chairman gave them - 40,000 tonnes of household and then you have 30,000 tonnes of what you call commercial. I would like to think all of you at some stage have gone down to Bellozanne and taken your old television sets and taken your chairs and taken all the rubbish you dug out of your sheds and taken it to Bellozanne for recycling. But what has happened in the past is that you have taken it down there, they have separated it and then thrown it all in the incinerator. That is what has been happening in the past. It is not happening so much now I would like to think because of the scrutiny panel getting on to them all the time. That is what has happened in the past. I can recall many times going down over the last 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years and seeing huge piles of beds and old furniture, seeing huge piles of tyres, and they were then just incinerated. As well as you say the easy option about incineration, just remember that the more you put into the incinerator to burn, the more ash comes out of it, and the more ash that comes out of it, you have to find somewhere to put that ash. That ash is going to soon be filling the reclamation site as well. So the more you burn, the more ash you are going to get and, therefore, the less you can put in and the less stuff that you can put in, so be it. I think this is where I am coming from because, yes, the recycling, everybody wants to do more, which is quite right, too. You have gone to Bellozanne; that is great. They want to try and get 2 other sites, one out St. Brelade way, one down in Grouville way, so as people can take all this stuff so there is not any fly tipping and that that goes on. But  I think you have to differentiate slightly between the refuse collection once a week and all the other rubbish that collects, because there is a vast difference between that and this is where you have to do the separation. But the majority of the value in separation is in the aluminium cans and is in the plastic and so on as well. So I think you have to bear all that in mind in that respect, and I think we want to do more recycling so it does not go into the incinerator so we will not have ... it is just the easy option again, is the incinerator. Let us be fair, we are all prone to take the easy option, are we not?

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

If  I can come in, the Island has already adopted and wholly endorses the waste hierarchy. The waste hierarchy is very simple. It says: "At the top of your list, you reduce. Next best is you ..." [Aside] Yes, it is reduce and recycle at the top. Reuse, I beg your pardon. Reduce, reuse, recycle, energy from waste or some kind of recovery process that gets you back some type of energy and, at the bottom, landfill. Now, what it does not tell you is whether or not in endorsing that waste hierarchy you are as green as the next person if your top 3 only constitutes a small proportion of the whole waste being produced. So if you stack your energy from waste at the bottom and you have 70, 80 per cent of your waste being burnt and through an energy from waste process, you are still within the hierarchy but does that make you as good because you are only treating 20 per cent of the materials at the top in those fashions that are deemed to be more environmentally acceptable? [Interruption] The Island as a whole, yes. [Interruption]

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

Because until you distil this down to the individual, we are going to continue in this aspirational debate.

Mr. M. Tadier :

Sorry to interrupt, but I feel I need to come in on this point. One way or the other we are paying, whether it is a parish rate or whether it is an Island rate. If St. John is giving these things away, the money is coming from somewhere. It is not coming from a hole in the ground; it is coming from money that people have paid at some point. So let us not try and mystify this in any way. One way or another we are paying to get things recycled. One of the points I wanted to make - and I do not want to take a liberty here - is to say that if we are taking rubbish to the dump instead of it being collected, even in a small parish like St. Mary where there are 600 homes, if everyone has to take rubbish to one site to be recycled and they do that once a week, that is 1,200 trips that they are making. You have to think of the emissions into the atmosphere, and that is obviously ironic because it would be undoing the good that they are doing in recycling. So that is why I think it is common sense to have rubbish collection.

Mr. K. Shaw:

It is an interesting concept. Everybody would really like to recycle and there is no doubt about it, we like to get some money back for it, for the Island and for ourselves. In reality, it is rather nice to have somebody else do it for you. I have to agree with the Constable of St. Mary that it brought a touch of realism to the whole idea and what the costs are in doing it. I live in Havre des Pas and I would estimate the take-up would be 10 per cent. I do not think we are going to achieve the figures you are talking about, especially in areas where it is built up by bed-sit land and flats. It will be almost impossible to fill those places with sacks, additional bins and the ways of collecting rubbish. The concept of collecting once from one location but paying for extra equipment to sort that into economically sized items in the way of plastics, aluminium and metal is quite a good one. There is a terrific cost to recycling, whether it is the cost of bins in the road, and I have been to cities around the world where they have these underground bins that you lift up with cranes and they are lovely ideas but they are very, very expensive. We are also a very small island, like the size of a small town in the U.K. and we have to think about can we continue to sell this rubbish which we are told has high value for ever and ever. Shipping costs of items like plastic and metals to wherever will buy it are going to increase for ever and ever. We cannot sell steel easily. We are losing money on steel. We might gain money on aluminium and copper and brass. The Bellozanne dump that the gentleman over there mentioned earlier on is probably 20 years too late in what they have been doing in the last 6 months. It is a nice idea but very, very late. My concern at the moment is that it is a combination of things we will have to have. There will be some recycling, some reusing. You cannot recycle the products over and over and over again. It will have to go somewhere and we cannot dump it. It may have to be burnt. This is a combination of various technologies we are going to need. It is very important that whatever we get in the way of incinerator is a hell of a lot better than what we have at the moment. It may not be the size that has been proposed, but we do need something. We cannot just ignore the fact of the incinerator; it will be coming. The site has not been chosen perhaps yet, but we will have an incinerator. I would like to know with an island our size if there is any link or any causal link between the

acknowledged high death rate from cancer and our present incinerator, which I understand has not had any emission checks since the mid to early 1990s. If that is true, which includes perhaps the J.E.C. (Jersey Electric Company) chimney and may even include the green waste composting sites, we must be damn clear that the new incinerator is 1,000 times better than what we have got.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

A comment from the front before we answer.

Mr. D. Rotherham:

Listening tonight, there have been a number of people piecemeal making, I think, quite a good case for the M.R.F. type plant that Constable Crowcroft was mentioning at the beginning of the night, the centralised sorting facility. As Mr. Le Gallais said, the idea would be for people to take responsibility as individuals. But not everybody is the kind of person like us. We are all people who care enough to come to this meeting, but there are a lot of people out there watching the football on satellite television in the pubs tonight who really do not care where they dump their rubbish. You know, it is the non-compliance can be a problem with the shifting it on to the individuals. We are not Germany. There is a sort of bolshie culture to British and Jersey people alike that a lot of people are not compulsively compliant to these things and if you move to a centralised sorting system then you are taking the worry out of it. Even people in good faith sometimes do not know what to do with something. Take your classic blister pack, plastic on the front, paper on the back; which bin do you put it in? The really conscientious people will rip the thing apart and put each bit in half. A lot of people are not going to bother; they are just going to bin it. It is that type of thing, whereas if you move to a centralised sorting facility then the job is going to be done properly by people who are paid to do the job properly and equipped to handle things. I think that meets both the point that Constable Le Brun was making that people like easy options, and the gentleman over there whose name I did not catch was saying about how one-stop-shops are this, but if we are continuing to send the combined waste into a centralised sorting facility and it gets sorted properly by people who are equipped to do it, know what they are doing and you do not have to worry about if you have dropped a glass jar full of out-of-date jam in the rubbish bin because it is a job to spoon it all out and put the jam in the composting bin and the glass in the recycling bin. You know, the centralised facility takes the worry away from the people who do not want to be worried with it.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel: Okay, thanks.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Can I come back first on that because I think one of the things the Havre des Pas zero waste scheme has done - and it has not really had the recognition for some strange reason that St. John has had - is the only recycling scheme in the Island which is separating kitchen waste from other waste. One of the things that we are particularly interested in trying next in St. Helier is to continue the kitchen waste separation, which has gone really well. People like having a little caddy in their kitchen. They put all the peelings and the egg shells and all the things in there that are compostable, and that is taken away every week. Everything else is marvellously clean and dry. It makes sense. If you do not tip half a chicken curry into your waste bin, you find you can separate out the parts. It makes obvious sense. One of the things we want to try is a mixed dry recyclables collection so that your big wheelie bin will basically have plastic, paper, cardboard, tins, glass. It can have everything in it which is essentially not covered in chicken curry and peelings, and that kitchen waste is taken away in compost. We do not yet have an on-Island composting kit, but we have seen them at work in Preston and Manchester and smaller councils have got them up and running all over Britain. That makes useful compost that certainly as far as St. Helier is concerned we can find a use for, even if the agriculture industry still has reservations about putting it on land since foot and mouth. So we are quite excited about that because if you take out the kitchen waste, you have mixed dry recyclables which can be sorted centrally using a variety of technologies now. You have probably been to these places or seen them on the telly, but the magnets pull out some things, air pulls out other things, and you are left with very little which has to be disposed of, whether it is burning or any other thing. So I think it may well be that we need some kind of incinerator. We need some kind of facility for what is left, but there is no doubt we can take a lot more out of the waste stream than we are at the moment. The word "aspirational" has been used pejoratively. I think aspirational is a good thing. We are a very aspirational scrutiny committee because we think that Jersey in the past has aspired to being at the cutting edge. The ultraviolet sewage treatment plant was something that people came to Jersey to visit. Surfers Against Sewage surfed on our outfall from our sewage plant, but you can be absolutely sure if we put in an incinerator, however modern it is, we are not going to get many visitors who come to see Jersey's incinerator. I want to see Jersey embracing a waste solution which people come and visit, and that is really one of the reasons why I am on this committee.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

I think also if I can just add to what the Constable is saying because this is the district where one of the gentlemen here this evening lives and I have been representing for a number of years and working with. It is true to say that there are some people in the scheme that are not happy. They have their refuse collected as normal. There are some people that have come to love and appreciate the recycling system down there and the separation that is occurring. They find it is part of their ordinary, normal, daily life. They have got used to it; they like it; they want it to continue; they want it to expand. Most importantly, I think (I do not have the exact figures) something like 54 per cent were the figures that we managed to recycle in that scheme. Not 32 per cent which is the States target, 54 per cent. [Interruption] Yes, we have the figures.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Just picking up on one of the health points that was made by one of the people here tonight, there was a suggestion that in some ways we are all being poisoned or whatever by the gas emissions that are coming out of the existing kit. Indeed, it was mentioned about the same things happening with perhaps the J.E.C. chimney and maybe even the crematorium plant and, once we start, what about ordinary people running coal fires, fires in the winter, though we have not had to light too many, I hope. There is a whole load of issues there which would suggest that if, indeed, it could be shown by our Environmental Health Department, which is set up to legally look after the public health of the Island and they have the powers to close down any particular piece of kit that is being used in an unsound fashion, in particular if it is poisoning us, does the public think that the department would still be around not looking after our interests and somehow trying to hide kind of bad emissions if those effects were well recorded? If that is the case, we have another scrutiny issue to look into whether or not the Environmental Health Services are doing their job. I think they are doing their job and although there perhaps have not been as many surveys done in the immediate past, those surveys have been done. They are all on file; they are all capable of being read by the public. I think it goes without saying to say that if you have a piece of kit it is not necessarily the piece of kit that is to blame, it is how you use it. A number of the materials that we are burning do not burn particularly well and the point that is being made, I think, more and more by other authorities is that if you do not need to burn these materials and they do represent in terms of the waste hierarchy a low environmental method of disposing of those materials, then you go to the top of the waste hierarchy and you find ways to take them out of the waste stream, bearing in mind that there is a cost to be borne at any level.

Mr. N. Palmer:

I mentioned my environmental credentials the first time I spoke. Now, perhaps it might surprise you by saying: "What is the point of recycling at all? What is the point of preserving wildlife? What is the point of conserving energy? If we are going to have an incinerator, why should we bother having gas cleaning on it at all? In fact, why have an incinerator at all? Why not just throw it in the sea?" The £15,000 gorilla in the room is the word "sustainability". All of that, all environmental plans are because it is a tacit recognition that the way we do things at the moment is not sustainable and things do have to change. While I applaud what the scrutiny panel are doing, most of what they are saying is what is achievable now at this very moment, but the road to achieving sustainability, it will be quite a long time. The planned obsolescence society and the consumer society may have been with us 50 or 60 years; maybe it will take 25, 30 years to achieve a sustainable society. Along the way many, many things will change: products will be redesigned; they will be using different materials; transport systems will be different; fuels used will be different. The whole of what will be capable of being recycled and reused will change radically over the next 35 years. I have read the policy statement, the Waste Management Policy of Transport and Technical Services, in its entirety. The need to achieve a sustainable society, which is the reason for half of the expense that they are going to have to put into a new incinerator, is just not there. I wonder if the panel finds that a useful point of view.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

I think I agree with you. It probably is even worse than that. In reviewing the recent energy consultation documents for the energy strategy, there were statements to the effect that the Island was wholeheartedly endorsing sustained economic growth rather than sustainable economic growth. There is a world of difference between the 2 points of view and the Island has adopted sustainability in its long-term strategies. But I think part and parcel of the discussions that are taking place in other areas, the 2033 exercise, Imagine Jersey, and the potential for increased immigration, extra wealth generation, perhaps to the disadvantage of locals, all of these things are tied up, absolutely right, in the word "sustainability" or, in our case, probably the opposite of that.

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

Sorry, I would just like to follow up on a point you made and also the Constable of St. Helier a moment ago, Mr. Chairman. You had a little sort of ... you suddenly got into full flood about environmental health and Bellozanne and chimney emissions and all sorts of things. We are all here still. If there are things to improve, I am sure they can be improved. But let us keep our feet on the ground and, while we are keeping our feet on the ground, can I just say that if any of the Havre des Pas food waste that St. Helier parish is so carefully storing and composting gets on any agricultural land in this Island, that will prove the undoing of our industry. We know that the foot and mouth epidemic - horrendous epidemic in the U.K. in, when was it, 2001, 2002 - occurred through food waste. I think the simple thing to food waste is people should value their food, and what they have on their plate they should jolly well eat. That is the way a lot of people were brought up and I think if people want to chuck it away then it has a very, very, very high cost of disposal. It cannot go anywhere near someone's vegetable patch. It cannot go on any agricultural land because it poses an enormous risk. I would like to follow that up with the lady who brought up the issue of A.D., which is a very, very topical issue and, again, is one that is, I think, relevant in terms of scale. I, like many dairy farmers in this Island, am looking to increase the storage of slurry and farm waste on my farm because we are having to comply with new government regulations. I have looked at setting up an anaerobic digestion plant, either on my farm or collectively with my neighbour. A.D. on the face of it sounds a very good idea, but if you introduce food waste along with cattle slurry and other green waste, then that product that comes off must be pasteurised to a specific temperature before it goes anywhere. We have to understand what this risk is and what it poses, not just to the Island's dairy herd but also to wildlife in this Island, to the zoo and to anyone who has any form of care over animals. Food waste is an enormous risk and must be handled very, very carefully because unfortunately we are in a consumer society and there is no traceability to a vast amount of food that we are quite happy to either stuff in our mouths or leave on the side of our plates if we do not like it.

Mr. D. Rotherham:

Where does the human slurry go to, then? It goes to Bellozanne.

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

Yes, because it gets spread out as well.

Male Speaker:

It goes on the fields.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Can I just take issue with Mr. Le Gallais? Mr. Le Gallais is a dairy farmer and he knows his onions, he knows his subject, but if he is right and food waste is some kind of nuclear waste that is dangerous, I would like to know why we have seen respected authorities in the U.K. composting food waste up to the right temperature, having it tested by D.E.F.R.A. (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) and passed for use on fields. Now, okay, so if the whole of Manchester has got it wrong then we need to get back in touch with them, but we have seen ... part of our job as a scrutiny panel is to listen to all views. We have heard your view that food waste is some kind of nuclear waste that needs to be treated with enormous care. We have also spoken to professionals in the field of agriculture and composting who simply do not agree with you. What I would invite you to do is to come to our exhibition on 14th March and you will see pieces of kit that heat up this stuff and cook it so that it is not a danger. In any case, I did preface my remarks by saying that when we get round to composting our green waste in St. Helier , we will use it in our Parks and Gardens Department. We will not be putting it on fields. My final remark is that if compost is

so dangerous, how come for centuries people have been putting their peelings and their egg shells on a compost heap at the bottom of the garden and spreading it across their vegetables? This is not new technology, composting. You know, we are not talking about people putting the spinal fluids of diseased animals in their green waste. Now, most people do not get spinal columns of infected animals in their kitchen in the first place, not if they shop at a proper butcher. So I accept where you are coming from, but I think there is a certain amount of scaremongering going on here and I think we need to look at all the science when it comes to food waste composting because, as I said in my earlier remarks, if we can take food waste out of what we are putting out for the rubbish people to collect, we have a much simpler task when it comes to sorting out the recyclables.

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

Some of the issues ... [Interruption].

Deputy S.C. Ferguson of St. Brelade :

I was going to confirm that. It is my understanding - and I am certain that the panel will know this as well - that the U.K. supermarkets, who buy a terrific amount of stuff from us, will not touch stuff where the land has been fertilised with compost that includes food waste. Now, cattle slurry is fine because that is a vegetarian animal, but you get food waste and stuff like that ...

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Well, what about sewage? We put sewage sludge at the moment on our agricultural fields. That is human excrement which is being ...

Deputy S.C. Ferguson:

We are not putting sludge on our fields, I did not understand.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Well, I think you will find that we do as long as sufficient time elapses between the application of the sludge and the harvesting. But it may be different for ...

Deputy S.C. Ferguson:

Well, Andrew can talk about that, perhaps. Can you confirm that for me, Andrew?

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

We are not putting it on there, but there are one or 2 sites in the Island which are not used for agricultural production where sewage, liquid sewage, is used. My understanding is that a lot of it is pelleted and even that which is pelleted, which obviously has to go to a very high temperature, that is not allowed. It is not because the department do not want to use it, it is because the supermarkets, as the Deputy of St. Brelade is saying, will not allow it.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

It is our experience that it is not a widespread experience across all of the supermarket outlets. Some supermarkets do allow properly composted materials according to the standard, the P.A.S. (publicly available specification) 100 standard, to go back on to agricultural fields. The clear reasoning for laying down these standards is to make sure that if you do have ruminants grazing on lands, then they do not eat these materials until they have been incorporated into the soils because, as we all know, cows eat grass. The B.S.E. (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) problem was not caused by feeding compost made from household waste to cattle. It was the cattle farmers themselves chopping up chicken remains and feathers and God knows what in order to get some kind of vegetable ... or, sorry, protein supplements to their feedstock in order to come forward with heavier milk yields. In fact, in effect ... [Interruption]

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

There is none of that product in our animal feed. Sorry, there is none of that.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

There is not at the moment but there was. There was. That is what the big ...

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

I think you want to be careful how you say that. Whether that was the case I am not prepared  to  say,  but  look,  we  are  not  going  to  get  anywhere  if  this  ends  up  in scaremongering.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel: I agree with that.

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

I just simply wanted to bring to this debate an issue that in the right spirit of things the Havre des Pas residents were separating food waste and St. Helier is composting it. Great. If the Constable can say it is being done to the right temperature in the right way, fantastic. If it is used on the parks and gardens, even more fantastic. But let us get the thing in proportion. As a farmer in this Island, as Deputy Ferguson has said, there are some strict rules that we have to adhere to for some very clear reasons and I do not think we should be going anywhere near trying to compromise the efforts that farmers in this Island are trying to achieve with high quality products to suit a particular line when there are other alternatives. There is a risk.

Deputy P.V.F. Le Claire:

I think it is important - because I have done quite a substantial amount of work on this topic - for us to say that if we wanted to talk about compost we could be here all evening talking about compost. But can I just allay some fears that people may have. The Transport and Technical Services Department, through its Chief Officer and its Minister, have offered this panel the opportunity to visit the composting operations to look at the data, to look at the expertise that is being put in down there by the staff, and to look at the land bank that they are using the process on, and to understand the issues, and then to see whether or not the theory of composting, what we believe can be composted in in-vessel containers, can occur. But where we are suggesting that the deposit of that material happens is nowhere near agricultural land. It is on amenity land or other land that has been identified within the energy policy. I have already written this week to the Environment Department to ask them where they drew up their figures from and their land base from. They are going to supply us that information so we will be able to understand where they find their figures from that is outside of agriculture. From our experience and from our understanding, there is more than enough land available. We are discussing this with Transport and Technical Services at the moment. Nobody in Jersey would dismiss the concerns of agriculture. They would be a fool as a politician if they did. They are very minded about the protocols from the supermarkets. So we understand quite clearly the issues about the 10 years, if things are dropped on to the fields of farmers and the risk not just to one farmer but to Jersey as an industry in agriculture. We understand that clearly, so let us put an end to that there. You made a very clear point. Unfortunately, it was run off with before we were able to say that fundamentally we understand the necessity to make everybody understand that the Jersey agricultural process and the product that is derived from it is first class, world class, and we are going to make sure it stays that way. At the same time, we have information and evidence that the processes of open windrow composting at La Collette could be done in a better way and a cheaper way and a more environmentally friendly way, and that is what we hope to demonstrate to you.

Mr. A. Le Gallais:

Thank you for your reassurance.

Mr. M. Tadier :

Okay, so we have the compost issue out the way and I feel a bit relieved to have that clarified. I just want to state the position from what I see it as the position we are in with the proposed plant. The way I look at it is that Jersey is being told to reduce its waste, just like any sensible place in the world should do, and that is why we do not need a bigger plant. If we are being told to reduce our waste, we will presumably have less waste so we do not need a bigger plant which is more expensive. That is just the point I would like to make. The question I would like to ask is a question that I asked Guy de Faye on the radio, and that is to clarify the reason that the actual alternative plant, this plant we have heard about - I do not know the actual name of it, the super plant which is supposed to be able to process everything for you - was not accepted. It was also going to be proposed in Orkney. I do not know if they have gone ahead with it. I know the gentleman, a Scott ish guy called Bill Findlay. He has just been over to the U.S., as Simon Crowcroft has confirmed, because they think this plant is such a good idea that they want to install a few of them in the U.S. Seemingly not good enough for Jersey, though. From what I understood, it was not a question of time because I think he could have set it up in time in Jersey. So what was the real reason that this plant, which is seemingly greener, cheaper, and he said that he would have taken it down if it did not work, free of charge, was not adopted?

The Connétable of St. Helier :

Well, as I said in answer to the lady who asked about this process, the parish of St. Helier - and the Constables were all aware of this because we discussed it several times on the committee - we were fully hoping that this new technology would be set up in St. Helier . In fact, we had approval from our Parish Assembly to provide a shed in which this would take place. The Transport and Technical Services Minister was happy for that to happen and it was all looking very rosy. The fact was that the chaps running the company - I think it was early on in their process - simply did not think they could make it work here. Maybe they were offered more money elsewhere, I am not sure of their reasons, but the next thing I heard was that our 100,000, which is what the Assembly voted, was less attractive than setting up the plant in the U.S. They also had a lot of interest from a dominant supermarket chain in the U.K. so I know there is interest there. I think it probably does not matter. It would have been nice to have had the first European trial in Jersey and that is one of the reasons I encouraged them, but the fact was they took a commercial decision not to proceed with it in Jersey. But we have recently heard from them and they are now offering us free tickets to the U.S. to see the plant, so it may well be that that should happen. Personally, I would rather send the doubters over to the U.S. rather than go myself because I have seen the product. They have shown it to me and I have seen the plastic that comes out of a plant that is currently working in the U.S. I would rather send over the T.T.S. Minister if he is still in office and the Chief Minister, either the present one or the next one. I would like to send them over to the U.S. to see the plants in operation because I think it is important. I come back to the finances of it. The Island is about to spend over £100 million plus the opportunity cost on old technology and if there is new technology that we can bring into Jersey which will make us a place that people want to come and see this kind of plant working, I would far rather be going with the new technology. There may be a certain "untestedness" about it and I can understand why the engineers at T.T.S. feel happier with incineration, but as someone said earlier, Jersey has been at the cutting edge and I think we can be there again.

Mr. D. Rotherham:

I would just like to support Mr. Le Gallais' concern for the industry. I think we all need to make sure that is protected. We must not lose sight of the fact that whatever you put on the land, almost wherever you put it, it is going to leach down into the water supply. The Constable of St. Mary knows about that. He had areas in his parish polluted by T.T.S. some time ago, if I remember rightly. In St. Peter (we do not have anybody from St. Peter here) the airport polluted all the water supplies in that area beneath it. At the moment, we have a lot of nitrates in our drinking water and that is evidenced by the water going out to St. Aubin's Bay, I presume, with the high incidence of sea lettuce, I think it is called. So whatever you put on the land and almost wherever you put it will have an implication on what we are drinking and what we are eating.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Right, I notice we have a couple of minutes before 9.00 p.m. so we will take 2 last points of view.

Connétable P.F. Ozouf of St. Saviour :

Firstly, I have concerns about the large plant which they are proposing for incineration. With all of the options that appear to be available and the uncertainty in the quantity of material that is likely to be burnt, I would have thought we would have been better having a plant that would have a number of streams that we could ramp up if the quantity of material was necessary to be burnt, rather than having one big plant that would only work effectively with a vast amount of material to be burnt. Then if we found we were not having the material because recycling was becoming more successful, we could shut down a stream and then eventually shut down a second stream and then the plant would last 3 times as long. To say we have to have one huge plant, I suspect is a lot cheaper to put in than 3 smaller streams, but to have one plant that requires a lot of material to get the benefit so that we can get energy from it strikes me as being short-sighted. That is just one point. I would just like to say also that I am very pleased that you have come as a committee to come here and give us the opportunity of hearing this. I look forward to hearing the figures that you say are going to be coming out with your report because I think that could be crucial. Thank you all very much for coming.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Thank you. One final question from the gentleman in the yellow.

Mr. D. Moody:

Very quick, where is the fuel farm going to go? At the moment, at 10.00 a.m. on a Monday morning they test the sirens there in case there is a disaster in that area. So obviously to have a plant there plus a fuel farm just is not viable. So that fuel farm is the one that has to go or an incinerator is not going to be put there. Those are the 2 options. Thank you.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Just to finish off and to tell the audience, there is a body of work being undertaken at the moment to assess the absolute requirement for moving the fuel farm. I think it is fair to say that the cost of moving it is of the order of some £40 million at the moment as an added cost. But these costs have to be taken into account for whatever solution the Island determines for dealing with its long-term waste management strategy. That is one of the things that we will be addressing when our report is brought out in March. Right, okay, I think it is probably only fair, unless the lady in blue has a very, very quick one?

Ms. C. Beech:

If I could just say quickly, you said that the Havre des Pas testing of the recycling went very well. Was it a couple of years ago or 18 months ago? It is a bit disappointing that you have not made a larger area in St. Helier or perhaps offered the chance of trying this with some of the other parishes. As I say, I am dying to have a go at St. Lawrence and encouraging it there. I agree with you, if Cardiff can do so well with recycling before they decide on a plant, I feel that that surely is the way to go, that we try and see how well we do as an Island, not just one or 2 little places, how well we can do. If we can all manage to get going with this recycling and see how much we can cut down, then we will know how big a plant we need rather than guessing and hoping and assuming.

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Right. Final word from the Constable of St. Helier , then?

The Connétable of St. Helier :

I agree and certainly, as I said earlier, I have now committed to the electorate that we are going to roll out recycling across the parish and being, you know, a third of the Island it is going to be quite enough work for me to get that in place. But I will be talking to my fellow Constables and if we can find ways, for example, certain things could be collected on an Island-wide basis, certain recyclables, it may pay to have it done like that. We talk to each other every fortnight. There are no walls between the parish Constables and we will certainly be working together to achieve what your vision is for the Island.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Certainly from the St. Mary point of view, I look forward to St. Helier up and running because we certainly have visions that I can sell all my rubbish to St. Helier and then, you know, he will pay us for it. So we will get something back on our rates in that respect, so I am really looking forward to St. Helier being up and running and have a thriving business there.

The Connétable of St. Helier :

We already have his composting site!

Deputy R.C. Duhamel:

Okay. Well, I think on that note it is past the time allotted and I would like to thank everybody for their forthright expressions and opinions. We will certainly take the viewpoints expressed here into account. Thank you for attending the meeting.