Funding Waste Recycling - Minister for Transport and Technical Services - Transcript - 22 October 2009

STATES OF JERSEY

Environment Scrutiny Panel

THURSDAY, 22nd OCTOBER 2009

Panel:

Deputy P.J. Rondel of St. John (Chairman) Connétable J.M. Refault of St. Peter

Witnesses:

Connétable M.K. Jackson of St. Brelade (The Minister for Transport and Technical Services) Mr. J. Rogers (Acting Chief Officer, Transport and Technical Services)

Mr. J. Rive (Recycling Officer, Transport and Technical Services)

Ms. E. Littlechild (Acting Director of Waste)

Present:

Mr. M. Haden (Scrutiny Officer) Mr. M. Orbell (Scrutiny Officer)

Deputy P.J. Rondel of St. John (Chairman):

For the purpose of the record, I am Deputy Phil Rondel, chairman of the Environment Scrutiny Panel. We will go round the table and if you could give your names please and your position in your department.

Ms. E. Littlechild (Acting Director of Waste):

I am Ellen Littlechild, the Acting Director of Waste.

Mr. J. Rogers (Acting Chief Officer, Transport and Technical Services): John Rogers, the Acting Chief Officer of Transport and Technical Services.

Connétable M.K. Jackson of St. Brelade (The Minister for Transport and Technical Services): Mike Jackson , the Minister for Transport and Technical Services.

Mr. J. Rive (Recycling Officer, Transport and Technical Services): John Rive, Recycling Officer, Transport and Technical Services.

Mr. M. Orbell (Scrutiny Officer): Malcolm Orbell, Scrutiny Officer.

Mr. M. Haden (Scrutiny Officer): Mike Haden, Scrutiny Officer.

Connétable J.M. Refault of St. Peter :

John Refault, member of the Environment Scrutiny Panel.

The Deputy of St. John :

Today we are here to review the recycling terms of reference, the current revenue budget - which I believe we all work off the same hymn sheet - and the occasions of temporary additional funding grants in the States and the Business Plan for 2009, and additional capital and revenue budget requirements identified by Transport and Technical Services for 2010/2011. If we take our spreadsheet and we will start off with paper and card. You are looking for an additional required revenue budget within your budget of £240,000. Your current revenue budget figure is £225,000. Can you please explain ... well, give me some detail in this saying how you propose to get this additional revenue.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

This is perhaps the challenge for my chief officer.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Thank you. Within the States debate on the Energy from Waste plant it was agreed that we would aim for a recycling rate of 36 per cent. To achieve this we put within our model of waste arisings the figures which have come out with this is the money we need to achieve that figure of 36 per cent. Now, we have never anticipated that to be done in a one-year period, and I think we were aiming at 36 per cent recycling being provided in 2018, so the figure of £240,000 is the additional budget at today's prices we would need to meet that recycling figure of 36 per cent.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

That is very clear.  Thank you, John.

The Deputy of St. John : That is by 2018, you say?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, that was looking at ...

The Deputy of St. John :

You are looking at a 9-year spread?

Mr. J. Rogers:

It is just looking at how we could achieve it because it is effectively doubling the amount of ... we are quite effective with paper and cardboard now but looking at the actual amount in the Island and how much we can get out, looking at models that we have looked from other areas, we are looking at that timeline. Without a fiscal driver it is very hard to achieve.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

I see from your notes you are looking to double the amount of tonnage exported, are you not?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Is that a realistic aspiration? Is there not a downturn in packaging? There is a general green movement towards reducing packaging so would that not translate into a reduction in your volumes?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In theory yes, but in practice in an Island situation it is not as easy as that because you can take the packaging out and then stuff comes over broken, so there is a base amount. So John might have a

remark to make on that, but what is your feeling?

Mr. J. Rive:

Keep in mind a proportion of that is paper, so it is office paper and newspaper and so on, and there is not a great deal of evidence, to my knowledge, of that figure reducing. There have been aspirations for more electronic office space, communications and so on, but the reality, I think, is that that is at a steady state. Possibly cardboard packaging would reduce in the longer term but I think in that period that we are looking at we felt that that growth was realistic for combined paper and card.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

What sort of attention have you paid to the fact that the latest sort of survey on the retail trade has shown there is a 3 per cent downturn on the non-food items being bought. Obviously that is going to translate into less packaging as well because there are less items being bought so obviously less items being shipped in. Have you looked at that ... extrapolated that over the period to see if that were to be a constant trend how would that affect your targets and therefore your budgets?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think, if I could pick that one up, these figures were based on the work we did prior to the strategy the year before. The economic downturn and the effect on Island was not built into those. We have seen a downturn in overall waste, as the U.K. (United Kingdom) and Europe because of the economic downturn. There will be an effect, absolutely. What tends to happen is our recycling rate has dropped this year because the proportion of waste has changed.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Interesting. Just for the sake of ... it would be interesting to know, have you got a rate of percentage of the downturn and amount of waste you have been collecting?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Well, we have certainly seen on inert waste a significant drop from the commercial activity that we have got at La Collette but that is probably due to the building industry. It is difficult because it is a cyclic thing and depends if the digging foundations are ... but we have seen a significant drop in the waste at La Collette, the inert waste which goes over the tip head.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Would you put that down as a direct relationship to the downturn in the economy?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes.  A portion of it, yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Have you seen a similar sort of downturn on the weighbridge down at Bellozanne?

Mr. J. Rogers: We have.

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, the forecast for 2009 is about 70,000 tonnes and the previous years it has been certainly mid-70s and we have had 80,000 tonnes so there is evidence a proportion of that is extra recycling over the last few years. But there is evidence that ... certainly plateau I think would probably be the best way to describe how the total non-inert waste ...

The Deputy of St. John :

So therefore, within that, on your household ... I know there are only 3 Parishes who have got a household paper collection, for instance, they have been going now roughly 3 years, has the paper collection been reduced given that if there is a credit crunch - well, we know there is - are people buying as many newspapers and recycling them back through or not?

Mr. J. Rive:

The only figure I could refer to which would give any evidence of that is our overall paper recycling rate, and that has not reduced in that period, we have seen steady growth in paper recycling literally in the last sort of 7 to 8 years ... 9 years, and the last 2 or 3 years the kerbside is coming online, and it is 4 Parishes now. It seems to have added to that figure every year, so there is growth in recycling still in papers.

The Deputy of St. John :

Going back to where you would have had, Minister, in the 3 Parishes, the fourth only came on to stream last year, was it?

Mr. J. Rive:

The beginning of this year.

The Deputy of St. John :

So that could be skewing your figures.

Mr. J. Rive:

You mean hiding ... potentially, yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

The other point, Chairman, is that - and the reporter might confirm this - but newspaper readership generally is down, and I think that is fairly well accepted that could have an effect, difficult to say.

The Deputy of St. John :

Mike, are there any questions you would like to ask?

Mr. M. Haden:

One really; I suppose budget is £225,000 paper to card and yet the spending last year was way above that, £348,000 was spent, how do you cope with that extra spending?

Mr. J. Rive:

I am not sure what you are referring to.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : That is a question for Ellen.

Mr. M. Haden:

Just to repeat it, the revenue budget down there is £225,000 but the figures that you gave us of the actual spend last year from paper to card was £348,000. The actual spend on the recycling of paper and cardboard so your spending is way above your budget for that particular ...

Ms. E. Littlechild:

It is actually to do with the subsidy rate was a lot higher at the beginning of 2008, John.

Mr. J. Rive:

No, the ... certainly this year the subsidy has increased because of the reduction in the value of the materials after the September price crash last year but I cannot think what that figure would be because that does not sound familiar for paper and card.

Mr. M. Haden:

It was the figure you gave us in your submissions.  Maybe something you could clarify later.

Mr. J. Rive: Sure, yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

So you will come back to that one. It is just that we obviously get these things on record wherever possible and from time to time if I or the Connétable have omitted to ask a question I will refer to one of my officers to prompt us, i.e. or put the question.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Fine.

The Deputy of St. John :

Right, we will move on to fridge recycling and the additional requirement of £50,000 where your current revenue budget is £12,000. Could we have ... I presume the answer would be not unsimilar to what you gave on the earlier one, but give us an explanation.

Mr. J. Rogers:

The key issue with fridges is CFCs (Chloroflurocarbon). We currently degas the CFCs and the CFC which is within the compressor and the actual refrigerant mechanism. One of the ways fridges are built is insulation is done with CFCs. Ideally we should be shipping the fridges to a plant in Europe or the U.K., which shreds the insulation and encapsulates the CFCs as they are given off. Currently all we can do within the budget constraint is degas the mechanism and then the shredding and the release of that CFC still happens within the scrap yard.

The Deputy of St. John :

I note that you are in fact doing this and venting to the atmosphere which is obviously not good for the ozone.  Have you got an explanation other than what you have already given?

Mr. J. Rogers:

No, we have not got a budget to do ... we have approved concept and we have shipped fridges.  We did a trial in 2006 unsuccessfully handled shipped fridges in bulk to the U.K. for processing but since then we have had to revert back to the degassing with a local specialist contractor.

The Deputy of St. John :

Of course this is not acceptable, not by the E.U. (European Union) in fact, not by myself either. I think it is a non-accepted practice.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

We were talking earlier on about this and I just could not understand where the CFCs were coming from within the insulating materials.  Is it in the form of bubble wrap and the gases are within that?

Mr. J. Rive:

In the construction of modern fridges, as John has mentioned, the circulation system which provides the cooling in the body of the fridge, and it seems by coincidence CFCs were also used as a blowing agent in the insulation foam, so in the body of the fridge you have got very good insulation to make it more efficient.  I think in the early part of this decade, 2002, both those products were effectively banned from the manufacturing process.  But there is the same, if not more, of those CFCs in that insulation foam.  So effectively you have got foam with void spaces in which has the CFCs in the gaps, and that is the bit that is being controlled now because just doing the mechanism is not sufficient because when you shred the fridge you effectively release the gases that are in the insulation foam, and that is the bit we would like to do.

The Deputy of St. John :

John, have you got something else to add on to that?

Mr. J. Rogers: No.

The Deputy of St. John :

Right, we move on from that one to the W.E.E.E.s (waste electrical and electronic equipment) recycling where you are looking for £100,000 over and above. Can you please come in on that one, John.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Certainly, yes. Waste electrical and electronic equipment effectively goes into 2 elements. One is anything with a cathode-ray tube, televisions are the main one, and computer monitors. The other bit is small electrical goods. However, best practice proposal with televisions and what we have been undertaking this year with a backlog of 40 full trailer loads of televisions and monitors that we have been sending as a shipment to a processing plant in the U.K. for dismantling in the controlled environment. Again, it is about dismantling it with the hazardous materials within the cathode-ray tube being controlled and dealt with effectively.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

What sort of gate charges are you getting when you are sending them to the U.K.?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I will hand over to my colleague.

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, it is about £7 a unit, I think. That is the cost.

The Connétable of St. Peter : Per unit?

Mr. J. Rive: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Would you not consider then there is an opportunity for a local entrepreneur to start doing that locally?

Mr. J. Rive:

We visited a number of facilities in the U.K. before we went down this route, and clearly to make sure that we were dealing with companies that were reputable and so on, and the process met the standards that we expected. There are a very small number. The scale of making a facility like this work ... the economies of scale required to make it work are generally very large. I am not sure how many there are but there certainly would not be enough of a stream from Jersey to warrant running such a facility in the Island, the large facilities relying on the fact that there is an enormous throughput of units. It is adjusted by the scale.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think it also needs to be added that the labour used in these establishments is not as a sort of labour we would have plenty of in the Island.  We have been very keen to keep an accurate audit trail on the products that leave the Island and go to the U.K. and there is a bit of paper that appears at every movement.  In fact, we were talking earlier on, the process of transporting waste electrical goods by road in the U.K. is really quite onerous and of course it is far cheaper to transport new ones than second hand ones or scrap ones.

The Deputy of St. John :

On that point then, is there not a merit in your department, along with the Council of Ministers, putting in a charge at the time of purchase on all these products?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Indeed, and fridges, electricals, you are absolutely right, but I think if I can just refer to Ellen, I think you made a comment earlier on that it was deemed more appropriate that if we put on an environmental tax the actual administrative costs for collecting that tax at the moment is deemed to be higher than the return it would give. Effectively, I think you worked out roughly it was going to be about £12-£15 a television set, something like that, the disposal cost. I am not sure what it is for a fridge. But those are the sort of figures involved. In an ideal world that would be the correct route to go down.

The Deputy of St. John :

But surely an environmental tax affects everybody but if you put a user pay tax, i.e. user pay charge, on every item that is used. If I am going out to buy a new television at the time of buying I should be paying for the disposal of it at that rate at the time of buying, so therefore the Island has already got the finances in hand to be able to dispose of it 5 or 10 years later down the road.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

As long as the administration costs do not outweigh the return.

The Deputy of St. John :

This is an area I would expect your departments to be working on.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In effect, we need to be working with probably Customs who obviously filter the ports in order to do that, and that is something I agree with you entirely, we should be evaluating.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think there is a difficulty with ... I think you are absolutely right. The principle of what you have suggested is perfect because you can change your behaviour to avoid the tax. The difficulty is administration of that and the cost of administration of that, and there is a potential of penalising the local suppliers versus internet suppliers and it becomes a more complicated issue. As the Minister has suggested it then becomes a Customs issue and it has been reviewed as part of the environmental tax proposals.

The Deputy of St. John :

But at the same time, have the Ministers not basically been told by the U.K. and others that we should be dealing directly with the E.U. with E.U. proposals, i.e. of this type, to find out exactly what is going on in the rest of Europe, and therefore should we not be trying to tie something up with the E.U. to make sure that we can move in the same direction and costs are put on at the time of purchase?

Mr. J. Rogers:

The W.E.E.E. directive, which I think, John, you could expand on, is exactly what that is. It is a mechanism whereby the supplier of that electrical equipment pays for the disposal of the old equipment, but that is a European Directive and it does not apply here, but, John, we have had some inquiries on that.

Mr. J. Rive:

We have, we did look at the possibility with the Environment Agency that administer the W.E.E.E. directive in the U.K., a possibility of obviously what ... what happens in the U.K. now is that the original manufacturers receive costs back of the recycling so it is even before the customer, although the customer clearly pays for it because that will be returned to the customer, but our thinking was that because most of our electronic equipment sourced from the U.K. comes down to Jersey and effectively for recycling it goes back, we could tie in with the U.K. W.E.E.E. regulations and effectively have, if we pay the shipping costs we would have free recycling as part of their system.  A meeting was held with the Environment Agency over that and the initial reaction to that suggestion was that they would not think that to be appropriate, but it would certainly be one that would be worth revisiting, I think, as time goes on, but we have asked that question and the answer at the time was that they were not feeling they would be taking part in such an exercise.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think there is one important thing to add, Chairman, on this with regard to televisions particularly, one might have thought that with the advent of flat screen televisions there would be a reduction in volume coming through and that has been the case to a certain degree but it has to be remembered that these things are almost seasonal and that Christmas will bring along another influx of the old sets.  We are also aware that in the new flat screen sets there is a small amount of mercury so they will still have to go through the same rigorous conditions as the present ones do unfortunately.

The Deputy of St. John :

Getting back to shipping of these. I am given to understand, because I was approached by a local contractor who was quite keen on taking over or taking on your disposal of televisions and the like, who lives in the Parish of St. John . Yet he complains that in fact he has basically had no response from the department in relation to that. What is your view in pushing this out into the private sector for the disposal of these sets?

Mr. J. Rive:

We have been through 2 tendering exercises because almost all this work already is in the private sector and we started as a trial in - I think it was 2007 - with an arrangement whereby it was a combination of our workforce and an external contractor, and we decided to go through a tendering process as is right in those circumstances. We tendered the specification, it was a complete package, so inviting private companies to literally pick monitors and T.V.s up from Bellozanne and deal with everything downstream, so that is taking them away, advertising them, exporting and dealing with the external recyclate and we did have ... and we advertised that as we always do in the Jersey Evening Post. We did have some interest in that and we did have a tender but the tender was not ... we did not accept the tender that was presented to us. So we ended up breaking the process down into dealing with the outlet ourselves and tendering that, so that is the U.K. reprocessor, tendering the shipping part and working with a local contractor to do the local handling. So the actual mechanism is still the same but we have been through 2 competitive tendering processes to get to the process as it is.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Just to clarify, we did not accept it because it was double our budget. So we had to look at a more innovative way of providing that which broke the supply chain down so that we took the risk perhaps that was being built into the price away, which is why we have got the prices to what we have there today.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Just carrying on from that: just recently you would have seen in the media - Mike, you will be aware of it - there was an incidence with housing where they sought local tenders against a U.K. tenderer to do some work and the local tenderer was something like a third higher than the U.K. tenderer. Any thoughts about looking at a U.K. contractor for tendering this work? I know at the moment we are trying to keep the funds within Jersey and not have any economic leakage, as they call it, but at the same time if we can get this work done cheaper by employing a U.K. contractor to do it directly, at a significant advantage to your budget, then perhaps that is an avenue we ought to consider.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, we are quite satisfied with ... the cost challenge we applied after the tendering process and what we have looked at since then has looked at probably a value for money benefit that we did not expect in terms of our previous estimates, so I think we have really challenged this because of the original price we had. There is a local element to it, but predominantly most of the cost is on the shipping in the U.K. and transportation off the Island by the ferry company, and also the processing.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In a way, the way it is structured is probably the best way to satisfy the local situation, if you like. My preference would always be to use local contractors wherever possible and if they are a smidgen more one could justify it, but I think if there is a significant difference it would need serious consideration.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

It would be a useful exercise to go through the exercise in putting the tender out to a potential U.K. contractor to see whether in fact it could be done cheaper.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

If only to challenge the local ones into ...

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Well, yes, or to find a contractor who can do it cheaper than doing it in-house at the moment to improve your bottom line. Clearly if the money is going to cause an economic leakage it has got to be a significant advantage, but the bottom line is the situation at the moment we need to find more cost effective ways of doing things.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Absolutely. In terms of our ... this is an outsourced service because it is effectively a new service. We have not taken on more staff to do this, this is a service which we have put out to the private sector, just to clarify that.

The Deputy of St. John :

Of course it does not necessarily have to be done in the U.K., it could be done on the Continent.  It could be outsourced off-Island.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Can I also add, there are ... some of the W.E.E.E. element go to the prison for processing.

The Deputy of St. John : Yes, I am aware.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think that is worth clarifying.  W.E.E.E. is not just televisions, it is the other electrical goods ...

The Deputy of St. John :

While we are on W.E.E.E.s then, can I draw your attention to the W.E.E.E.s that go to the incinerator. I know there are not as many as people may think, but there are the curling tongs, there are the hairdryers, and things that go in everyday dust bags, particularly of people living in blocks of flats and they have got a chute and in it goes and it finishes up going to the incinerator. How do you intend, in the long run, to get these out of the system because historically I would have thought you may be able to educate 70 per cent of the populous, what about the other 30 per cent? How are you going to stop it?

Mr. J. Rogers:

It is a combination of education and being vigilant. I think it is something which the Parishes, if you do not mind me saying, have got some responsibility for in terms of responsibility and what they pick up ... and I declare that in front of 2 Constables.  [Laughter]  So there is a responsibility for everybody in the chain. The education, John's team has got to lead that and people have got to be aware that there is a hazardous element to these products and they should not be going through an Energy from Waste plant. What we have got to do is promote our recycling function, which is very successful using the prison and it is, I think, in terms of a local solution very innovative and is working for both parties. So, I think we have got to keep promoting that. We have got to explain the rationale about not putting hairdryers and curling tongs in the black bag because that goes to an Energy from Waste plant and just keep the education going. The positive is the new Energy from Waste plant will be able to deal with any of the hazardous heavy metal contamination that comes off these materials when they get burnt so the environmental impact of that is not as severe as it is at the moment with the current plant. The current plant will have problems with heavy metal contamination as we are aware of.

Mr. M. Haden:

It is just again the revenue budget is clearly quite inadequate at the moment at £65,000, you have to put a lot of extra money into that. Do you believe that £100,000 additional budget is going to be sufficient. Is this just a short-term measure or is it something that is going to grow in the next few years, or needs to grow in the next few years?

Mr. J. Rive:

Well the figure is certainly sufficient for the next few years. The September forecast for the 2009 W.E.E.E. recycling is just under £200,000, which was the outturn for this year and that includes last year's backlog. So the £165,000 ought to be adequate for moving that forward in terms of the next few years.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

We were just discussing earlier on flat screens and such like and one wonders what the next phase will be, and it may become a fashion item. You might find people will buy flat screens with pink surrounds and such like, which we encourage them to change, and no doubt the market will dictate the amount of tonnage we get back from that.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think moving forward in the medium-term electronic and electrical equipment is getting smaller, much more complicated and relatively cheaper, so I think we are going to move from ... the big cost we have is televisions with cathode-ray tubes that will stop, but it will be replaced by something else and I have no doubt about that.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Is there a difference - and I am just putting it to John now - that negate costs between a cathode-ray tube television and a flat screen television and an L. C.D . (liquid crystal display) or plasma?

Mr. J. Rive:

Not in the contractual arrangement we have. We have a fixed price per unit and the specification includes any type of display equipment, so at the moment the company we deal with do not differentiate between ...

The Connétable of St. Peter :

So you have a 36 inch C.R.T. (Cathode-Ray Tube), a mighty great tube, against a little small desktop screen; a 16 inch?

Mr. J. Rive:

I think presumably for simplicity they take the rough with the smooth and the quoted cost is the same for every unit.

The Deputy of St. John :

We will move on. The recycling green collection system: plastic bottles and paper, et cetera. You have an additional requirement there of some £80,000, can you give me a breakdown, please, John, of how you are going to collect this?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes. What we have done is if you look at the current output of 2,000 tonnes to what we are predicting is 3,000 tonnes to achieve that growth in a fairly mature market when we have a system in, you have to roll out a lot more green system. But that is again to hit the 36 per cent, so the growth is a lot of diminishing returns. You put more out there and it effectively plateaus off.

The Deputy of St. John :

Should we not be stopping using bottled water wherever possible, thereby cutting out the amount of movement of these products, because all that, in fact, is affecting our carbon footprint?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think the example in front of us says volumes about the issue we face. Ten plastic bottles for a meeting of 10 people.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Perhaps we should put a charge on plastic bottles as per television sets.

The Deputy of St. John :

Well, possibly that may be a way because 80 per cent of the Islanders carry around a portable water supply and really we have to start educating ourselves, starting in this Chamber, at using tap water and not bottled water when there is nothing wrong. Just like with a farm where you have a well supplying the water supply and obviously have nitrate problems, et cetera, or out in the country, but where you have a perfectly good water supply within 80 per cent of the Island, I would hope that education from within your department and the schools would be the way forward.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

While it is not my subject, there are a lot of people who do not like the chlorine in the tap water. Personally, I do not have an issue and drink tap water at home but there are many that will not.

The Deputy of St. John :

Yes, but that is a side point because that can be filtered out without any problems through ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : If you get a good plumber in.

The Deputy of St. John :

If you get a good plumber in, yes. But, no, those are areas that do concern me and plastic bottles because of their carbon footprint - because this is all imported - we could reduce that considerably and it is recycling another way. We are using what is already here instead of having to dispose of something that has already been brought into the Island.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think the waste strategy alludes to the waste hierarchy which is prevention, and bringing in 2 litres of water from Wales seems ...

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Allegedly.  They do say Welsh water, yes.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, into a little Island surrounded by water that has a perfectly adequate water supply seems quite illogical but it is driven by marketing, fashion and people's needs.

The Deputy of St. John :

So that needs to be reviewed somewhere along the way.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You will recall, Chairman, I think there was a company that developed bottled water in St. Brelade.  I do not know what happened to that but I think there were issues of ...

The Deputy of St. John :

There were issues to do with local water, yes, there were. But, of course, I am not referring to bottling water in the Island, I am referring to portable water supplies which are adequate which pass all the relevant standards on-Island.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Maybe something that the States should be leading on and making sure that officers have a tap water system as opposed to captive bottled water systems and maybe even Scrutiny move to something more radical than the 10 bottles you see in front of us.

The Deputy of St. John :

Absolutely.  I could not agree with you more, Chief Officer.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

There you are, there is a headline for you there: "Scrutiny to change to tap water."

The Deputy of St. John : Okay, John, any comments? The Connétable of St. Peter :

Really, the only comments I have are we have been talking about W.E.E.E.s and the cost of getting rid of those and we have 44 trailer-loads of those stacked up somewhere, probably up at Warwick Farm, taking up plenty of warehousing space which could probably be rented out and used for other things. I am just wondering whether we are chasing a political imperative of reaching a 36 per cent of recycling and the costs associated with that, and whether any thoughts are privately or publicly within your minds to look at this and say: "Well what are the most environmentally damaging products we have here in Jersey?" Should we not be focusing our attention on those and getting those dealt with properly off- Island and releasing assets like the warehouse at Warwick Farm and also down at Bellozanne for other uses, even though it might mean that we will not be recycling some of the easy to recycle things like paper and card at the moment? Have you gone through that loop?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Although there is a balance to be struck, we have the politically desirable thing, the percentage rate, which has often been quoted. I will just add in there often quoted with a different base line, so you have to be very careful comparing like with like and, of course, we have our budget. I think, thirdly, we also have public expectation. Public expectation with regard to recycling is increasing rapidly. I think we have all seen that in the past 3 years. One can see this enthusiasm which is ... we are victims of our own success. We have put an education programme in place, it is working, people want to recycle and we are having a struggle to satisfy the demand to deal with all the recyclables we are getting. So, it is a fine balance: how do we achieve it? A bit judgmental but I think your point about the most dangerous, we say, are the W.E.E.E.s; there has to be no question about that whatsoever. There is no question in our own mind, we would not ever consider any other route for those. Certainly, when it comes to cardboard there is a question mark, but I think when you come to paper and card where we encourage people in offices to segregate, I think it would be a very dangerous move to then throw those in an incinerator. I think that would be a very negative thing to do and I suspect would destroy all the work we have done so far in education.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Yes, but with all due respect, Minister, what we have is effectively a feel-good factor. For the sake of argument, I will go out and spend thousands of pounds on buying goods and then feel good because I have passed on to somebody else to pay to get rid of on my behalf. I feel good about it because I have done the right thing with disposing it. What I have not done is looked at my position policy and say: "Do I really need this? Can I recycle by not buying in the first place?" and perhaps that is an element of education that we need to look at. I am just looking at it from a slightly different perspective. If we are looking particularly at the W.E.E.E.s (and John very kindly took us down to your facilities - both Johns - at Bellozanne and also told us about the other facilities at Warwick Farm) all of these assets which have been locked up so that they have been taken out of use by storing people's "nice to haves", of dumping them on you to sort out, yet we are still getting the feel-good effect of the paper. But we are not saying to them: "Hang on, there are more important issues that we have to deal with." It was only a couple of weeks ago in the Chamber there was an allegation that you are still burning the televisions in the incinerator, you will remember that. Clearly, that came from a Member who should have known better because he was with us when we came down to Bellozanne to look at the televisions that were all stored there. I apologise for my frustration but there are some really environmentally-dangerous items here which are being stored here and not being dealt with adequately while we are dealing with the easy, feel- good ones. That is where I am coming from.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Can I just clarify that? We have shipped off 44 trailers this year, so that backlog was because in 2008 we did not have the budget, so the environmental taxes money we received, the £500,000 we received this year, has been utilised to get rid of that backlog. One of the things that we have strived to do as a department, and been very defensive of, is if we collect something for recycling, we recycle it. Now, I think there is a discussion to be had potentially with the new Energy from Waste plant whereby we challenge whether we should be recycling paper and card, and I think that should be a healthy debate we have annually based on the throughput of the incinerator, the success of recycling and the economy of the Island. But the principle, so far as I am concerned, is if we collect something for recycling, we recycle it. I think the credibility of John and for T.T.S. (Transport and Technical Services) must be upheld. What we can do is we cannot roll out schemes. We can stop schemes and I would rather be upfront with the general public and say: "We cannot afford to recycle cardboard any more; we are going to stop doing it" and we give a date when we stop doing it and then it goes into the waste. But what I do not want to do is keep collecting it as though people think that it is being recycled and then we do not, because our credibility will disappear.

The Connétable of St. Peter : I absolutely agree with you.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I very much understand your question and I think that challenge and attention should always be on recycling: is it worth it environmentally and is there a fiscal benefit to it? Just aiming at a figure of 36 per cent, that was a political driver but we have to be pragmatic as we are moving forwards.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think for the record, John will confirm when we last burnt television sets.  When was that?

Mr. J. Rive:

Unless something managed to get into bulky waste that we did not see, which is unlikely, it would have been in 2007 when we opened the recycling centres, so mid-2007 when we started.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

So since 2007 there is not a single television - to the best of your knowledge - gone into the burning stream?

Mr. J. Rive: Correct.

The Connétable of St. Peter : That is a good record, well done.

The Deputy of St. John :

Getting back to your bring and your collection systems, et cetera, this is basically for you, Connétable , when is St. Brelade going to come on-stream like the other Parishes?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

St. Brelade is very keen to come on-stream. We have 2 recycling banks and we are keen on doing another which we are shaping up for and budgeting for. In terms of our contract, we have a private contractor that collects for the Parish, and we separate glass, which some of the Parishes have not done in the past, and have been doing that for many years. Before I found myself in my present position, I had discussions with T.T.S. as to how we might proceed with this, and the department, in conjunction with the contractor, are reviewing the situation so that when we get to the renewal time of the contract we will be able to sharpen up pretty well to bring kerbside collection on board. That is the time to do it because there is considerable change involved with the contractor in terms of vehicles and pattern and so on - I do not have with me the date of renewal but I think there is a couple of years to go - by which time I hope that T.T.S. will be in the position to handle the volume that we will be putting through, because clearly at the moment we probably will not be on it and this I suspect will be the same for St. Saviour who are a similar size, perhaps a little bit more.

The Deputy of St. John :

Maybe you might be able to convince the Constable of St. Peter at the same time to join you.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Just for the sake of carrying on for a further minute and a half, I am very much aware of a Parish that does do recycling and a member of this panel lives within that Parish who tells me that he has 3 dustbin lorries coming along 5 minutes apart to pick up different elements of his waste. I just wonder what the overall environmental balance is between running 3 diesel dustcarts all on the same day, all going to the same properties, all picking up different items of things. I do not expect you to give me an answer but that was happening.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think it is a very pertinent point and was part of the discussions we had with our contractor but I understand now that there are - John would enlighten me on this - multi-compartmental vehicles which could be used for this and this is what we need to aspire to, but obviously there is a cost in these vehicles. As vehicles need to be replaced as they work their way down the line, shall we say, hopefully we will get those on board. Am I right in saying that, John?

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, they are known as "kerbsiders" in the industry. These are trucks that are designed with compartments in and there are a number of ways of doing it: a combination of the operators separating the materials from a mixed box into different chambers, to the truck having separate chambers and then being collected, as they are in St. John , in separate boxes, so that is entirely achievable. Clearly, other local authorities are trying to make this exercise as efficient as it can be. We have had challenges in the past - these vehicles need to be big to work properly because of the extra space required - which gives us the usual situation with oversized vehicles on Jersey roads. We visited a seaside town in Cornwall a few years ago and they were doing it with a Mercedes Sprinter-type vehicle with compartments in the back, so you can be innovative provided the vehicle does the job.

The Deputy of St. John :

Let us hope that we can move to that sooner rather than later. This must be the way forward for all Parishes, I hope. Any other questions on that particular ...? Mike? No? While on that one, tyres, they are not recycled in any way, are they?

Mr. J. Rogers: No.

The Deputy of St. John : They go into the incinerator?

Mr. J. Rogers:

No, we have looked at quite a few options for tyres. The reality of tyre recycling on a large scale is off- Island and a high percentage of the recycler burnt in cement kilns as a refuse-derived fuel. We did not feel as though that was different enough to what we do to advocate the transportation. It would look great for us, that we are sending our tyres for recycling, but the reality is it is probably in Derbyshire in a rotary kiln; in a cement kiln. So, hopefully they will get more innovative ways. They have tried many things with tyres. You can produce products like the playground matting and these issues but that is not the majority of what happens to the tyres. Is that a fair assumption, John?

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, there are 3 key outlets that I am aware of: there are the cement kilns; there are the cryogenics which is where they freeze the tyre to create the crumb which is what you use on the surface, and the third one is the engineering solution where they are baled to create large engineering blocks, things like landfill sites, and even some road construction, they use that as a cheap foundation. But none of them give you a particularly improved environmental performance compared to energy recovery in the Island.

The Deputy of St. John :

We will move on. Waste prevention, education awareness raising ... who is going to talk about the education and waste prevention?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think the department does quite well on that. In fact, we have just revamped our recycling trailer which made its first appearance on the weekend at Hamptonne. I went down, opened it, cut the ribbon with my colleague Deputy Duhamel from the Environment Department, and I know both of you went down over the weekend, was it well attended?

Mr. J. Rogers: It was, yes.

Mr. J. Rive:

Excellent, yes, and the trailer seemed to be well accepted by the public. I think it is of note that exercise because we are doing everything we can to get the best return on our budget for education and we have a very small team. We have 2 people working: myself and one other, so we have joined forces with the ECO-ACTIVE initiative which is, as you know, the Environment Department's branding for their wider environmental education project. Certainly, we have joined forces on the costs for the trailer and the manpower on things like the weekend, which is always difficult to get people to turn up at weekends on this. It is in a school tomorrow morning. We have a programme moving forward of that trailer going into schools, talking to school groups, delivering recycling and energy conservation messages and all those things, so that is moving forward. Interestingly, the U.K. recommended spend per household for education and awareness on recycling alone is about £1.50 per household per year, so that comes from W.R.A.P. (Waste and Resources Action Programme) which is the government agency which advises on these things. So if you put that into the Jersey concept you would be expecting certainly the best part of a £100,000 budget for that which, clearly, ours is not anywhere near that, and that is just for household recycling. It does not include commercial recycling which is another whole aspect.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I pointed out before we are victims of our own success in this which makes the playing around with the recyclers, putting them into the wrong source, a very delicate situation I am very conscious of.

The Deputy of St. John : John, any questions?

The Connétable of St. Peter :

No, just the only thought there, I am looking at your costs, are those mostly for that F.T.E. (Full Time Employee) to man it?

Mr. J. Rive:

No, the F.T.E. costs were excluded from that. This is mostly things like leaflet production, things like purchasing ...

The Connétable of St. Peter : Environmentally-friendly pens.

Mr. J. Rive:

... recycled Jersey pens which I am pleased to see Deputy Rondel supporting. No, it is materials costs and J.E.P. (Jersey Evening Post) advertising and that kind of thing.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

So you have an F.T.E. on top of that with similar sort of money, I suspect.

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, but her role includes other things apart from that awareness raising within the department so it is proportionate.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Had you considered engaging with any of the green groups whether they wanted to volunteer to assist in that role to reduce your F.T.E. costs?

Mr. J. Rive:

We do an amount of that already and we would certainly work ... I am just trying to think of some examples.  It has always been ... sorry?

Mr. J. Rogers:

We have the banks managing them.

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, I am thinking specifically of environmental groups and we have worked with Société Jersiaise and people like that on initiatives in the past.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think the fact that we are down to 2 is probably about as low as we can go in all practicality and obviously we will draw others in as we can.

Ms. E. Littlechild:

I think just to highlight, the cost on this page includes the direct costs for each of the different waste activities going back to Mike's original question. The costs were higher for this because it included, for example, John's costs, the costs of manning ...

The Connétable of St. Peter : What, that much?

Ms. E. Littlechild:

The costs of manning reception and doing the handling, the cost of the vehicles, and this is just direct costs. We should probably have included the indirect costs and you could tie that back to your original table.

The Deputy of St. John :

Any further questions, Mike? Do you have anything? No? Okay. Home composting, please, who is

going to deal with that?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Well I will start. Home composting is the top of the waste hierarchy because it reduces the amount of waste. It is one of the few activities that we do which stops waste arising. We have been very successful in running that out and John has been doing that certainly for the last 5 years.

Mr. J. Rive: Yes, 2004.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, and it feels like every garden has one now but we have to keep pushing that and we have been fairly successful in doing so.  John, do you want to explain the figures?

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, the way the initiative works which is exactly how we launched it in 2004, it is that we buy composters in bulk and we work with the garden centres to sell them on to the public at a subsidised rate, so they started at £10 per unit and they still are £10 a unit. We decided that was a: "Yes, I will have one of those" price and that seems to have worked very well. As I said in the table, we have sold just over 3,000 of those since we started. When you think there are 36,000, 37,000 households - we cannot guarantee they are all being used, of course - but that is a reasonable distribution, I think, for success.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Do you have one, Chairman, in your garden?

The Deputy of St. John :

I have a garden large enough not to worry about. I can have my own compost heap without having to worry about a recycling bin. I am very fortunate. Timber re-use and recycling.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Who is best for that?

Mr. J. Rogers: John.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : John is best for that, right.

Mr. J. Rive:

Okay, so the costs for this historically have come from segregating clean packaging timber for shredding and export to the U.K. It was an initiative that was driven probably more by the fact that we had capacity problems in the plant back in 2002 and it worked fairly well. We were using a specialist trailer that allowed you to carry bulk loading from the top and that moved on for a few years, and then we basically reviewed the quantity of pallet boards that were coming through the gate because the majority of that material was discarded pallet boards. Applying their waste hierarchy as we described earlier, it became apparent that we should be doing something to encourage these things to be re-used and not just used once and delivered to our site. So, we started working with a couple of private companies to take boards away initially, which was very successful. That reduced the board significantly and their latest push on that is to introduce a small charge of £1 per unit coming in through the gate which has pretty much cleared up the rest of the unwanted board. So that slight charge has allowed the 2 companies that collect boards, gives them an incentive to collect: "It is free if we collect from you or you pay £1 a board to deliver to the T.T.S. site." As a result we get very, very few brought in now which is exactly the outcome we were intending, so the costs of that have certainly reduced. But we did intend in the waste strategy to start to focus on other types of timber recycling and re-use, so not just packaging woods; I think like demolition timber and so on. The extra funds required here would be to help expand a very small initiative of timber re-use that we are struggling with Acorn Enterprises at the moment to pull out decent pieces of timber for direct re-use in D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) and other such things. So we have been successful in reducing packaging wood, but we would like to tackle other elements of the stream, obviously the review that John described earlier, but perhaps we should be looking differently if combustible parts of the waste stream was to come about then that would be another area obviously that we would have a very close look at because burning timber is clearly a reasonable solution. But we were certainly keen to increase timber re-use and recycling if we could which is why it appears in the table.

The Deputy of St. John :

Does the building industry take a great deal off you?

Mr. J. Rive:

Apart from what goes into the existing re-use scheme, nothing. If the buildings re-use timber it happens before it gets to us, so the big demolition contractors, Keith Joyce, and so on, and so forth for their own means.

The Deputy of St. John :

What about some of the more exotic woods? Because the reason I say it is one of my sidelines is woodcarving and therefore - although I cannot do a great deal these days because I have a shoulder problem - but that said, do you ever get anybody in that field who go down, or do you keep a stock of that type of timber within your recycling so they can ... or is it known to the industry that you have these timbers that get taken down there?

Mr. J. Rive:

No, we do not, Chairman. We do not really have space on the site at the moment for that kind of thing that we would like to see. Perhaps with a new re-use and recycling centre and sufficient space, that would be the kind of thing that we could do or to expand the relationship we have with a third party to do that. Our vision with that was that that would be ideal for that exercise. You could have someone like the Jersey Employment Trust. It would add work to their existing workforce: de-nailing, tidying up and marketing exactly those products. So I think that would be our preferred way to move that initiative.

The Deputy of St. John :

The other thing I have seen when I did a visit on a couple of occasions or been down there to deliver things is furniture. You seem to have some furniture that gets delivered down there which is in perfectly good fettle and excellent condition. There is no re-sale value on that off-Island?

Mr. J. Rogers:

One of the biggest frustrations of being previously Director of Waste and now acting Chief Officer is to see what is delivered to Bellozanne sometimes and I think it is a function of a very affluent society even now, although some parts of it they are not but the opportunity is there. The difficulty I found for the last 5 and a half years is finding a safe method and a safe area to do that work and if we could do that we would. The only solution I can see is when we move to the new Energy from Waste plant there will be more space available at Bellozanne and we will be able to do this more environmentally-friendly method of trying to get more out for re-use and work with local charities and that.

The Deputy of St. John :

Could this not work within a partnership similar to what has happened with your scrap vehicles? But if you had a partnership with somebody in the second-hand furniture business who was prepared to move it off your site to a ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But the trouble is second-hand furniture, unless it is very good, has fairly low value. I do not think you are going to get many Chippendales left down there.

The Deputy of St. John :

No, but I have seen some stuff that is down there and given the turnover of the population here, I am surprised that more has not been looked at in the past or in the future.  To me, there is an opening.

Mr. J. Rogers:

It is not a function of us not wanting to do it, it is just a function of space and being able to do it safely. The constraints of the site severely limit any form of working with people who have perhaps ... this work is ideally suited for Jersey Environmental Trust and these other agencies. But to be able to lead that on to the site is really difficult. As I say, perhaps when we can re-organise the site better we will endeavour to do that.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

I think just topping off on that one for a moment, I think you made a good point there, John, with the affluent society we have, there is a lot of those things going down there but equally from my time in dealing with Parish welfare, that people on welfare do not want second-hand furniture. There is a resistance to second-hand furniture. They do not want somebody else's used armchair, they want one of their own. It is quite surprising and that really underwrites, even living on welfare, are they going to be affluent where they have the higher expectation than having somebody else's cast offs, because that is exactly how they see it, as somebody else's cast offs. I think it is a very sad indictment of our lifestyle here in Jersey, I think. Obviously that does not apply to all people but certainly that was some of my experience.

Mr. J. Rogers:

We have had some approaches from the Grace Trust about 2 years ago and they were going to exactly do that, particularly about furniture, and help set up basically houses for some impoverished people. The difficulty they had and their stumbling block was finding premises to do that, and I am not sure if they have found any as yet. But our answer was, yes, if they could have done that because they could have managed that with some form of off-site solution.

The Deputy of St. John :

Any questions? No? We will move on to end-of-life vehicle recycling which, in some ways, has been a real success story in the way it has gone to date, although we are now starting to fall foul of various E.U. laws, et cetera. But the way it has been handled over the years it has been one of our more successful operations. Any comments?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I will pass over to John.

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, I agree, Chairman. The quantities of metals both ferrous and non-ferrous that come out of the scrap yard - and it has almost been driven by necessity in the Island because there is no landfill - Energy from Waste is the alternative, clearly. Metals into an Energy from Waste plant are not desirable and the company that run the contract for us have a spare parts business and everything that goes out of the gate that does not come to us, goes off-Island for recycling. What this expansion in the service will entail is to try and bring us up to the end-of-life vehicle directive standards. I think in the discussions that we have had, it may not be necessary to meet them 100 per cent, but the current dismantling exercise involves the removal of hazardous products from cars at about 3 or 4 points, so sump oil, gearbox oil and a couple of the others. Whereas I think there are about 14 or 15 required by the directive which goes much further into things like air conditioning systems and removing recyclable elements like plastic bumpers and so on. We would very much like to basically upgrade working with the company that are already there to a Jerseyfied improvement to the system. They are very keen to work with us on that but unfortunately to add these extra features, basically you have to move away from a scrap yard- type facility to more of a workshop-type facility. So you need cover, you need vehicle lifts and you need ways of extracting liquids and so on, so it becomes more technical with more equipment and hence the required extra costs. But we certainly would like to move towards that as soon as we possibly can.

The Deputy of St. John : John?

The Connétable of St. Peter : No, I am happy, thank you.

The Deputy of St. John : Mike?

Mr. M. Haden:

Is that generally then a subsidy to the company?

Mr. J. Rive:

The financial relationship that we have with the company is fairly complex but in budgeting this we knew that there would be extra costs involved here. There is clearly debate to be had as to whether the company absorbed that or whether we support those costs. But their costs are tied in very much with the value of scrap metals which fluctuates enormously and so in times when the value is high as it is reasonably at the moment, it perhaps would be reasonable to expect that they could provide that service from their own budgets, but in more difficult times there would be a cost which would inevitably come back towards the States. So, it is undecided how that would be done but I think it was important to recognise that there would be extra costs involved to someone in this.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

So it is a contingency budget, then?

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, I guess so.  I felt it would be wrong not to identify ...

The Connétable of St. Peter : Absolutely.

The Deputy of St. John :

The last time they had to dip into their pool, was that 4 years ago?  Five years ago?

Mr. J. Rogers: Longer than that. Mr. J. Rive:

2003, I think was the last.

The Deputy of St. John : 2003?

Mr. J. Rive: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

So that was just for several years they had to get over the last glitch, so there is still money within that fund at the moment?

Mr. J. Rive:

Yes, that is correct.

The Deputy of St. John :

As I say, that is one of the success stories.  You can work with a private partnership there; it works well.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Is that hypothecated then, is it, that budget?

Mr. J. Rive:

Ellen will give us the technical terms but in simple terms there is a joint account between us and the company and that money is put aside for the lean years.

The Connétable of St. Peter : Very good.

Ms. E. Littlechild:

Because when we provided assistance in the past, they have paid that money back and it is just like a contingency fund and there is a joint bank account which we administer with that company.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

A mini fiscal Stabilisation Fund even?

Mr. J. Rive: Something like that.

Ms. E. Littlechild:

It is not quite the right size.

The Connétable of St. Peter : Let us say mini or micro.

The Deputy of St. John :

How many years would that have been in place?  Twenty or 30 years?

Ms. E. Littlechild:

I think that has been within about the last 7 or 8 years.

The Deputy of St. John :

I thought it was in place prior to that in the 1990s but possibly in a different format.

Mr. J. Rogers: It may have done.

Ms. E. Littlechild:

I think it came after, I think it was about 7 or 8 years ago when there was a real lean time and there was a lot of support from the Treasury and Resources, and it was agreed if the price of scrap turned around, which it inevitably did, then the money would be placed into this special joint bank account. I think that was about 7 years ago but I can confirm.

The Deputy of St. John :

I thought my time in the Committee in the early 1990s or mid-1990s coming out of that other recession, there was money used that time and then it was paid back but I do stand corrected. As I say, it is one of the success stories that we did the right thing. Let us move on to green waste recycling. Is that yourself, John, or is that the Minister?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I will start off, Chairman. Effectively, you know the situation is that we had to move the domestic green waste recycling section to Bellozanne with a view to an ultimate move to Warwick Farm. The commercial green waste recycling section is still down at La Collette. So that is the prevailing situation which works and the Bellozanne waste gets slurried down to Bellozanne to be treated down there to inverse it into soil improvement in its various grades for onwards selling and disposal through the system.

The Deputy of St. John :

A lot of that would be put back within the agricultural industry on the land of which we pay the farmers?

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Indeed.

The Deputy of St. John : Is it £5 a time or ...?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think it is £10 a vergée.

The Deputy of St. John : £10 a vergée?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, we rationalised the charges a few years ago.

The Deputy of St. John :

So if we were not paying them, they probably would not take it?

Mr. J. Rogers:

That is an interesting question.  We lowered the charges for some materials and what we have tried to do is promote the use of green waste as a soil conditioner to build up the sub-base of the soil to keep the organic quantity in the soil. It will be an interesting discussion and my goal has always been to cut the subsidy to zero over time because I think the benefits of the green waste back on to the agricultural land in the medium term far outweigh the ... there is a perceived risk because the compost that goes out to agriculture is immature i.e. it has not been through the full maturation process. It has been through a pathogen kill process but not the full maturation. So there is a small risk to the farmer but they prefer the compost to be slightly immature because it helps with the soil.

The Deputy of St. John :

On that point, the £10 is that per vergée or is that after you have delivered to the site or do they pick it up and spread it or do we spread it?

Mr. J. Rogers:

We have got a contract with a supplier which effectively outsourced contract which goes from the slab at La Collette where the material is processed to the field and spread.

The Deputy of St. John :

And spread on the field as well?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

So in fact the subsidy is considerably more expensive than £10 per vergée?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, the disposal route is to spread as well.

The Deputy of St. John :

So could you tell us how much it works out per vergée if you take those figures into account?

Mr. J. Rogers:

We can work that out.  I have not got those figures to hand.

The Deputy of St. John :

Because it must be considerably more than just the £10.

The Connétable of St. Peter : Does Ellen have the contract costs?

Mr. J. Rogers:

The contract was set up and tendered I think 2 years ago. It is approximately £300,000 per annum. It is based on a unit cost per cubic metre of compost, regardless of which area of the Island it goes in because basically the composting application is dependent to where the potatoes have been planted and the crop rotation. One of the reasons we administer that is because we have tried to control and make sure in terms of quality that the correct amount of compost is being put on the correct fields because you should only apply one nitrogen load per annum or one compost load per annum. We make sure that it is not dealt with in a pile it up in one field scenario which could happen if we were not in control of it.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

The table you have given us, this table here.

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Where it shows the cost in 2008 is £784,000, just over three-quarters of a million pounds.

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Does that also include the cost of the subsidy you are paying farmers to receive as well as the contract cost to move it?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes, that is correct.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

And also your direct labour costs in your plant, both at Bellozanne and down at the La Collette.

Mr. J. Rogers:

That figure will be pre the Bellozanne move because when we had to split the reception area away from La Collette that increased our cost substantially.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

So this reflects the gross costs including subsidies to farmers in 2008?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

But further down that page you have an income of £22,200 so then that cost is £742,000, again just under three-quarters of a million pounds. A significant amount of money.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, it is a significant amount of material that is not going through an Energy from Waste plant as well. I think that is what we have got to bear in mind. Two reasons. The brick wall we face at the moment is the existing Energy from Waste plant could not cope with that amount of material. The new Energy from Waste plant will not cost a lot more per tonne running that material through it. I think there is a line in between where we can incentivise the people with bigger gardens to maybe do more composting within their garden then having a free good of delivery to La Collette. That is something we have been charged with. The team I have got are looking at reviewing the efficiency of green waste and doing a fundamental spending review on green waste in the near future to review those challenges.

The Deputy of St. John :

Do you get a 100 per cent take up of your product or would you do any surplus over and above take up?

Mr. J. Rogers:

We have been 100 per cent.

Mr. J. Rive:

We never dispose of any. Everything that comes out of the site either goes to agricultural land or is

sold.

Mr. J. Rogers:

We sometimes have backlogs because in inclement weather you cannot go over the land so we do have windows where we ... and in the planting season when the potatoes are in we sometimes have a fair old stockpile but that is a balancing act.

The Deputy of St. John :

Because I do believe if you did not pay the £10 fee per vergée you could recoup your £200,000.

Mr. J. Rogers:

No, it does not equate to that.

The Deputy of St. John :

You do not think so?  You do not think the farmers would still take their product?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think the farmers probably would, Chairman, yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

You are giving them something for nothing and a farmer loves something for nothing.

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Peter : And paying them to take it as well.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think it should be challenged and that is why I have commissioned a review because when we looked at that we lowered all the charges and brought them in line about 4 years ago. But I think even since then I think there is opportunity to look at it again because the price of land, the potato industry has changed fundamentally since then so I think that is part of the review. But we do not pay £200,000 in subsidy.

The Deputy of St. John :

No, but your additional required revenue budget. I am just thinking if you take that £10 per vergée off plus maybe put a small charge because do not forget you are spreading it on the land for them, therefore, they are getting something for nothing. Therefore, even if you put in a small charge of £10 per vergée spread instead of the other way round, it must be worth considering in any of your reviews because if they think they can get something even at £10 a vergée, they know when they are well off. I know what they are paying a vergée for land at the moment which is £200 - £250 is not uncommon now where 5 or 7 years ago it was only £40 a vergée, £50 a vergée.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I would suggest those elements will be tied in to the review. What we cannot afford to do is to lose that market as such for this material because we need some tension in the market and we need to have the relationship which both parties feel as though they get something out of it. So there is a line I think we have got to draw.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

One of the biggest issues, we have not got the space to keep it.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Is the scenario possibly downstream that we re-devolve back to the Parishes? Quite a few years ago it was done down at Saut Falluet, just on the border between St. Peter and St. Brelade. Then it was moved out of Crabbé at St. Mary and now it is in to St. Helier .

Mr. J. Rogers:

We as T.T.S. (Transport and Technical Services) would love the Parishes to take on board composting of green waste but the chances of that happening, the nuisance elements of it, the processing cost, the processing machinery, I do not think you can scale it down much further than what we have got now and save money. We are at the small end of composting processes and the nuisance issues we faced at La Collette with the rigour and application we have got there I think would be replicated and I would suggest for the Parishes would be very difficult to achieve.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think it is a big issue. I think probably domestic green waste reception could work. Clearly that used to take place at St. Peter but you will recall that your predecessor lived next door and was not very keen on the idea.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

It was in his back garden almost, was it not?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Having said that, green waste reception is not as nearly a problem to neighbours as general domestic waste as a recycling issue. But from our point of view if we start setting up different sites there are manning issues so the cost of running 3 sites is 3 times what we have now. So our policy has been to focus on one at the moment with the budget that we have.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

I accept that from a departmentally driven point of view, yes, but I am thinking if the Parishes were motivated into looking at doing their own recycling and not involving T.T.S. It is just something that may be worth exploring in the future.

The Deputy of St. John :

I just want to move on from that particular one.  I note you have moved your green waste recycling at La Collette to a new site at La Collette.

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

Was there a great deal of expense involved? Was there new membrane put down, new concrete, et cetera?

Mr. J. Rogers:

We moved the reception to enable the Energy from Waste plant to be built. We did it within the environmental standards needed. We did it at the cheapest cost we could but, yes, there was cost involved.

The Deputy of St. John :

Great cost?  Can you share the figure with us?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I have got the figures but I have not got them to hand.  I can provide them to you if necessary.

The Deputy of St. John :

Thank you. Officers, have you got any comment on that one? Cooking oils. I recall being at a meeting at Howard Davis Farm, was it? No, at the R.J.&H.S. (Royal Jersey Agricultural and Horticultural Society) some months ago with you and we are recycling oils, et cetera. Who is going to run with that particular one?

Mr. J. Rive:

Would you like me to talk to that one? This is one that the department has for many, many years pursued on the basis that we clearly also run a liquid waste treatment plant and it is desirable that catering oils do not go into the drainage system for the obvious reasons. So we, for many years, have supported a company to provide free collection of those oils obviously to encourage the catering premises to do the right thing. We reviewed that in 2006 because the bio diesel world was moving forward quickly and the kind of equipment that you needed to process cooking oils into bio diesel on a small scale was moving forward, driven by the rising cost of oils obviously. We decided it was time perhaps to try and move with a partner that could provide that service, the idea being that we would have a contract with someone that could continue to collect oils for free but instead of shipping them out of the Island would be to process them locally as a fuel and tick 2 boxes, as it were, which we did and were reasonably successful with. What has transpired is that the process works, collection works but the market for bio diesel is not quite as hungry, let us say, as we had anticipated. It has been very hard to sell the product. It is one of those things where you speak to people and they are very keen, especially people running oil rich companies and so on that think, yes, that sounds good. That will be an environmental improvement to my business and the cost is slightly cheaper than I am paying. But to move to the step where they are using it seems to be a step too far for most, mostly because of convenience and perhaps fears over the quality of the product and that kind of thing. So we are facing this year and next year having to move back to a position where we are subsidising that relationship, hence, the identification of a small amount to support that. So what is happening at the moment is the contractual worker has gone back to shipping to the U.K. (United Kingdom) and making a small amount of bio diesel. The overall cost balance for that exercise is slightly negative unfortunately so we will need to continue to support that process.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think it is worth you adding, John, the issue over the license charges being levied by Environment on this.  What are those again?

Mr. J. Rive:

Approximately £4,000 per annum.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : To a company turning over?

Mr. J. Rive:

Probably less than £100,000.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Yes, very, very significant licensing charge.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

A 4 per cent license charge then, so basically we are shooting ourselves in the foot effectively. We have got one department charging another department's contractor to get rid of a waste product on behalf of the Island which would be beneficial overall to the Island. Hang on one minute. Somebody is not talking to somebody here. But, John, it is interesting you were saying there was some reluctance for take up. Was there a cost advantage with bio diesel?

Mr. J. Rive:

A slight cost advantage which we thought would be enough and it does not appear to be. There is another contractor operating on his own but he is using the fuel in his own fleet which is clearly different than having to sell the product on because he is reaping the rewards of a cheaper fuel. Having conversations with him, he is having a similar problem. It just seems to be that despite the cost advantage, despite the environmental gains, it is just not enough to convert the big players to bio diesel.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : How far did we get with Connex?

Mr. J. Rive:

We have had discussions with Connex. I think the latest position there is that ... is it Veolia, the company?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

Mr. J. Rive:

Veolia have an international policy on sustainable fuels in their vehicles. Despite them being French I think or they have a big presence in France, I think their interest is in hybrid technology rather than in alternative liquid fuels. So they are looking at diesel with electric assist in buses and so on. I think a local company are taking that line so they can steer from the parent company.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

I understand you are using within your own fleet a blended product.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, diesel that is imported into the Island has 5 per cent bio diesel applied anyway. So we have some challenges because we run a wide range of fleet including fire service, we have got to make sure the quality is right and the blend. The logistical difficulty we have got, and this is perhaps where the supply chain have a problem with is if we have 10,000 litres delivered then to get the right percentage we have got to then have immediately 2,000 litres or whatever the percentage is. The logistics of it are not quite as simply as if you get 100 per cent blend or you are doing something for yourself which is easily managed. I think those issues have really inhibited the sale of bio diesel.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Is there any thought about using it as 35 second domestic heating fuel?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, we have looked at that. We looked to that for powering our animal carcass incinerator at Warwick Farm. The difficulty with that is the cost balance was not ... the domestic fuel is always cheaper than the bio diesel to produce.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Because there is no taxation on it.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes, considerably cheaper. We have challenged that. It was very easy to change the burners on the animal carcass incinerator. I thought it was a nice closed loop but it was going to cost us more money.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Even given your having to pay out at the moment to get it shipped off?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

We are going to have to move on because time is pressing. We will move on to section 2 which is the collection system, the initiatives to expand commercial recycling, please.

Mr. J. Rive:

Effectively as I said earlier we do have a small team. We have for many years in planning work for future years recognised that working with the commercial world is a top priority because there are significant tonnages of waste produced there and big opportunities because quite often the waste rooms are already segregated. A supermarket produces lots of cardboard and lots of plastic and so on. We have moved a number of initiatives forward. Clearly our cardboard recycling arrangement is primarily aimed at the commercial world so the in excess of 4,000 tonnes that we currently deal with of cardboard comes mostly from places like supermarkets and retailers in town. We have also done a fair amount of work with the finance industry so the big banks and finance houses, we have done initiatives with them to set up in house recycling schemes which has been successful and obviously generated some sponsorship relationships out of those exercises as well. But I think I would have to be honest and say that the plans that we have to work more with the commercial sector have been hampered or put on hold because of fears of ongoing revenue budget issues. It is hard to sit down and do an exciting exercise and exciting initiative working with the commercial world if we are not sure if we are going to be able to fund the materials that it generates. We continue that work but it does not move ahead at the pace that I would like it to because of the financial situation.

The Deputy of St. John :

That carries on to section 3, the proposed new reuse and recycling centre. What are the consequences of a delay in this project happening?

Mr. J. Rogers:

The biggest consequence is financial. Currently we are running 2 reception areas for the general public. One is green waste and one is the recycling centre. In every other place I have ever lived those 2 areas are combined so there are benefits in terms of co-location. It is a one stop shop for the general public and we have got easier manning. We can cut our costs by running one reception. It is a simpler message for the general public. It is easier and safer for us to manage. It is pretty much an essential for this Island moving forward.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Effectively we have a situation at Bellozanne with the separate green facility down there. Regular calls saying that perhaps it is overmanned on certain times. But the usage is really so fluctuating it is quite difficult to man it sensibly. If it were to be a multi use, multi recycling centre it would be a far much better use of staff. Effectively you have 2 people hanging round for half an hour then 10 minutes later there will be a queue of traffic down the road and we are expected to manage it so it is quite a challenge.

The Deputy of St. John :

You answered a question that we raised earlier today. That is very useful. What level of income will be required in the future for environmental taxes in order to fund these facilities or this facility?

Ms. E. Littlechild:

What we have looked at so far is we have put forward a request originally for capital moneys to be able to build the facility. That was taken out I think as you are aware, Chairman, from the capital programme until environmental taxes are established. Once we know that we have got the moneys to be able to build the facility then we will be able to produce more realistic costs. As John alluded to be before, there are probably likely to be manpower savings. The biggest benefit obviously is providing a one stop shop.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Just to add that. The things we have talked about more of the nice to haves in recycling like perhaps furniture, wood, working with the Jersey Employment Trust cannot be achieved in that current setup and will be able to be achieved if we can have that.

Mr. M. Haden:

Is there a new timescale for this centre?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

The situation is there are a lot of ifs and buts. When the E.f.W. (Energy from Waste) plant moves to La Collette that will release the present site at Bellozanne and we could put it there for a time. However, it covers part of the site which we would wish to use to increase the liquid waste strategy. It depends a bit how quickly the liquid waste strategy can be prepared. In funding terms once again it is dependent on outside taxes, if we can call on those. That might have an effect on how quickly it moves to the new proposed site. There is quite a lot of flexibility in a recycling centre as opposed to putting up a building. We would like to probably retain that flexibility for the moment.

The Deputy of St. John :

If I can move on to section 4, reviewing the current privatisation of the waste recycling projects. What are the Minister's priorities for recycling activities on the basis that limited fund is achieved?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Clearly we can talk of W.E.E.E.s to start with. I do not think there is any change there. We would always continue to do that so we have to maintain our £165,000 spend on that. In terms of fridge recycling, we could delay that. The effect would be probably to stockpile. Would that be the case, John?

Mr. J. Rive:

It could be. I mean we probably would not be able to look at continuing the process of half the job, if I can call it that, of removing the CFCs and not doing the insulation.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Can I just clarify? The question is, is if we do not get the £500,000 ongoing, what do we do?

Mr. M. Haden:

If you do get the £500,000.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Oh, if we do get the £500,000.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

We do do, in that case. In terms of end of life vehicle recycling, we would continue to do that. We would probably cap paper and card. Probably cap to a spend of £260,000. We would continue to do commercial green waste. We would maintain our own composting policy. We would continue with public green waste. Probably cap our recycling green collection system - plastic bottles, et cetera - to a £60,000 figure. We would probably cease our timber reuse and recycling element. We would continue with our cooking oils at a figure of £22,000 and hopefully enhance our waste prevention education awareness by £30,000.

The Deputy of St. John :

You would continue with your cooking oils.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Yes.

The Deputy of St. John :

I must say I had one or 2 concerns when I was at the centre when we had that presentation, given that there were concerns raised by a number of people.  You would not drop that?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

The risk is it will end up in the waste stream which is something we really do not want to.

The Deputy of St. John :

I know where you are coming from but ...

Mr. J. Rogers:

If we dropped supporting a local provider, it has then got be shipped off and it will inevitably come back to us to deal with.  We will perhaps review our local partner and how we work with him in the future.

Mr. J. Rive:

We do not really want it in the sewers.

The Deputy of St. John : No, definitely not.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Could you accept it in the solid waste stream? If you pressurise it enough it will burn without even touching it.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Some of the solid fats, yes. Again I would not be doing anything like that until the new Energy from Waste plant is available.

The Connétable of St. Peter : But that is an option.

Mr. J. Rogers:

One of the things I have considered is to premix with sewerage sludge if we need to burn sludge so you get the calorific value up.  We can look at other ways of dealing with it but it is all in the melting pot.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is good because ... it is a good expression, is it not.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

If you say so. Do you envisage a time when perhaps you could if funding were to become so short in supply that you would shut down existing easy to recycle waste things like cardboard and waste to burn so you could afford to fund the more damaging environmental ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Exactly the point you were making earlier.

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes, is the answer.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

So that is the end of the game.  If we get to the point where there is not enough funding, we will burn the easy recyclables, it is a good whinge(?) we have had so far, just get rid of the really bad stuff.

The Deputy of St. John :

I am conscious of the time. Which are the most important bits you want to deal with after this, Mike, because ...

Mr. M. Haden:

The next section you have got there.

The Deputy of St. John :

You want to go straight on to it? The objectives, okay. What would be the implication of closing the public reception of green waste?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Poor. I think there are probably 2 sides to it. One is from the commercial side. I think it is accepted that a charge will be levied there. I do think that is unreasonable. I think those people who use a commercial gardener would be little perturbed by a small charge on their gardener's bill to dispose of it. The effect of a charge on the domestic side I think is probably more delicate. I think you would find we would end up with rather more fly-tipping than we want. In view of the fact that we have got much smaller domestic properties, smaller gardens in flats and so on, we would end up with it on the kerbside.

The Deputy of St. John :

Is there potential for a private operator to seek commercial opportunities in developing composting facilities?

Mr. J. Rogers:

It would be great and we would embrace that. The difficulty is the N.I.M.B.Y.-ism (not in my back yard) and the processing and environmental standards you have got to adhere to mean that I think whatever problems we face as a States department would be faced by a private contractor. Whether we could fund that all from a charge, I would suggest in an Island that does not charge for waste as a principle that would be very hard to achieve. I think for the bigger commercial gardeners, they would start composting on site which is probably the right thing to do anyway. For the general public, if you had a choice of paying for your green waste to go somewhere versus you putting it in your black bag and it gets burnt in the incinerator, I am afraid I know which one I would do. I think the potential is there but I think you have got a structure of charging in for all waste and then there is possibly an opportunity in the medium term.

The Deputy of St. John :

So the department are looking at a possible waste charge across the board in the future?

Mr. J. Rogers:

We are not looking at that immediately but if the States had a structural deficit, if there is a problem in the future, it is something we cannot discount.

The Deputy of St. John :

So what challenges would be involved in manning such a facility if one were permitted to be built in the private sector?

Mr. J. Rogers:

The challenges would be just environmental standards.

The Deputy of St. John : Just environmental, okay.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : And neighbours.

Mr. J. Rogers:

And neighbours, yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

They are going to be the biggest thing judging from our experience with Bellozanne and Warwick Farm.

The Deputy of St. John : Right.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Can I just make a point about the green waste facility for the general public? One of the reasons we have always advocated green waste recycling and pushed it is because green waste when it goes into black bag waste and then is needed to be stored for any period of time was one of the problems we had at Bellozanne probably 10 to 15 years ago with the fires. The compostibility of the material instigates fires and makes the waste far more unstable. Hopefully with the new Energy from Waste plant, the mountains of waste we will not see again but it is something that we have got to bear in mind. If we had to do that from 1st January we would finish up putting the Island I think in a high risk scenario.

The Deputy of St. John :

Getting back to charges yet again. Has any thought been given to solely putting a charge in place for green waste?

Mr. J. Rogers:

Yes. We have been charged with looking at a commercial green waste charge as part of our budget savings. The difficulty we have got is the logistics of engineering that. The cost of the weighbridge and the mechanism to do it is higher than what we would recover from the charge but we are challenging that. Again that will be part of the spending review which will be undertaken by this team.

The Deputy of St. John :

Given the significant additional expenses of creating a new public green waste facility, there must be a compelling argument to review the location of all green waste operations.

Mr. J. Rogers:

We have spent the last 4 years reviewing the location of green waste operations. We have, I believe, looked at 32 sites across the Island. The site we have come back to as the least worst site has been La Collette. I think if there is a site available, that would be brilliant but so far in terms of logistics, neighbours and nuisance the site at La Collette has come out as the least worst site.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Moving on to paper and card, do you believe the current recycling operation to paper and card is sustainable given the current financial pressures on the States?

Mr. J. Rogers:

It is a good question.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Because at the moment you are paying an amount per tonne recycled, are you not?

Mr. J. Rogers: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : We could scale it down.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think what we have got to bear in mind is the cost for the alternative disposal waste incineration. The dirtiest incinerator in Europe is quite cheap if we have got capacity in it. The reason we have had to pull these streams out has been: (1) because it is environmentally the right thing to do but also because the capacity of that plant is inhibited due to its frailty. If we stop doing the recycling of paper and card which is a significant amount of tonnage, that waste is then not able to be processed in the Energy from Waste plant. We have then got to bale it, store it, ship it 3 or 4 times and tie up some more land. So it is not a case of stop cardboard and paper recycling and we save all that money. I think when we get to the new plant we have got to look at a slightly different perhaps view in terms of the capacity of that plant and the effectiveness of that plant and the whole cost of that plant and whether or not it is effective to burn the paper and cardboard to generate electricity which it might be a very close run thing. It is something which might be variable depending on the electricity price and the price of paper and cardboard. Again reiterating my point before, if we collect it for recycling it stays recycling. We have just got to have that mature relationship with the general public.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

Looking forward, you would not discount putting into the Energy from Waste stream in the new Energy from Waste plant if it was going to be more cost-effective to do it in that way?

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think there is a balanced view which we would take at the time.  It is not no but it is not a ...

Mr. J. Rive:

My only concern I guess, and it may not be a good enough reason to not do it, but by backtracking on such a major initiative and you are also undoing all of the education work that has gone before. There is a lot of time and effort gone into raising understanding on the importance of recycling, the importance of understanding to keep materials clean and keep them separate. I think if we then removed a major proportion of the very visible part the public see then we potentially lose a lot of trust. It would have to be a very well organised exercise to communicate why we were doing it and our intentions were honourable rather than we just did not think. We are not doing it because it is too expensive because I think the public would find that very difficult to accept.

The Connétable of St. Peter :

It will become economically driven. At the end of the day we are looking forward potentially to a structural deficit and the fact that you will not have the money to subsidise the operation to ship out card and paper. When that day comes, hopefully after 2011, we do have a viable alternative where that waste stream can contribute to the income to your department via a subsidy from the Jersey Electricity Company because you supply more electricity through that type of matter. I know it is not in an ideal world bearing in mind what you have done but it is one of these difficult decisions that may well have to be made at that time.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

We are certainly cognisant of that scenario.

Mr. J. Rogers:

I think we have got to be cautious in assuming that without running the figures and closer to the time.

The Connétable of St. Peter : Sure.

The Deputy of St. John :

Right. I think we are rapidly running out of time. Mike, would you like me to put the last 2 or 3? Minister, I know you are over your time. Are you happy to give another 10 minutes? We need a conclusion now. Given the restriction on funding, how does the Minister intend to reconcile this problem?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In the event of no £500,000 charges, we are going to be restricted. We would continue with the recycling of W.E.E.E.s, no question about that. Continue with the present situation with fridges. Continue with end of life vehicle recycling. Once again when we get to paper and card, probably as we discussed earlier we would have to review that. At the present stage obviously prior to the commissioning of the new plant we would probably be charging for card which would mean a spend of probably £80,000. As we suggested before, once again put a commercial charge in place for green waste commercial which would reduce the spend down to £690,000. The home composting project would cease. Public green waste would continue so we continue with £200,000. We would probably have to cease the green collection system. We would probably have to cease the timber reuse project, cease the cooking oils and reduce the waste prevention education awareness policies by taking the figure to £12,000.

The Deputy of St. John :

Should new environmental tax would be required to replace funding previously approved in the States Building Plan? That goes on. Does the Minister believe that there is a need for a green policy on the use of environmental taxes before they are introduced, in order to avoid them being used to fund initiatives in a piecemeal fashion? We all know, given the concerns that we might be putting some taxes in place or some charges in place and the funding not being ring-fenced and it goes into the Exchequer for doing something that is nothing to do with the environment.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I sympathise with your philosophy, Chairman. I agree with you. I think if environmental taxes are to be imposed on the public, the public will have an expectation that they are directed where they are told they are going to be spent and on the basis on which they are being raised because otherwise I do not think the Government would be very popular.

The Deputy of St. John :

That is for sure. John? Mike? Before closing, Minister, I had one or 2 little concerns over an earlier meeting we had re the hearing to do with the Ramsar. We were promised by yourself and your officers the records from the project manager's diary. As yet, some 5 weeks later we still have not received those records. Could you please find out what is holding them up, yourself and your Chief Officer please, because we need to get on with our final report? It is not helpful when we are told that officers are on holiday, then they come back and they are still on holiday, and they have got to go through the paperwork. Given that we were promised that many weeks ago now, if you could shake a finger at whoever is responsible, please.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Indeed I shall, Chairman.

Mr. J. Rogers:

Just to clarify. That has been chased by your Scrutiny Officer and there has been no response to date so I will chase that personally.

The Deputy of St. John :

Thank you very much. Thank you. The time being 4.20 p.m., I declare the meeting closed. I thank you, Minister, and your officers for attending. I thank the media and my officers and colleagues.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Thank you, Chairman.