‘Scaremongers’ put incinerators in bad light

Date: 30/01/03

ENVIRONMENT protest group Greenpeace's 'scaremongering' strategy is not helpful, says Vanya Veras.

"Greenpeace frequently uses sensationalist tactics and outdated information to get media attention," says the European Federation of Waste Management (FEAD) secretary general.

"In doing so, they're actually putting negative political pressure on governments, who need to proceed with waste management plans."

She claims that protestors scaling incinerators and unfurling big banners ignores what's really going on inside many of them - the creation of new energy by burning garbage via high-tech processes that "hardly" harm the environment.

"Incineration is not a panacea, but can be the best option in an area of high-density population. For lower-scale populations, pre-treatment such as mechanical-biological treatment could be more suitable together with other waste management options."

In the UK, where 80 of waste is landfilled, "Greenpeace activists simply raise consciousness of waste issues in a negative sense and aggravate the difficulties posed by an arcane permitting system," she says.

"Its an image problem," adds Veras, an EU hybrid of British-Greek parentage who heads up FEAD's three-woman Brussels base. "There is a very distorted image of waste management as the bad guy, the dirty guy."

She's willing to concede, however, that some over-the-hill, pre-1960s incinerators are still baddies, but they are now being shut down due to a waste management directive introduced in 2000. Greece, for example, has no incinerators, and Portugal has built and operates a state-of-the-art integrated waste management site in Lisbon that serves the whole city.

"It really depends on the lie of the land. That makes a big difference, as there are several options for waste management. Most member states need to use "a mix of options, making for integrated systems of sorting, pre-treatment, recycling, composition, incineration and landfill," she adds.

If incinerators suffer from an image problem among some EU citizens and governments, they suffer from a far more convoluted definition problem at the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

In two recent cases brought by the Commission against member states on the cross-border shipment of waste and to be judged on 3 February, Advocate-General Francis Jacobs delivered opinions relating to the definitions of recovery and disposal of waste that FEAD fears could have a highly negative impact on waste management.

In one case, brought against Germany, waste was to be moved to Belgium for use in a cement plant, where it is burned along with fossil fuels to produce energy and thereby cement. This process is called co-incineration.

In regular incineration plants, waste alone is burned to produce energy, which in turn produces heat and power that is delivered directly to buildings or the national power grid. This process is simply called incineration.

The crux of Jacobs' argument relates to the 'primary objective' of the plant, which he defines as the reasons for its existence. In the case of the waste incinerator, he claims it exists only for disposal of waste and otherwise would not operate.

In the case of the cement plant, if waste did not exist the process would go ahead using another fuel.

The upshot: incineration with energy recovery is a disposal operation and co-incineration with energy recovery is a recovery operation.

"The environmental benefit of replacing fossil fuel with waste is the same in both processes, so legally, there is no justification to conclude differently," Veras says. "The Court should not be responsible for this type of decision, which needs wide debate with all stakeholders. And the Commission is the EU institution responsible for organising this."

Veras and FEAD President Dominique Pin sent a letter last November to the Commission asking whether the EU's Waste Framework Directive could be altered if the Court agrees with the advocate-general's opinion.

"In order to assess whether a recovery operation took place, the only factor of importance is not the objective but the result: does the operation lead to a saving of resources and/or energy, and does it have a beneficial impact on the greenhouse effect?" they write. "Apart from this, a shipments issue should not be used to make such a distinction, when the result would have far-reaching effects upon the whole sphere of waste management."

The Commission has launched a study on 'R' (recovery) and 'D' (disposal) definitions, which should lead to an "open stakeholder dialogue and a compromise decision", Veras says.

"Waste legislation has advanced to such a high level in the EU that now it needs to be clarified and simplified."

Perhaps the most shocking fact is that today some 12 to 16 of ECJ cases are on waste: "For waste to be such a high percentage is crazy really - its all because of differences and disparities in interpretation."

According to Veras, the average EU citizen produces about three kilograms of waste per day, and that figure can easily rise to 11 kilos for a single-person household.

"We are a consumer society," she says. "We like the way we live, and that generates waste.

"So, before you landfill, energy recovery is a really good option."

• Interview: Karen Carstens

Environment protest group Greenpeace's 'scaremongering' strategy is not helpful, says Vanya Veras, secretary general of the European Federation of Waste Management (FEAD).