A waste incinerator could be on its way to an area near you. STEPHEN LEWIS looks at radical plans to tackle York and North Yorkshire's mountains of rubbish.

NO deals have been done yet, but the future of rubbish management in York and North Yorkshire is likely to be incineration.

City of York Council, in partnership with North Yorkshire County Council and local district councils such as Ryedale, Harrogate and Selby, has just completed a consultation on the region's future waste strategy.

While the results have yet to be collated, Andrew Waller, York council's deputy leader and executive member for the environment, says what is being proposed is two new waste treatment plants in the region - one in the north, one in the south.

One would be a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant which would mechanically reduce household and commercial rubbish and turn it into fuel pellets.

The other would be an energy from Waste (EfW) incinerator, which would use those pellets - and other household waste - as fuel, converting them into electricity.

Between them, the two plants will cost in the region of £100m - with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) indicating that about £45million of that may well be available in the form of a Private Finance Initiative loan.

The mechanical plant, Coun Waller says, could be in operation as soon as 2010, with the incinerator following "a little bit later".

Coun Waller says the plants will be an essential part of the region's waste reduction strategy, cutting to a fraction the amount of rubbish that needs to be buried in landfill sites, and also generating useful power.

The Greens on York council are furious, saying an incinerator is not the green way forward. They have mounted a campaign of opposition against the proposals.

So what are the issues?

The pros

By building two plants, Coun Waller says it will be possible to create a 'closed loop', where the end product of one plant ends up as fuel for the other. By adopting such a strategy, the amount of rubbish being dumped into landfill could be reduced to a fraction of what it would otherwise be.

Waste management experts in York and North Yorkshire looked long and hard at a range of waste management techniques before coming up with the options they put out to consultation, and consulted with pressure groups, Coun Waller says.

Ultimately, North Yorkshire was in favour of an incinerator, while York was keen to have a mechanical treatment plant as well.

The resultant compromise is likely to see one of each, one in the north of the region, the other in the south, although no sites have been talked about yet, Coun Waller says.

An MBT plant would mechanically separate household waste from grey bins and black bags so that as much as possible - metals, for example - could be recycled. The remainder would then be biologically treated to produce fuel pellets. Methane generated during the process could be burned to generate a certain amount of power.

The waste incinerator, or EfW plant, would burn fuel pellets or household rubbish to generate electricity. The plant being talked about in North Yorkshire would generate about three megawatts of energy - enough to power up to 3,000 homes, according to some estimates. Not enough to supply the region's energy needs, in other words - but a useful earner.

The main benefit, however, would be the disposal of household waste. The regional strategy, Coun Waller says, is to aim to recycle 50 per cent of all our rubbish by 2010. That target is, he believes, achievable - York hopes to reach 36 per cent in the next financial year. Any more than 50 per cent, however, would be uneconomic.

With the amount of rubbish councils will be allowed to put into landfill being reduced every year by Government, York and North Yorkshire have to do more to reduce the amounts of waste being buried - or face being fined £150 per tonne.

"That would be a multi-million cost which would be in no one's interest at all," says Coun Waller.

By using the new MBT and EfW plants in tandem, the amount of rubbish being buried could be reduced to a fraction of what it would be otherwise, Coun Waller says.

"There would be very little waste going into landfill."

The cons

THE Greens are furious about the proposals. Coun Andy D'Agorne, leader of the Greens on City of York Council, believes there are three main problems:

Incinerating waste will place less emphasis on recycling and re-using household rubbish, so people will chuck more rubbish away. "It undermines the drive for greater recycling," says Coun D'Agorne.

An incinerator could release potentially harmful emissions

The EfW incinerator would need to burn significant quantities of plastic, which could otherwise have been recycled. Since plastic is made from oil, it is essentially a fossil fuel - so an EfW incinerator would be no more environmentally friendly than a coal-fired or oil-fired power plant.

Whether burning rubbish does mean local authorities make less effort to recycle remains to be seen.

SITA UK, which runs a large EfW in Teesside, insists that harmful emissions are not a problem. The Teesside plant - which generates 20 megawatts of electricity per hour, compared with about three for the proposed North Yorkshire plant - produces only 0.6 per cent of Teesside's total dioxin emissions, a spokesperson said.

"The Teesside plant would have to run for 100 years to produce the same amount of dioxins that were produced by fireworks on Millennium Eve in London."

Coun D'Agorne admits that while historically emissions were a problem, modern incinerators are said to be "much more energy efficient". To reduce the amount of emissions, however, incinerators have to burn at a very high temperature, he says - and to do that, they need to burn lots of plastic.

Coun Waller insists that is not the case. He does not know the exact balance of fuel that would be needed to fuel an incinerator, he says - but it could be a mixture of whatever was left in household grey bins after most plastic, glass, garden waste and other recyclable material had been taken out. There would be no need to feed an incinerator extra plastic, he says.

SITA agreed. "The best feedstock is mixed waste, not just one single waste source" the spokesperson said. Too much plastic would be bad, she added, because it would lead to 'spikes' in the burning process.

Coun D'Agorne insists the truly green option would be for York (and North Yorkshire) to go for a "zero" waste strategy, in which everything was recycled.

Doncaster is moving in that direction, he points out (see panel) - so there is no reason why York should not do so too.

The way to achieve it? "Higher rates of recycling, and more waste minimisation."

What happens next

YORK, North Yorkshire and local district councils are putting together a business case to be submitted to DEFRA, Coun Waller says. That will be submitted by next month.

The results of the county-wide consultation have yet to be collated, he says. So what if they show local people are against an incinerator?

"We would have to take that into consideration."

If the incinerator route is ultimately decided on, waste contractors would be invited to bid to build and run the MBT and incinerator plants. York could end up paying about one third of the £100million cost, spread over 20 years, Coun Waller says.

And the site of the plants? That has yet to be even considered, he insists - although most likely there would be one in the north of the region, one in the south. It may also be possible to build a single larger plant that combined both processes.

What other regions are doing

Doncaster

DONCASTER'S directly-elected Labour Mayor, Martin Winter, is driving forward a draft waste strategy which aims to achieve 100 per cent recycling - or "zero waste" - by the year 2025.

"I think Doncaster should stop talking about becoming more environmentally friendly and do something to achieve it," says Coun Winter.

The strategy will focus on reducing, re-using, recovering or recycling waste (the 4 Rs) instead of simply burying it. "The draft Zero Waste Strategy sets out what I think we should aim for - so that Doncaster becomes the best in the country when it comes to turning waste into wealth," he added.

Lancashire

INCINERATION was initially high on the agenda in Lancashire, which numbers partnership authorities including Lancaster, Blackpool and Blackburn councils. That, however, is beginning to change.

"Following significant advances in current technologies available for dealing with household rubbish, Lancashire is moving away from incineration to more sustainable and environmentally acceptable treatments such as Mechanical Biological Treatment," according to the county's municipal waste strategy.

Teesside

THE Teesside EfW plant managed by SITA Tees Valley Ltd has been running since May 1998. It has two furnaces, which can burn 250,000 tonnes of waste a year, producing 20 megawatts of electricity an hour. That, the company claims, is enough to power 40,000 homes.

Bottom ash produced as a result of the process is used for roads. Air pollution control residues, including fly ash, are "collected from the flue gas cleaning process and sent to special waste landfill as they contain levels of chemicals that would make them unsuitable for reuse," the SITA website says.

Updated: 10:16 Thursday, January 12, 2006