LibDems and Labour fail to back Green call to stand firm against Incineration

1 February 2006 - Norwich City Council last night unexpectedly failed to pass a Green Party motion in opposition to plans by the County Council to burn waste. On Norfolk County Council, last month, the LibDem and Labour groups opposed the ruling Conservatives' plans to build a giant incinerator at Costessey; but last night, to the surprise of both Norwich Green Councillors and of representatives from Norfolk Friends of the Earth and 'NAIL2' (the new anti-incinerator coalition – 'Norwich Against Incineration and Landfill'), the City LibDem and Labour groups joined the lone City Conservative to oppose the Green motion. The Green motion would have committed the City Council to opposing the incinerator and to committing money in its upcoming budget to improve recycling facilities. (Instead, the City Council decided to 'refer the motion back' to the City's Waste Management Committee, for decision at full Council on March 7th – a date after that on which the City's budget will already have been decided.)

Councillor Adrian Ramsay, Co-ordinator of the Green Party Group on Norwich City Council, said: "I am dismayed that the other parties on the City Council have not joined us in opposing the plans by Norfolk County Council for an incinerator to be built at Costessey. We are concerned about the effect of emissions from incinerators on human health and the environment. NAIL (the anti-incineration group in Nottingham) has informed us that there have been dozens of pollution breaches from the Nottingham incinerator - and that pollution levels there are monitored by an outside body just twice per year. Furthermore, the permitted emission level from incinerators in the UK is 100 times higher than in the US, which perhaps accounts for why areas of localised poor health around the Nottingham incinerator closely mirror the main paths of incinerator emissions there."

The Green Party believes that reducing waste and increasing recycling levels are the only environmentally-friendly ways of tackling the waste problem.

Councillor Ramsay continued: "Norwich has a very poor recycling rate. This could be massively improved if the Council invested in truly comprehensive recycling facilities for the city. Since the Greens gained the balance of power at City Hall we have been able to secure money for some improvements to local recycling facilities and these have started to be put in place in recent months. (For example, there are now two plastic bottle recycling banks in Norwich for the first time.) However, many more improvements are needed and our motion asked the other Parties to commit to funding further such improvements in the 2006/07 council budget."

The recycling level in Norwich is currently around 15%. This puts the city in 337th place out of 393 councils in England, according to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Other parts of Norfolk have recycling rates approaching 40%, which other parties of the EU have rates of 70% or even 80%. Canberra went from 0% to 59% recycling in just eight years.

Green Party Councillors argue that the appropriate level of investment could easily see a recycling rate of over 60% in Norwich within a few years and that a resource recovery park (like that currently being created in Lowestoft) should be set up to enable the residual waste to be sorted into different types of usable materials.

Rupert Read, Green Councillor for Wensum ward, said, "I believe that many people in the Norwich area will find it hard to understand why the LibDem and Labour Parties in Norwich joined last night with the Conservatives, and failed to back plans to commit Norwich to improving its recycling facilities in the coming year. There is no time to lose – the time to oppose the County's incinerator plans and to put money into the budget in Norwich for improving recycling is now. If this incinerator is built, then – according to local weather forecasters -'residents in my ward may well have to suffer from its emissions for about 50 days a year. That's about a day a week – one day a week too many! The Green group deeply regrets that the other Parties were too timid last night to stand firm against incineration. We are pleased that at least the other Parties have not ruled out coming out against incineration on March 7th, after the Waste Management Committee have looked at the issue. Rest assured that between now and then we will be campaigning hard, alongside local residents, to ensure that Norwich is committed, by March 8th at the latest, to opposing this retrograde incineration scheme."

Jenn Parkhouse, Co-ordinator of Norwich Friends of the Earth, said to reporters after the meeting, "The current City Hall administration is the same administration that signed up to the 'Zero Waste Charter', with much fanfare, in 2002. The sine qua non of that Charter is: no incineration. I am deeply disappointed that the administration have not followed through on their commitment to Zero Waste. They must do so, on March 7th, if they are not to lose all environmental credibility."