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May, 2012:

Hong Kong plan to create 25 islands threatens wildlife, say protesters

Creation of 1,500 hectares of land in the region is flawed on environmental and demographic grounds, say experts

Tolo harbour, Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s Tolo harbour: tonnes of construction waste could be dumped here, if planners get their way. Photograph: Philip Dunn/Rex Features

Green hillsides stretch out behind Ruy Barretto’s stone house and trains to China slip under the hill in the designated conservation area where his family home has stood for generations. Down by the waterfront, Tolo harbour is teeming with visitors. Behind it, a narrow, neglected road crawls up theSha Lo Tung hillside through dense trees, birdsong, wild rushes, ferns and fresh air.

But if Hong Kong’s planners have their way, tonnes of construction waste will be dumped in and around Tolo harbour, disfiguring shorelines, despoiling uninhabited islands and wrecking a rare recreational resource.

The plan is part of a broader aim to create 1,500 hectares of land to provide homes and land space for millions more people. The planners talk of creating 25 islands and waterfront extensions of hundreds of hectares each. They would dump concrete in the sea to join up islands where weekend sailors see porpoises and turtles, and wipe out natural pebble and sand beaches.

Possible Hong Kong reclamation sites. Photograph: Graphic

Thousands have signed petitions against the plans. Experts on population, environment, urban design and sustainability say that instead of creating new lifestyles for residents, the plans will allow the government to save the cost of shipping waste to China and garner huge profits from land sales.

“They are trying to kill two birds with one profitable stone,” says Barretto, a barrister. The WWF says the environmental cost of the redevelopment is too high. Among the sites targeted for reclamation, Po Toi island is home to Romer’s tree frogHei Ling Chau island is home to a special burrowing lizard; and the waters around Beaufort island support more than 30 species of coral. Porpoises, mangroves and spawning grounds for fish would all be put at risk.

However, the 25-location plan will create land in one of the planet’s most heavily populated places. The authorities are also thinking about creating new land for a third runway at the international airport.

The government’s civil engineering and development department (Cedd), which refused to be interviewed, says it is merely seeking public opinion on the best way to meet future development needs. It issued a brochure suggesting that new land could be created at 25 locations outside Hong Kong’s central harbour area, which is protected from development by law. It embarked on a “public engagement process”, in which the plan was outlined at seminars and exhibitions. Responses are being analysed with a view to shortening the list of 25 sites down to 10.

The trouble, says a range of experts, is that the department’s assumptions are wrong, its reasoning faulty, and the process flawed. Take the Cedd’s claim that Hong Kong’s population (of 6.9 million) will reach 8.9 million by 2039. “I don’t believe it,” said Prof Paul Yip, Hong Kong’s top demographer, from the University of Hong Kong’s department of social work and social administration.

Hong Kong has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, at 1.04%, and a rapidly ageing population. The daily quota for 150 new migrants from mainland China is rarely full. Without a massive inward migration programme it is hard to see how it could produce such significant population growth.

As for the need for new land, the countryside is already scarred by storage of shipping containers and old factory areas are left to rot. The government has admitted that 200,000 flats are standing empty; more than 5,000 hectares of other land has also been identified for rezoning.

“Reclamation should be the last resort,” said Roy Tam Hoi-pong, chairman of environmental pressure group Green Sense. The Hong Kong Institute of Planners says that reclamation “at an appropriate scale and level of overall sustainability is a possible option” but warns that study of a large number of criteria, including environmental and ecological, is necessary.

“The identification of 25 sites, prematurely released and belatedly presented, is confusing … ‘island’ sites in particular are extremely unlikely to be viable,” it said in a submission to the government.

Government sources the Cedd’s plan was a surprise to policy units usually involved in such significant planning processes. A 2007 government study called Hong Kong 2030 stressed the need for a more sustainable quality of life and warned against rampant reclamation.

“We’re suffering from a lack of decision-making,” said Peter Cookson Smith, architect, urban planner and president of the Institute of Planners.

Some allege a broader lack of vision, saying Hong Kong’s land needs depend on its future relationship to the mainland. The border between the two different jurisdictions is becoming more porous, which is partly why mainland Chinese feel less need to live in more expensive Hong Kong. It also raises questions about why Hong Kong should build more land, when there is the huge space of China next door. For Barretto, the most disturbing aspect of the 25-site plan is that the government appears to have forgotten, or thrown out, the most basic principles of international practice for sustainable planning.

After researching the figures, local commentator Tom Holland said: “It’s hard to conclude anything except that the planners and their construction industry cronies have run completely amok, crazed by the prospect of getting their hands on the government’s huge fiscal reserves, and using them to build ever more grandiose, expensive and unneeded civil engineering projects. They need to be stopped.”

Hong Kong’s reclamation tradition

When British and other foreign traders’ ships first sought safe harbour in Hong Kong in the 1840s, the island offered a mere strip of flat land which rose precipitously to the 550-metre peak. Reclamation – taking land from the sea – was envisaged from the start.

Begun in 1889, the first major project added almost 4.5 hectares of new land, creating what is now called Central, the primary business district A subsequent reclamation of what is now called Wanchai added another 4.8 hectares.

Since then, Hong Kong has grown exponentially. The government has been creating 500-700 hectares of land every five years, until 2005 when new environmental awareness and legal sanction cut the growth back to under 100 hectares over five years.

As of early 2011, about 6% of land in Hong Kong (6,824 hectares) has come from reclamation, the government says.

Traditionally, reclamation has been done by dredging, using rock and sand fill and taking out mud that could not be built upon. New techniques involve the use of large concrete blocks. This involves less dumping of mud, and makes better use of existing construction waste. Engineers say it also provides more stable land.

Hong Kong’s international airport was built on new land made by taking marine mud away. If a third runway is agreed, the new land it will require will almost certainly involve the use of construction waste.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/27/hong-kong-islands-threat-wildlife?newsfeed=true

HK cannot solve its serious waste problems with stopgap measures

SCMP – May 27, 2012

May 27, 2012

Some advocates of recycling have called for more recycling bins.

I believe that boosting the number of these bins will only partially solve the waste problem in Hong Kong.

Instead we must address the waste problem at its root cause. Every day Hong Kong generates more than 17,000 tonnes of solid waste, and although we are recovering 45 per cent of our waste through recycling, the three landfills that are in use are expected to be saturated in three to seven years.

Over the past five years, waste reduction adverts and recycling bins have appeared everywhere in Hong Kong; however, the government has yet to offer concrete policies to actualise the waste reduction.

It prefers addressing the waste issue through mere expenditure, such as buying and building new facilities (integrated waste management facilities) and purchasing new technology (incinerators).

Unfortunately, though these kinds of stopgap methods are relatively easier to implement, as Hong Kong is affluent, they can only address the symptoms, but not the root cause.

These methods are not cost-effective and are short-sighted. I believe that the administration needs to implement waste levy legislation and a producer responsibility ordinance to address the root problem of waste production in Hong Kong.

Under the producer responsibility scheme, by forcing producers to be involved in the disposing stage of their products, a circular economic framework is formed, returning the waste that is generated as a result of economic activities to the consumption loop.

In this case, recycling not only slows down the rate of the depletion of natural resources and reduces the pollution from manufacturing activities, but it also provides many opportunities for the development of the recycling industry and even creates employment for lots of people on low incomes.

A waste charge also employs the principle of polluter pays. The government has already got the plastic bag levy to curb the excessive use of plastic bags, and this has resulted in a 90 per cent drop in usage.

The government can use a similar policy for waste reduction through implementation of a flat-rate charge (through existing general taxes), thereby hurting the wallets of the end-users and inhibiting waste production.

Syed M. Sumayed, Sai Kung

Burning questions over rubbish trips

SCMP – 26 May 2012

We have more news of freebie overseas trips to push the Hong Kong government’s incinerator agenda. Yesterday we wrote that although government plans for the Shek Kwu Chau incinerator are on hold after being voted down by Legco’s environment panel, the government is quietly trying to advance its agenda with a heavily subsidised trip to Singapore for island residents and environmental groups. The point of the visit is to learn about Singapore’s approach to waste management, which, unsurprisingly, is heavily reliant on incineration. A group called the Hong Kong Islands District Association is organising the trip, which is for 50 people, who are being asked to pay HK$1,000 for four nights and three days. Now we hear that another trip is planned for Taiwan, along the same lines. This time the invitation comes from Professor Jonathan Wong, who is with Baptist University, has received a number of research grants from the Environmental Protection Department in recent years, and is an advocate of incineration for dealing with Hong Kong’s waste. The trip to Taiwan is being funded by the Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF), and Wong sits on the ECF’s funding committee. Should the government be spending money in this way to surreptitiously advance a project whose future is currently uncertain?

Incinerator may be on hold, but jaunts to Lion City are a go
LAI SEE
Howard Winn
May 25, 2012
Readers will be aware, as we keep going on about it, that progress on the government’s plans for an incinerator on Shek Kwu Chau is on hold. So you would have thought that the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) might like to take the opportunity to reconsider its plans. But not so. Lai See has learned that the government is quietly working behind the scenes to advance this project. Recently, various heads of environmental groups based on the islands have received an unusual invitation from the Hong Kong Islands District Association (HKIDA). Noting that the incinerator is a key issue of concern to island residents, it says the HKIDA is organising a trip to Singapore at the end of the month. The purpose of the trip is to study the Lion City’s approach to waste management. Singapore has been chosen for the excursion because it has four incinerators.

Participants only need to pay HK$1,000, which for four days and three nights in Singapore is not a bad deal. A trip like this would cost at least HK$6,000. There are 50 places available, so let’s assume conservatively it is costing HK$300,000. Who is funding this, you might wonder. Certainly not the HKIDA. The sponsors are the Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF) and Environmental Campaign Committee. These funds are for a wide range of non-profit environmental projects, and for promoting environmental awareness. One member of the ECF funding committee is Professor Jonathan Wong Woon-chung, who is with the department of biology at Baptist University. In the past few years, Wong has been the recipient of funding from the EPD and is periodically wheeled out by the government to promote incineration as a means of dealing with waste. Now there’s a coincidence

HKBU’s subsidised Taiwan jaunt offer

2012/5/15  (Google translate)
Subject: Hong Kong Baptist University  nominates you to participate in the 4 days and three nights of Taiwan’s environmental protection mission
Nominated you to participate in 4 Days 3 Nights of Taiwan’s environmental protection mission
Baptist University, Sino-Forest Pearl River Delta Environmental Applied Research Centre in the period from January 2012 to June waste none of your business “community involvement & public education programs Thanks to the active support of people from all walks of life, the plan was successful. This education program not only reflects the warm attention of the public of Hong Kong’s waste problem, and successfully collected the views of the districts public. In addition, the center will hold on June 25-28, 2012, a four-day and three nights of Taiwan’s environmental protection mission, Thank you for your support of this program, the Centre wishes to nominate you as  a candidate to participate in the event, the organizers and The sponsor will be further screened the participants list. Program “Environment and Conservation Fund”, you only need to pay (HK $ 1,000) will be able to participate in the total value of $ 5,000. Taiwan’s environmental protection mission.
The main purpose of this mission is to see the successful examples of green community as learning, visit the local waste disposal facilities: Taiwan EPA, waste recovery and disposal sites, incinerators, biotechnology, treatment facilities, and so on. In addition, the trip to Taiwan’s famous attractions (please refer to the attached tentative itinerary).
You fill in on or before May 19 of the annex to the reply slip, indicating that you have / are not interested in participating in the event, and pass to this center. Sponsor of the Environment and Conservation Fund “and the final list of this center will be further screening delegation from interested participants. Upon completion of the screening, the center will later notify all invited participants will later be selected for individual contact to arrange the details of activities. This is a golden opportunity! Hope that you will not miss the opportunity and look forward to your reply as soon as possible.
After the mission, each participant (institution) shall submit a brief inspection report within two weeks on personal feelings and views on waste management (about two A4 paper) as a reference to the views of the Hong Kong Government.
If you want to do this mission or have any questions or inquiries, please, and is responsible for contact colleagues Miss Tan (3411-2089/helentam @ hkbu.edu.hk) or Chen (3411-2094/11467169 @ hkbu.edu.hk). Let us work together to build a green community.
Sincerely yours reply. Cis-designate
Sino-Forest director of the Pearl River Delta Environmental Applications Research Center
Professor Jonathan Wong
提名閣下參加

四日三夜之臺灣環保考察團

浸會大學嘉漢林業珠三角環境應用研究中心於2012 年 1 月至 6 月期間的《廢物關你事》社會參與暨公眾教育計劃承蒙得到各界人士的積極支持 ,本計劃才得以順利進行。此教育計劃不但反映了公眾對香港垃圾問題的熱烈的關注,並成功收集了各區市民有關的意見。另外,本中心將於2012 年 6 月25至28日舉辦為期四日三夜的臺灣環保考察團,為感謝閣下對本計劃的支持,本中心欲提名閣下為是次活動的候選參加者,主辦和贊助單位會進一步篩選最後的參加名單。計劃獲得 《環境及自然保育基金》資助,您只需以優惠價(港幣一千元正)便能參與總值五千多元的臺灣環保考察團。

此考察團主要目的是以臺灣的綠色社區成功例子作為借鏡,參觀當地廢物處理設施,例如: 臺灣環保局、廢物回收處理場、垃圾焚化爐、生物科技處理設施等等。此外,還會到臺灣著名景點遊覽 (請參閱附件的暫定行程)。

請閣下於519日或之前填妥附件的回條,表明您有/没有興趣參加是次活動,並傳給本中心。贊助單位《環境及自然保育基金》和本中心會進一步從有興趣的參加者中篩選考察團的最後名單。篩選完成後,本中心會稍後通知所有被邀者,被挑選的參加者會稍後作個別聯絡,以安排活動細節。 這是一個千載難逢的機會!! 希望閣下切勿錯失良機,盼您能盡快回覆。

考察團過後,每位參加者(機構)須於兩週內提交一份簡短的考察報告,闡述個人感受和有關廢物管理的意見 (兩頁A4紙左右),作為給香港政府的意見參考。

如閣下對此考察團有任何疑問或查詢,歡迎與負責同事譚小姐(3411-2089/helentam@hkbu.edu.hk) 或陳小姐 (3411-2094/11467169@hkbu.edu.hk) 聯絡。讓我們攜手共建一個綠色社區。

敬侯回覆。順候

嘉漢林業珠三角環境應用研究中心主任

黃煥忠教授

2012 5 15

‘We didn’t reclaim in cement test’

Airport Authority says trial pumping of cement into mud pits under seabed for third runway was not reclamation so public did not need to be told
Amy Nip
May 26, 2012

Working underneath the seabed does not constitute reclamation, the Airport Authority said yesterday in defence of its decision to carry out a trial project for the proposed third runway without first informing the public.

The “deep cement mixing” project took place in January and February and drew criticism from environmentalists because it was not gazetted. It involves injecting cement into soft mud pits to form pillars, which then become the base for reclamation work.

WWF Hong Kong said the work created a bad precedent for the government to reclaim seabed wherever it liked.

But Tommy Leung, the Airport Authority’s general manager of projects, said it sought advice from the Department of Justice before starting the project and was told it did not contravene any laws.

“The project didn’t leave any temporary or permanent structures on top of the seabed … Sand and geotextile [a permeable fabric] were laid, so that the seabed was protected and could return to its previous state after the trial,” Leung said.

According to the Foreshore and Sea-bed (Reclamations) Ordinance, reclamation means any work over and upon any foreshore and seabed. Thus, work underneath the seabed does not necessarily constitute “reclamation”.

The trial involved drilling 20 metres under the seabed, injecting the cement and allowing it to solidify into pillars. Ten such pillars were made, Leung said.

Water sampling showed no harmful materials were released from the mud during the cement-mixing process, he added.

A total of 650 hectares of land will need to be reclaimed for the proposed third runway, and there are mud pits covering 40 per cent of the area. The new technology, which costs up to four times that of traditional reclamation methods, ensured reclamation was more environmentally acceptable, Leung said.

However, Leung’s explanation failed to convince the green groups, which said the trial altered the natural habitat for marine creatures, irrespective of whether it amounted to “reclamation”.

“A cement surface is totally different from sand,” WWF HK senior conservation officer Samantha Lee Mei-wah said.

Lee said invertebrates lived in the seabed, and formed part of the marine food chain. They could be destroyed by construction work underneath the seabed, she argued.

Samuel Hung Ka-yiu, chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society, said dolphins were displaced even when no structures were erected on the seabed.

“Dolphins usually dive to the seabed to find food. The placement of geotextile on it means they can no longer find food there,” he said.

Former president of the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers Gregory Wong Chak-yan said the use of the geotextile layer raised questions about whether the project should be governed by reclamation laws.

Although the geotextile would not stay on the seabed for ever, local regulations governing seabed works did not differentiate between temporary and permanent projects, he said.

amy.nip@scmp.com

Technology Partner for Sundrop’s Waste to Gasoline Facility

http://www.waste-management-world.com/index/display/article-display/7447850645/articles/waste-management-world/waste-to-energy/2012/05/Technology_Partner_for_Sundrop_s_Waste_to_Gasoline_Facility.html?cmpid=EnlWMW_WeeklyJune12012

25 May 2012

Gasification based biofuel specialist, company Sundrop Fuels has entered a partnership with technology and engineering supplier ThyssenKrupp Uhdefor what it claimed will be the first commercial scale ‘green gasoline’ production facility in the U.S.

Colorado based Sundrop said that its inaugural plant near Alexandria, Louisiana, will yield up to 50 million gallons (190 million litres) of renewable gasoline annually while also serving as proving ground for its proprietary biomass conversion technologies that will be used for future large-scale facilities.

The company said that it will convert sustainable forest residues and thinnings, combined with natural gas into bio-based green gasoline by using a production process that integrates gasification, gas purification, methanol synthesis and a methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process.

According to Sundrop its biofuel is ready for immediate use in today’s combustion engines and will be delivered to the marketplacevia the nation’s existing fuels distribution infrastructure. The company’s first production plant will have a capacity of about 3500 barrels of renewable gasoline per day.

As a key element to its first facility, Sundrop said that it will deploy ThyssenKrupp Uhde’s High Temperature Winkler (HTW) gasification process, coupled with other well-established technologies for gas cleanup, methanol synthesis, and the MTG conversion.

Within the plant the company said that it will demonstrate its proprietary process for biomass conversion incorporating the company’s patented RP Reactor?, an ultra high temperature technology that is claimed to generate the highest fuel energy yield per ton of biomass of any biofuels process available.

Sundrop said that it plans to follow its first facility with larger-scale fuels plants producing nearly 300 million gallons (1135 million litres) annually, with a combined production capacity of more than one billion gallons by 2020 – a significant%age of the cellulosic advanced biofuels goal set by the U.S.’s Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).

The company said that it expects construction to start on the facility later this year.
Read More

Biofuel Specialist Expands Enzyme License from Dyadic
Abengoa Bioenergy New Technologies has agreed to pay enzyme specialist Dyadic International (OTC Pink: DYAI) $5.5 million for an expansion of its rights under a previous non-exclusive license agreement.

Membrane Contract to Boost Waste to Biofuel Efficiency
KmX Corporation has agreed to provide biofuel Fiberight exclusive rights to its membrane aided concentration and dehydration technologies for the conversion of Municipal Solid Waste into ethanol.

160 Million Euro French Algae Project Targets Biofuels from Wastes
French agricultural research organisation, the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) has launched a 160 million Euro collaborative platform aimed at developing efficient biofuels and high added value substances by utilising micro-algae feeding on nutrients contained in waste and industrial emissions of carbon dioxide

Tokyo Waste Management

download PDF : Tokyo Waste Management

Tokyo’s waste reduction and plasma arc

Download PDF : Tokyo’s waste reduction and plasma arc

Report Attacks World Bank for Backing Waste Incineration

by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON – In spite of a global treaty that requires countries to minimize the use of waste incinerators that produce toxic pollutants, the World Bank and its affiliates continue to promote projects in developing countries that include incinerators, according to a coalition of international environmental and health groups.

In a report released here Wednesday, the Washington-based Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), a grouping of some 375 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 40 countries, and the Manila-based Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA), charge that the Bank Group has funded or recommended funding at least 156 projects that include incineration, in 68 countries, since 1993.

That was the same year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified incinerators as the country’s primary source of dangerous airborne dioxin and mercury emissions, both of which are highly toxic to humans.

Since 2001, some 26 projects that included incineration components, have gained the Bank Group’s backing, adds the report.

”It’s outrageous that a public institution like the World Bank is using public money to destroy public health,” said Von Hernandez, GAIA co-ordinator in the Philippines. ”The Bank must immediately stop funding incineration.”

The report, ‘Bankrolling Polluting Technology: The World Bank and Incineration’, was released on the eve of this year’s annual meeting here of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where NGOs are expected to turn out in force to urge major reforms in the lending policies of the two international financial institutions (IFIs) affecting a range of issues, from tropical deforestation to privatization.

The new report, based on an analysis of World Bank documents, charges that the Bank is promoting a technology in poor countries that has largely been repudiated, or in some cases banned outright, in developed nations.

The incineration of industrial, health-care, and municipal wastes has become an increasingly contentious health and environmental issue in recent years.

Incinerators produce large quantities of gaseous, solid and sometimes liquid residues that are often contaminated with toxic substances, such as heavy metals, dioxins, furans and other so-called persistent organic pollutants, or POPs.

Dioxins are particularly dangerous. They have been shown to cause a wide range of health problems, including cancer, immune system damage, reproductive and developmental problems. They also ”bio-accumulate” in the fatty tissues of living organisms and are passed up the food chain, especially concentrating in fish, eggs, and diary products, without decomposing.

Governments have increasingly recognized the dangers posed by the production of POPs.

In 2001, nations approved the United Nations Stockholm Convention on POPs, a global treaty that requires participating nations to minimize their production of certain, particularly toxic POPs – including dioxins and furans – and to eventually ban 23 of the most dangerous substances. The same treaty identified incineration as a major source of these chemical compounds.

In wealthy countries, technology has been devised to mitigate – although not eliminate – air pollution caused by incinerators, but its expense is beyond the reach of most poor countries.

”Increasing pollution in regions already suffering from widespread health problems due to by-products of combustion, such as particulates, POPS, and mercury is especially unsustainable and threatening to public health,” the report said.

Poor countries also generally lack the kind of regulatory, environmental, and public-health systems needed to ensure that incinerators are in fact minimizing toxic emissions.

The report stressed that viable alternatives to incineration exist for most hazardous wastes. Health-care waste, for example, is composed primarily of non-infectious waste similar to general municipal waste. Maintaining separate waste streams for potentially infectious and non-infectious material has been shown to be both inexpensive and cost-effective.

In addition, aggressive recycling and compost programs can reduce much municipal waste, while non-burn treatments have been developed for the most hazardous contents. On industrial wastes, the best policies, according to the report, are preventative: reducing or eliminating hazardous industrial inputs.

The report stressed that of the 156 projects backed by the Bank, only three – in Singapore, Mauritius, and South Korea – were primarily concerned with incineration. In the rest, incineration was a secondary or minor aspect of the project.

Of the total projects in which incineration was included, half are in Africa, where Kenya was the global leader with 12; 22 percent in Asia and the Pacific; 19 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean; and 10 percent in Europe.

But almost half of all were concentrated in just 12 countries: Kenya, Brazil, Turkey, India, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, Zambia, China, and Nigeria.

The incineration capacities of these projects vary greatly, the report says, noting that the Singapore incinerator may burn as much waste as all other Bank-backed incinerators combined.

About 50 percent of the projects involve incineration of a wide variety of industrial and manufacturing wastes; about 29 percent handle health-care wastes; and the remainder, general municipal wastes. Twelve of the 19 projects that include municipal waste incineration are related to tourism, including luxury hotels in remote locations.

The World Bank itself established a POPs Unit with the goal of improving ”various operational policies by integrating POPs issues” after the Stockholm Convention was signed.

It also has policies that prevent it from lending to projects that use certain pesticides that are POPs, according to the report. The Bank also supports projects designed to clean up existing POPs stockpiles – such as those abandoned by multinational pesticide companies in Africa – and to help countries move away from reliance on POP-producing technologies.

”It’s particularly hypocritical that the World Bank is seeking funds to clean up POPs problems at the same time that it continues to create new ones,” said Neil Tangri, the report’s author. He cited a 1999 New York Times article that reported that the Bank’s president, James Wolfensohn, personally contributed 50,000 dollars to an effort to prevent the construction of a mixed hazardous waste incinerator at his vacation home in Wyoming.

The report stressed that a number of groups represented by the coalition have tried to engage the World Bank directly on these issues but ”received little constructive response”. Asked about the Bank’s reaction, spokespersons from the Bank and its private-sector affiliate, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) said they had not yet seen the report.

© 2002 lPS

###

Download PDF : The World Bank Group and Incineration

European Parliament decisions

European Parliament info

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=REPORT&mode=XML&reference=A7-2012-161&language=EN

includes:

Calls on the Commission to streamline the waste acquisition, taking into account the waste hierarchy and the need to bring residual waste close to zero; calls on the Commission, therefore, to make proposals by 2014 with a view to gradually introducing a general ban on waste landfill at European level and for the phasing-out, by the end of this decade, of incineration of recyclable and compostable waste; this should be accompanied by appropriate transition measures including the further development of common standards based on life-cycle thinking; calls on the Commission to revise the 2020 recycling targets of the Waste Framework Directive; is of the opinion that a landfill tax – as has already been introduced by some Member States – could also help achieve the above ends;

http://ukwin.org.uk/2012/05/17/rotterdam-incinerator-closed-due-to-overcapacity/

172012

As reported in LetsRecycle, Frans Beckers of the Van Gansewinkel Group waste business has stated that the company closed down an incinerator due to overcapacity and advised others to do the same:

We closed one of our incineration plants in the Rotterdam area. There is overcapacity in Germany and we hope some of our colleagues will follow suit. We hope more [incineration] capacity will be taken out of the market. In the end we could harm recycling performance.

Beckers also claimed that these problems also relate to biomass, stating that: “There is a lack of fuels. Too much is being burnt. We need to ensure we do not invest in too many biomass energy installations as we won’t have the fuel any more”.

In the same article Michel Sponar, policy officer with the European Commission’s environment directorate, is also reported as saying that “member states such as Germany and Denmark which are heavily reliant on incineration need to change their focus too, by sending more waste for recycling and composting”.

These comments should be set in the context of the Environment Agency recently granting SITA a permit to export 600,000 tonnes of UK RDF to Amsterdam, a quadrupling of RDF export licenses; calls from the European Commission for the UK to avoid sending recycable material to incineration and the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment calling for “the phasing-out, by the end of this decade, of incineration of recyclable and compostable waste”.

Incinerator may be on hold, but jaunts to Lion City are a go

SCMP

LAI SEE
Howard Winn
May 25, 2012

Readers will be aware, as we keep going on about it, that progress on the government’s plans for an incinerator on Shek Kwu Chau is on hold. So you would have thought that the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) might like to take the opportunity to reconsider its plans. But not so. Lai See has learned that the government is quietly working behind the scenes to advance this project. Recently, various heads of environmental groups based on the islands have received an unusual invitation from the Hong Kong Islands District Association (HKIDA). Noting that the incinerator is a key issue of concern to island residents, it says the HKIDA is organising a trip to Singapore at the end of the month. The purpose of the trip is to study the Lion City’s approach to waste management. Singapore has been chosen for the excursion because it has four incinerators.

Participants only need to pay HK$1,000, which for four days and three nights in Singapore is not a bad deal. A trip like this would cost at least HK$6,000. There are 50 places available, so let’s assume conservatively it is costing HK$300,000. Who is funding this, you might wonder. Certainly not the HKIDA. The sponsors are the Environment and Conservation Fund (ECF) and Environmental Campaign Committee. These funds are for a wide range of non-profit environmental projects, and for promoting environmental awareness. One member of the ECF funding committee is Professor Jonathan Wong Woon-chung, who is with the department of biology at Baptist University. In the past few years, Wong has been the recipient of funding from the EPD and is periodically wheeled out by the government to promote incineration as a means of dealing with waste. Now there’s a coincidence