CUTESPHERE

Retro Hi-Fi

CuteStudio

CuteDating

Cemex's plans for South Cambs

(Notes from 2004/5)


	The council waste plan aims to install this cement/co-incinerator (Photo of Rugby above) at Barrington next to the M11 and A10. Co incinerators do neither cement or waste particularly well.

The wrong and illegal tools for the job

The co-incinerator is not such a bright idea as the two technologies of cement manufacture and incineration have conflicting requirements...

Cement plant	Incinerator
Oxygen required 6%	Oxygen required 20% +
Medium temperatures	High temperatures
Relaxed emission standards	Chlorine limits and dioxin checks
Ideal for making cement	Ideal for incineration
Not designed to incinerate	Not designed for cement

If this plan goes ahead the following events are anticipated:

Cemex and the council get £35million pounds of our money and a 25 year lease
They have already spent £625,000 planning the FPI scheme to create fuel pellets from waste
A new road will be built across a right of way to the A603 to carry some of the extra traffic
A new site will be constructed to create a giant incinerator 450' tall
Site construction traffic will be dwarfed by the operating traffic carrying fuel + 5x the cement
They will incinerate waste 24 hours a day, 200,000 tons a year
Toxic fallout lands downwind on Cambridge, Addenbrookes and the surrounding villages
Highly toxic ash piles will be created, possible 20,000 tons per annum
The local water table will be threatened by rain leaching through this ash into the ground and streams
Property prices will fall, health will suffer, healthcare costs will rise
Re-use and recycling will be shelved as the commitment to feed the fire comes first
Waste production will be 'justified', carbon emissions will be ignored
Cemex will profit at our expense; i.e. the voters and people who live here

Objections to the Barrington co-incinerator

There are currently two major planning consultations being done by Cambs County Council and they are currently open for comments. until March 13th 2006. That's now two weeks away.

The first is the general descision to classify the Barrington incinerator as a waste management site. Once classified I fail to see how pointing out a few planning permission errors is going to stack up against the planning designation of the site.
Issues and Options Additional sites Jan 2006 - page 45
The second is the actual proposal to expand the quarry into the big plant and build a new road from there out to the A603 for cope with some of the additional traffic feeding the plant. Once this is in the county plan again I cannot see our planning permission objects cutting much ice with a council that has had the plan available since the summer for public consultation (with forms to fill in at the back!) and that no one has objected to.
Issues and Options 1 Report June 2005 - page 39

The main council page is HERE

You need to use the council form by 13th March 2006 to be counted, this may have been extended to April 2006. "Councillors are appealing for people and interest groups to write or e-mail them with their views on the new technologies available for waste disposal. A number of respondents will then be chosen to give their views at a special meeting which will be held on March 15 at 1pm in Cambridge.

The meeting will be open to the public who will be able to listen to the debate.

People can send their views and should express if they wish to have their say at the meeting by writing to Chris Badger at Rm 224, RES 1206, Shire Hall, Cambridge, CB3 0AP or by e-mailing scrutiny@cambridgeshire.gov.uk or by calling 01223 718562 by March 8."

Download a poster for your window!

Modern waste management...

New technologies for waste displosal is newspeak. Firstly technology is the problem, Secondly none of these propsals is new. Like a slimmer trying yet another wonder diet and wondering why it doesn't work, waste management is a simple case of applying the laws of physics.

There is too much waste being pumped into the system
The waste is being dealt with inadequately

Like a disease, waste is best dealt with by prevention.

50 years ago we did not have a landfill problem, despite having occupied these shores for many thousands of years. Before the oil and plastics industry got hold we had a industry that repaired TVs and radios, food was bought locally in paper bags, goods delivered on cardboard boxes, more use and less consumption. Today we have blister packs, expanded foam, plastic bags, plastic containers for tomatoes, carrots, ready cook meals etc. I challenge anyone to buy for a meal without buying plastic as well. I buy most of my waste from Tescos. Most do. I throw away kilogrammes of rubbish, lets try to change the quantities before we change the percentages. 50% of nothing is still nothing.

Throwing away waste does not make sense.

Reuse before Recycling. Every trip around the cycle costs money. How many re-use centres does the council run? How many do they employ? Where are they? Sort before Recycling. I can tell the difference between cardboard/wood/paper, plastics, glass, metal and batteries etc. I bet you can too. Using distributed waste sorting is powerful and free. Where is my blue plastics bin? Where is my small grey batteries bin? Europe is way ahead of us here! Compostable waste can be landfilled or turned into gas. This is a modern technology that can lessen our dependency on energy imports, Metal, glass and plastics can all be sold to make new products at reduced material costs.

Burning waste is lunacy.

This is not a new technology, people have been buring their waste for hundreds of years. With however our modern packaging and cunsumer durable culture things can be rather dangerous to burn.
Burning waste has the following drawbacks:

Problem	Description
Energy loss	You have to turn waste into fuel pellets, that uses a lot of energy
Less recycling I	Once you've burnt it, it's gone - you cannot recycle it.
Encouraging waste production	A fuel dependancy develops, sabotaging prevention of waste production, the fundamental A1 priority
Cement or incineration	Cement kilns are bad incinerators. The temperatures are too low and the oxygen content is 1/3rd of that required for proper incineration.
Carbon emissions rise	Burning waste completes the cycle from oil reserve to carbon dioxide emission. We are suppose to be cutting carbon emissions - burning 200,000 tonnes per annum is not helping that.
Dioxins	Some gases recombine on cooling and create deadly dioxins, highly toxic to all life.
Heavy Metal	Metals like cadmium, arsenic and lead are heavier than air and sink out of the plume. This lands on the fields and even organic farmers have no solution. Land in Sheffield and Yorkshire has already been poisoned by the coal burning steel industry to the extent that growing food is impossible is some areas. Coal and steel are safe compared to waste burning - do we really want to poison the east anglian fields of England?
Toxic slag and groundwater	Ash. Waste is not efficient at burning like oil or gas. If only 10% is left as ash that still has to be disposed of. That ash will be laden with non-combustible elements... like arsenic, lead and cadmium. Burning concentrates these elements (because most of the other stuff burns to a gas) into toxic ash, some of which goes up the chimney to be spread over the countryside, some of which has to be dumped. These big slag piles (20,000 tonnes per year?) will leach into the groundwater and polllute our drinking water.
Expense	Costs. It has been estimated (http://www.ukhr.org/) that the UK could save £24bn in health care costs by operating a clean air policy. For every 'free' ton of waste fuel that goes up the chimney someone somewhere will be costing their employer, family and the NHS a lot of money. The PFI companies and cement/incinerator companies may benefit financially but UK PLC will get poorer, and we all like in the UK.
Traffic	Traffic and noise. The estimated traffic at Barrington will be over 500 vehicle movements per day. Because of the nature of the fuel and the cement business the plant needs to expand to be viable. This means an increase of 5x the amount of cement created, resulting in 5x the vehicles. The new road proposed to the A603 will mean existing roads still have to bear roughly 3x the current traffic.
Eyesore	Views of Cambridgeshire and rights of way. Currently travelling past Barrington you can see the chimney and a plume. The new co-incinerator proposed has to have a 450' chimney to help the toxins disperse over a wider area than just Haslingfield, with a giant tower-block sized drying tower. The UK Government has signed the European Landscape Convention, which aims 'to promote landscape protection, management and planning' and commits the signatories to integrate landscape into land use planning, involve the public in landscape issues, protect outstanding landscapes through national landscape laws and policies, raise awareness through education and the assessment of landscapes and co-operate at a European level.
The Rain That Falls	Rainfall. When it rains the rain drops wash the toxins straight down into the nearest village, complete with vegetable patches.
Water shortage	Water. Incinerators use about 50million litres of water a year. There is a water shortage.
Air Pollution	Particles. According the the EU, WHO, Health protection agency, Friends of the Earth, the British Society for Ecological Medicine, The Country Doctor, the EA, UK Health Research (etc.) the most dangerous particle size for humans is 2.5 microns and below, known as PM2.5. What's the most common particle size coming out of Barrington currently? Yes, it's PM2.5 - measurement commissioned by Barrington Cement themselves. As a co-incinerator the quantity shoots up, it is already much higher as they burn SLF. It's dangerous now, it will be lethal when its grown up. Directly downwind of the plant are many villages, Cambridge City and Addenbrookes hospital The health effects of scattering all of this rubbish into billions of highly dangerous ultrafine particles over the countryside, concentrating the non-combustible elements of Arsenic, Cadmium etc.

Therefore I think that burning waste is old-fashioned and extremely dangerous and expensive, creating less, re-use, recycling and careful management is the modern and safe thing to do.
Oh, and we have more than enough cement.

Illegal

Creating a co-incinerator in Barrington is illegal because it violates several statutory undertakings of the UK:

The 1950 European Human Rights Convention

The 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: because safe alternative methods are available.

The 1990 Environmental Protection Act

The 1990 Environmental Protection Act requires that emissions must not harm human health.

The 2000 Precautionary Principle of the European Communities

The 2000 Precautionary Principle of the European Communities aims to avoid the legacies of illnesses, premature death, and the costs of compensation and to the public purse through the NHS, that were attributable to (e.g.) asbestos, DDT, leaded petrol and tobacco smoke. The UK undertook to apply this Principle, as reaffirmed in the 2002 HMG Cabinet Office Strategy Unit Report.
The Government is committed to using the precautionary principle, which is included in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.
The precautionary principle must be invoked where:
1. There is good reason to believe that harmful effects may occur to human, animal or plant health or to the environment
2. The level of scientific uncertainty about the consequences or likelihood of the risk is such that the best available scientific advice cannot assess the risk with sufficient confidence to inform decision-making.

The UK Government has signed the European Landscape Convention

This aims 'to promote landscape protection, management and planning' and commits the signatories to integrate landscape into land use planning, involve the public in landscape issues, protect outstanding landscapes through national landscape laws and policies, raise awareness through education and the assessment of landscapes and co-operate at a European level.

The 2001 United Nations Commission on Human Rights

This establishes the human right to live in a world free from toxic pollution and environmental degradation.

The 2001 Stockholm Convention:

this global treaty specifically identified waste incineration as a primary source of serious persistent pollutants, and committed the signatories to eliminate them.

Background

There is a waste problem in the UK. The problem is:

There is too much waste
Burying it is becoming expensive due to land costs
There is pressure from the EU

In the UK about 50 years ago landfill was a viable option, as very little household waste went in the bin. Most was thrown onto the fire to heat the home. Much now comes from the supermarkets in food packaging, many people do not have wood burning stoves and the government has done nothing to change this.

The primary ways to combat the waste management problem is simply to create less and dispose of more. By ignoring the first point DEFRA is avoiding the simplest and cheapest option. In fact by ignoring prevention and just going the cure might sound crazy to you or I but seriously this appears to be the limit of their imagination. Please note that preventing waste also has the effect of slowing down the more wasteful parts of the economy. Any economic slowdown however is seen as a very bad thing by the government. This is because they measure things by money, rather than quality of life.

Shop packaging: cardboard, not plastic.
Quality - specify a minimum 3year guarantee (like in some of Europe)
Tax breaks for Hire Stores
Re-use centres - official subsidised swap areas
Allow us to recycle plastics!!

Dealing with waste

In the UK we can only think of burying or burning it seems. If Austria can recycle over half of their rubbish then we cannot we????

Disposal options

Bury it
Burn it
Recycle it to make other stuff
Recycle it to make (low grade) fuel
Burn it for heat in the home (cardboard, paper and wood)

Non-sustainable Waste Management

Make just as much waste. Then take that waste and use a lot of energy to make low grade fuels. Then burn this stuff in a huge cement kiln that has no PM2.5 particle or heavy metal emission restraints next to some infants schools, sixteen villages and downwind of the City of Cambridge, Cambridge University and Addenbrookes hospital, and surrounding East Anglian farmland that helps feed the entire UK. Remember when we used to recycle newspapers in the 70s? What happened to that?

Intelligent Waste Management

This is the only long-term way to deal with waste. Imagine instead of the mass of plastic in the bin you had instead a pile of cardboard you could burn on your wood burning stove to heat your house.

Imagine not buying a new tool as you could hire it for less. Imagine a world where all plastic was recycled into anything from insulation to flooring.

Air Quality

The main concern of residents is naturally air quality. If people are not concerned about air quality as the primary factor then they need to be, this is a big health threat and is not going to go away.

What ever is incinerated will decompose at a high enough temperature to form new compounds during the burn as oxidation and combination into new molecules takes place, and also as the gases cool in the chimney and the surrounding air. The atoms however stay the same, i.e. you put arsenic in, and you'll get arsenic out. The main three outputs that spell trouble for health are:

Dust that irritates the lungs
'Heavy' metals that poison you
Dioxins, natures most dangerous poison

Dust

Dust causes a number of irritations to the lungs, eyes and throat. Dust is more or less dangerous depending upon what it is, for instance asbestos dust causes a number of serious lung conditions.

Dust that comes from a cement works is quite variable in quality but the population effects have been studied on groups of school childen, just like the school children that go to Haslingfield Primary School situated on the other side of the hill to the proposed cement works expansion.

Figures for the some of the consequences of placing cement works near schools are in this 1995 study [ref 2] of 300 children attending primary schools near the Castle Cement works which was burning 50% recycled liquid fuel - in Clitheroe, Lancashire as compared with 300 children in schools not near cement works, found that they were:

1.7 times more likely to have sore eyes
1.8 times more likely to suffer from sore throats
1.6 times more likely to have a blocked nose

Fine particulates excluding PM10's are known to settle in the lungs and enter the bloodstream. It is widely agreed that they are instrumental in causing lung cancer, heart and respiratory problems.

[ref 2]: Respiratory health effects of industrial air pollution: a study in east Lancashire, UK; SE Ginns and AC Gatrell, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Volume 50, pages 631- 635, 1996.

Toxins

The problem with the pollutants is the concentrations. By shipping in millions of tonnes are raw materials from around the country and burning them at Barrington, the amount of arsenic that naturally occurs in the material might for instance only be 10 grams per tonne. Burn 1,000,000 tonnes and you then get a weight of 10,000,000 grams or 10 tonnes of arsenic spread over South Cambs.

The list of hazardous heavy metals that will in the smoke plume are listed below. For comparison you may like to view the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) CERCLA list. This is a prioritization of substances based on a combination of their frequency, toxicity, and potential for human exposure. This is a better priority than the absolute toxicity because it takes into account their rarity. The toxicity rating from CERCLA is given in the brackets []. To get the priority order in perspective, Cyanide is number [28] in the list.

[ 1] Arsenic
[ 2] Lead - learning impairment and behavioural problems in children
[ 3] Mercury - causes damage to the nervous system and kidneys
[ 7] Cadmium - lung cancer
[51] Nickel - cancer

Dioxins and other fallout products

Dioxins are a Class A carcinogen known to affect human reproduction. We can see where they end up because we can see where the SO2 ends up, which is apparantly on the boot of my car:

Bmwpaint1 (75.1kB)

A highly polished surface forms areas of oxidation directly under raindrops. It rained earlier in the week on the same surface and there was no oxidation. On a day when the smoke plume was over Haslingfield and it rained this happens. This paint needs deep cutting to remove the oxidised layer, not the first time this has happened in Haslingfield.

Particles

The health effects of the tiny PM2.5 magnitude particles (est 100,000 tons per year output over villages, Addenbrookes and Cambridge City) are well known to be extremely dangerous. There is no report marking these as safe. The current plant's most popular particle size peaks at PM2.5. Compare this to burning straight coal at PM30 - a much bigger and virtually harmless particle size.

If you have not already read this, please have a look at some of the evidence: www.countrydoctor.co.uk

This report The Health Effects of Waste Incinerators, (moderators Dr Jeremy Thompson and Dr Honor Anthony) has now been made available on the website of The British Society for Ecological Medicine at www.ecomed.org.uk/pub_waste.php

The Health Protection Agency: HPA report . In England and Wales 20% of children have asthma; an estimated 30% of acute exacerbations of childhood asthma are related to outdoor air pollution. Around 36 children and 30 adults per 1,000 population may have asthma that is attributable to chemical environmental factors. There is some evidence of an association between daily concentrations of particles and hospital admissions for treatment of cardiovascular disease. A 1 �g/m3 drop in annual mean PM2.5 particles throughout the lifetime of individuals in England and Wales may reduce mortality rate from cardio-vascular disease by 0.1%."

DEFRA: Improved air quality can extend life expectancy explains how you can live 8 months longer with clean air. Who said air pollution wouldn't kill you? Apparantly it wasn't DEFRA, the EA (Environmental Agency) said in front of the March 15 Scrutiny Committee at the Shire Hall, Cambridge, that they listen to the HPA (Health Protection Agency) so we're all agreed then: No Incineration without killing people.

The cost of running such a scheme is prohibitively expensive, have a read of UK Health Research where they say:

NHS could save £24bn per annum with cleaner air [like the US] The US Clean Air Act was unpopular with industry, yet the White House Office of Management and Budget report for Congress showed that reducing harmful industrial PM2.5 emissions saved $193 billion between 1992 and 2002 in reduced hospital visits and fewer days off work [Washington Post, 27 September 2003]. The UK could save £24 billion per annum in NHS costs by following the US clean air strategy. For ever £1 spent on reducing PM2.5s there will be a saving of £6 on reduced NHS costs and £4 on reduced Social Security costs as fewer people will be too sick to work [EC's 1999 OKOPOL Report].
There are of course many alternatives that cost less, are harmless to health, provide greater employment and are good for the environment leaving the air and water clean and toxin free. Oxford are looking at this, in fact the Mayor himself is opening the conference that are having about it soon.

Useful links

	CuteSphere SuperWiki, © Cutestudio Ltd.