Nine years ago, then minister for the environment Noel Dempsey published a policy document on waste management entitled Changing Our Ways. And indeed, we have. At the time, Ireland languished 14th in a league table of the EU-15 for the volume of waste recycled. Now, it is in eighth place - ahead of countries such as Britain, France, Italy and Finland, but still behind better performers such as Austria, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. This is a creditable performance, even though it must be attributed at least in part to the imposition of charges for collecting domestic refuse. But other elements of the 1998 policy document have not been realised, notably the construction of incinerators, more politely called "thermal treatment plants", to deal with post-recycling residue.
Minister for the Environment and Green Party leader John Gormley now wants to have this policy reviewed. He is coming from a position of outspoken opposition to Dublin City Council's controversial plan for a thermal treatment plant on the Poolbeg peninsula. And although he is debarred by the office he now holds from interfering in the planning process, Mr Gormley has been sending out signals that national policy on waste management - the main reason given by An Bord Pleanála for approving incinerators in the past - is about to change. But this is no surprise; the programme for government specifically mentions new waste management technologies such as mechanical and biological treatment.
But MBT, as it is known in the trade, is not a complete system. In countries such as Austria and Germany, it is generally employed as a "pre-treatment" process, with 40 per cent of the output going to landfill and 45 per cent to incineration. But there are no EU standards yet for this technology, and these will clearly take some time to develop. Nonetheless, MBT may be an efficient method for Ireland to examine, particularly for rural areas, where door-to-door collection of recyclables is economically non-viable. The real issue is what happens to the residue, and whether it is disposed of to landfill or incineration. In the context of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, thermal treatment scores higher, particularly if it involves turning waste into energy.
So far, three incinerators have been approved and a further seven are in various stages of planning. Given our relatively small population and geographical area, it is inconceivable that there will be enough post-recycling waste to feed them all. The Poolbeg incinerator alone would have a capacity of 600,000 tonnes per annum, and under the contract agreed with the Danish-American consortium that would operate it, Dublin City Council would face financial penalties if it failed to supply a minimum of 300,000 tonnes of waste annually to the plant. One must also question whether the council was not being somewhat prejudicial in entering into such a contract in advance of the determination by An Bord Pleanála and the Environmental Protection Agency of planning and licensing applications for the Poolbeg project.