Overstating the obvious.

Heinrich

So Gormley wouldn't wait till Friday to shut the stable door after the horse bolted. I love our green exports, damned hyprocacy!

Minister to clamp down on export of waste abroad

The Minister for the Environment John Gormely is tightening controls on the export of waste abroad for recycling and recovery.


The main aim of the set of new measures is to prevent the illegal shipment of waste to other countries.

Approximately 83% of waste collected for recycling or recovery here is shipped abroad.

New EU regulations on waste shipments come into force this Thursday.

Akrasia

Heinrich wrote:

So Gormley wouldn't wait till Friday to shut the stable door after the horse bolted. I love our green exports, damned hyprocacy!

Well, If the moronic Irish 'small' government didn't allow irish glass bottle recycling plant to close down, we might actually have somewhere to process some of that waste.

Don't worry John Gormless though. We won't need to recycle that waste after your government allow the construction of incinerators around Ireland. (its better than shipping the paper to china to be burnt anyway right? What do you think the 'recovery' part of 'recycle or recovery' means?)

Or we could actually use a little imagination, and set up plants to recover ethanol from household and industrial waste instead of incineration to help kill two birds with one stone (waste management and fuel security)

maniac101

Akrasia wrote:

Well, If the moronic Irish 'small' government didn't allow irish glass bottle recycling plant to close down, we might actually have somewhere to process some of that waste.

What? The Irish Glass Bottle plant closed because the owners decided that they weren't making enough money. Recycling was only a small part of their business and not of any consequence to them. They closed it ultimately because they couldn't compete with their rivals across the border in NI. The government didn't have anything to do with the closure.

Akrasia wrote:

(its better than shipping the paper to china to be burnt anyway right? What do you think the 'recovery' part of 'recycle or recovery' means?)

I don't know what it means! Do you mean Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? If so, yes I agree that Recycle should be the last option.

Mick86

maniac101 wrote:

I don't know what it means! Do you mean Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? If so, yes I agree that Recycle should be the last option.

Reduce should be the first. And the government could come up with some policies in that regard. Manufacturers and shopkeepers over-package everything. 90% of what comes through my letter box is junk mail. I automatically bin most of my Sunday newspaper unread and Styrofoam should be outlawed immediately.

Akrasia

maniac101 wrote:

What? The Irish Glass Bottle plant closed because the owners decided that they weren't making enough money. Recycling was only a small part of their business and not of any consequence to them. They closed it ultimately because they couldn't compete with their rivals across the border in NI. The government didn't have anything to do with the closure.

The Government could have nationalised that factory, It was built on land owned by Dublin port the Company was violating the law by not paying the workers statutory redundancy and the workers were offering to remain there at significantly reduced terms. It is a disgrace that Ireland's only glass recycling plant was allowed to close (while it was profitable) just as the government was introducing bin charges in Dublin City and we were all being told to be more environmentally conscious

I don't know what it means! Do you mean Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? If so, yes I agree that Recycle should be the last option.

recovery means burning the waste in an incinerator to 'recover' energy rather than landfill it.

A huge amount of the materials we put in our recycling bins are sent abroad to be burnt in incinerators. a double whammy for CO2. the huge transport cost, and the huge environmental cost of burning them in china where their environmental standards are hardly world beaters.

maniac101

Akrasia wrote:

The Government could have nationalised that factory

Can you please explain why you think the government should have nationalised the Irish Glass Bottle Company? I can't understand why any government should be in the business of making bottles and selling them to Guinness! Why should Irish taxpayers money have been used to bale out a profitable public company who decided to ditch Irish Glass rather than invest in it, once they saw that Sean Quinn was going to give them a run for their money?

Akrasia wrote:

recovery means burning the waste in an incinerator to 'recover' energy rather than landfill it.

You seem to be suggesting that the options are recycle or "recovery". Surely Reducing and Reusing are the better options?

The ethanol recovery that you mention is by no means a solution for municipal or industrial waste. It's an energy-intensive process and only a small proportion of the organic fraction of the waste is converted into anything useful. You're still left with an awful lot of waste in the end of the process. Ireland's waste policies should concentrate on waste prevention rather than on disposal. With a new Green environment minister I'm hopeful that this will be the case in future.

Akrasia

maniac101 wrote:

Can you please explain why you think the government should have nationalised the Irish Glass Bottle Company? I can't understand why any government should be in the business of making bottles and selling them to Guinness!

Because the government has a responsibility to provide essential infrastructure and recycling is essential in the modern age.

The Irish government has been extraordinary lazy regarding all recycling in Ireland, doing only the bare minimum and showing zero imagination.
In most of Europe, all glass bottles sold include a tax (roughly €3.80 per 24 bottles in Holland) that is refundable when the customer returns the bottles to an automated depot at a supermarket or off license. This is an extremely simple and extremely sensible way of ensuring that glass bottles are re-used in the most efficient way possible.

Why should Irish taxpayers money have been used to bale out a profitable public company who decided to ditch Irish Glass rather than invest in it, once they saw that Sean Quinn was going to give them a run for their money?

The Irish government could very easily have negotiated a deal with the company that would have been economic for both the state and the shareholders. They refused to do so because of an ideology that was totally against any kind of state enterprise even if that meant services were not provided at all

You seem to be suggesting that the options are recycle or "recovery". Surely Reducing and Reusing are the better options?

No I'm not at all. I'm pointing out the meaning of the statement in the original post. When we say we ship materials abroad for 'recycle or recovery' it hides the fact that most of that material is simply burned and never re-used.

The ethanol recovery that you mention is by no means a solution for municipal or industrial waste. It's an energy-intensive process and only a small proportion of the organic fraction of the waste is converted into anything useful. You're still left with an awful lot of waste in the end of the process. Ireland's waste policies should concentrate on waste prevention rather than on disposal. With a new Green environment minister I'm hopeful that this will be the case in future.

Yes,prevention is the best option, but unless you want to ban newspapers and cardboard and plastic, nappies etc etc etc, were still going to have waste to dispose of.

We currently have a choice, either burn it, bury it, or ship it abroad to be (burned and buried)
The technology now exists to reclaim valuable materials from unsorted waste and to convert celulose based materials into bioethanol reducing waste by 80% in volume and also seperates out and cleans valuable materials such as metals which can then be reprocessed and reused

The technology can also be used to mine existing landfills and reclaim the valuable resources that have been discarded over generations of consumption to turn pollution and waste into positive and useful resources.

http://www.reclaimresources.com/
Surely this technology should be at the forefront of government policy?

John_C

Akrasia wrote:

The Irish government could very easily have negotiated a deal with the company that would have been economic for both the state and the shareholders. They refused to do so because of an ideology that was totally against any kind of state enterprise even if that meant services were not provided at all

The service is available in Fermanagh, Britain and a lot of other places.

Oirthir

John_C wrote:

The service is available in Fermanagh, Britain and a lot of other places.

None of those places are in the Republic....

Jackie laughlin

The reason that nationalisation was not considered is that the ideologues would go ape. It is an article of faith that the State must have no direct ownership or control of any enterprise. Common sense doesn't come into it!

Why would anyone continue to buy a newspaper and then bin most of it? Strange!

John_C

Oirthir wrote:

None of those places are in the Republic....

Why does that matter, the glass gets recycled?

Jackie laughlin

Here we go again! The usual Irish solution to an Irish problem: export waste; import "nuclear" electricity; abortions in Britain ...

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Here we go again! The usual Irish solution to an Irish problem: export waste; import "nuclear" electricity; abortions in Britain ...

How is exporting bottles to be recycled in Britian (which is what is alluded to) the same as allowing the right to travel and banning abortions.

Do you want to bring back the days of the Macaroon bar or something?

Liam Byrne

Mick86 wrote:

90% of what comes through my letter box is junk mail. I automatically bin most of my Sunday newspaper unread and Styrofoam should be outlawed immediately.

Phew! It's not just me that thinks this way, then ? I was almost tempted to send the bills for my recycle bags to the newspapers....particularly the local "property supplements" that either arrive in the papers or another one that arrives in my letterbox - and goes straight into the bin....

Seriously, though, why should I have to pay for additional recycle bags more often ? Is there a way to stop this ?

nesf

Liam Byrne wrote:

Seriously, though, why should I have to pay for additional recycle bags more often ? Is there a way to stop this ?

Where I was before bags were shared out among people in our row, i.e. people who didn't need them (because they lived alone or whatever) gave them to people who needed more. Neighbourly spirit and all that.

maniac101

Akrasia wrote:

Because the government has a responsibility to provide essential infrastructure and recycling is essential in the modern age.

So you believe that the Irish government should have nationalised the Irish Glass Bottle Company simply to provide a glass recycling facility. But why stop there? Why single out glass for special treatment? What about paper, steel, aluminium, plastic, chemicals, etc? By your logic, the Irish government should also nationalise Aughinish, Smurfit, Mergon and every other company that uses recycled products in its processes. Nationalising Irish industry is not a solution to Ireland's waste problem.

Akrasia wrote:

http://www.reclaimresources.com/
Surely this technology should be at the forefront of government policy?

No I don't agree. Waste reduction should be the policy driver. Waste to energy conversion technologies should only be the weapons of last resort when tackling waste. Remember, if you build a monster you've got to feed it. The economic and environmental projections for all similar plants are always based on a very high availability i.e. with the plant running at close to full capacity almost all of the time. However, if you manage to cut your waste by say 30%, these plants are no longer economically or environmentally viable. In this manner, waste to energy technologies can act as a disincentive to waste reduction. For instance, a local authority that decides to commission a plant to recover biogas from the organic fraction of municipal solids waste would be less likely to encourage residents to compost their organic waste.

Akrasia

maniac101 wrote:

So you believe that the Irish government should have nationalised the Irish Glass Bottle Company simply to provide a glass recycling facility. But why stop there? Why single out glass for special treatment? What about paper, steel, aluminium, plastic, chemicals, etc? By your logic, the Irish government should also nationalise Aughinish, Smurfit, Mergon and every other company that uses recycled products in its processes. Nationalising Irish industry is not a solution to Ireland's waste problem.

The government should provide essential infrastructure, especially if the private sector couldn't be bothered doing so themselves (things like public transport, electricity, postal services, waste collection, water and sewage treatment are all public utilities. Recycling should now be included in that list because the costs of not providing those services are far higher than the cost of doing so. (and private companies aren't concerned about the public cost of not doing things)
I never said anything about nationalising companies that use recycled products, you're just being ridiculous now.

No I don't agree. Waste reduction should be the policy driver. Waste to energy conversion technologies should only be the weapons of last resort when tackling waste.

Yes they should. but no matter how successful we are at reduction, there is still going to be household waste that needs to be dealt with. The technology I linked to is not just a waste to energy converter, it's also a recycling machine that captures valuable metals and materials and recovers the petrochemicals from plastics and polystyrine which would otherwise be simply landfilled.

Remember, if you build a monster you've got to feed it. The economic and environmental projections for all similar plants are always based on a very high availability i.e. with the plant running at close to full capacity almost all of the time. However, if you manage to cut your waste by say 30%, these plants are no longer economically or environmentally viable.

look at the link. The plant is modular (it is easy to scale up or down the capacity) and it's also easy to assemble and disassemble to move it somewhere else where there is a greater need for it. It is very different from an incinerator. What comes out the other side is non toxic and sanitized material, in comparison with highly toxic ash that Incinerators produce.

maniac101

Akrasia wrote:

The government should provide essential infrastructure, especially if the private sector couldn't be bothered doing so themselves (things like public transport, electricity, postal services, waste collection, water and sewage treatment are all public utilities. Recycling should now be included in that list

I think you haven't understood the implications of your comment that the government should undertake recycling. A product isn't recycled until it's used in another process. There's no glass recycling facility in the republic because there's no factory in the republic to use the recycled product. You can't have one without the other. For instance, if you want the government to recycle steel then you're effectively saying that they should build a steel plant. (The plant that you linked to doesn't recycle steel, it simply sorts it!). No government can provide the infrastructure to recycle all of the products that we use and dispose of. Btw, inspite of what you believe, there are plenty of companies in the 'private sector' that are involved in recycling.

I don't want to argue with you but frankly I'm a little tired of people expecting the government to resolve our waste issues. This is what happens when recycling is promoted above waste reduction. Recycling waste helps lay the responsibility of waste management on the shoulders of government. Reducing waste on the other hand places the onus squarely on the shoulders of the consumer, where it belongs.

The plant is modular (it is easy to scale up or down the capacity) and it's also easy to assemble and disassemble to move it somewhere else where there is a greater need for it. .

Try telling that to Greenstar and others who've unsuccessfully attempted to build similar plants in Ireland in the past! We're talking about Ireland here, waste handling plants can't be simply be moved up and down the country as needs require.

Jackie laughlin

Nesf,
I didn't say they were the same. You know well the point I was making.



I'm tired of people ruling out State involvement in all enterprise. This is ideological nonsense.

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Nesf,
I didn't say they were the same. You know well the point I was making.

You made the comparison and I don't think it works tbh. Ireland is a small country, there are things that we simply don't have large enough economies of scale for them to work for us. A private specialised recycling plant for a particular substance might be able to make a profit in somewhere like Germany because there is enough indigenous industry for them to have somewhere to sell what they recycle or it would have enough of the waste available to drive the average cost per kilo or whatever down. Versus here where they'd have to first ship the waste in and then ship the recycled materials out to market which combined with our high wages would make said plant unsustainable.

There is nothing wrong with exporting some waste abroad to be recycled when we couldn't feasibly do it ourselves at a reasonable cost. We're a very small country in the grand scheme of things, trying to do everything ourselves is a losers game or more importantly the belief that we should do everything ourselves which doesn't work very well, this is what the macaroon bar referred to.

Jackie laughlin

I never suggested doing anything plain silly. Your argument is essentially in favour of doing everything at the lowest possible cost. There might be moral, strategic or environmental arguments against that.

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

I never suggested doing anything plain silly. Your argument is essentially in favour of doing everything at the lowest possible cost. There might be moral, strategic or environmental arguments against that.

Not necessarily, my argument is this:

a) Say we're talking about building a lightbulb recycling plant. The smallest efficent plant requires 10 billion lightbulbs a year to keep it running year round without large gaps of idle time. Ireland only produces 5 billion lightbulbs a year. In this circumstance there's no real reason build this plant because we simply don't produce enough waste to keep it ticking over. It would be more efficient to ship it over the UK where they have a nice big lightbulb recycling plant which our 5 billion bulbs would help it to tick over. Essentially you want to recycle this stuff, where it is recycled is a secondary concern when you get down to it.

or

b) We have 10 billion lightbulbs so the plant can keep running year round but there's only an indigenous market for 5 billion bulbs a year. Now we need to export the other 5 for it to make any sense to recycle them in the first place, if we're a high cost country there might be no market for said bulbs at the price we can recycle them for. In order for them to sell them we might have to make a loss, essentially we'd be paying people to take them off our hands. This is untenable again if we could sell our waste bulbs to countries with lower wage costs and who could sell the recycled bulbs on for a profit. There is no benefit to us recycling them ourselves in this instance versus having them recycled somewhere else.


It's not necessarily about the bottom line but about whether it is actually feasible to recycle. Again, we're a very small country, if we could actually feasibly recycle all our waste it would be extremely surprising considering we actually import so much of our consumer goods to begin with.

John_C

Jackie laughlin wrote:

I'm tired of people ruling out State involvement in all enterprise. This is ideological nonsense.

I don't think anyone is doing that, in this thread at least. Rather, it's being pointed out that there is a perfectly good bottle factory in Co. Fermanagh and no need to duplicate the facility south of the border.

Jackie laughlin

John C,
I accept that but contributors above have argued that the state should not be in business.

Nesf,
Can you think of an example where you would support a "green" industry in Ireland which no business interest was prepared to finance and operate?

John_C

Jackie laughlin wrote:

I accept that but contributors above have argued that the state should not be in business.

That's true but there's no need for this discussion to turn into another left/right debate.

I won't answer for Nesf but there are lots of green industries the government is involved in and more that it should be like composting organic waste, running most of our public transport and building electrical storage stations.

maniac101

Jackie laughlin wrote:

contributors above have argued that the state should not be in business.

...and.....

Jackie laughlin wrote:

I'm tired of people ruling out State involvement in all enterprise. This is ideological nonsense.

Jackie, I've re-read the whole thread twice and can't find where anyone suggested that 'the state should not be in business'. It's certainly not my view. I think you're putting words in people's mouths here. The Irish state runs many fine and successful enterprises and long may that continue. (Personally, I'd like to see greater state involvement in enterprise - but that's not the topic of discussion here).

I've taken issue with the comments that the Irish government should take on the task of recycling the all of county's waste in Ireland. My view is that it would be technically, economically and environmentally unsustainable, and I and others have given examples of the impracticalities of that approach. If you don't share this view, then please explain how it would work, rather than glibly dismissing other people's contributions as 'ideological nonsense'. This has absolutely nothing to do with ideologies.

However, my main point was that the primary focus of government waste policy should be on Reducing waste and not on Recycling it. As simple as that! Is that an ideology?

Jackie laughlin

Maniac,
You said, "I can't understand why any government should be in the business of making bottles .." I took that to be a principled opposition to state ownership of a bottle plant. I think that state ownership should always be an option. Reading your latest post, there's clearly been a misunderstanding. I'm sorry, if I offended.

It IS very difficult to suggest that state ownership should be considered because ideologues DO go ape!

There is no way of avoiding left Vs right approaches. The Green parties are riven on ideological lines with "watermelons" (red on the inside! Jaysus!) versus their liberal opponents.

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Nesf,
Can you think of an example where you would support a "green" industry in Ireland which no business interest was prepared to finance and operate?

Where I personally would support it or where I think the government or local government should support it? I assume you mean government so..


The immediate examples that come to me are recycling collection free of charge for people, this happens already in many areas but should be nationwide, combine with bin charging and you've substantially increased recycling levels.

Jackie laughlin

Nesf,
May I try to nudge you a bit further to the left? What about a new state company to manufacture ethanol? The model might be the original Irish Sugar Company.

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Nesf,
May I try to nudge you a bit further to the left? What about a new state company to manufacture ethanol? The model might be the original Irish Sugar Company.

Ethanol manufacture (to the best of my knowledge) is most efficient with present technology when using sugar cane because the pulp can be used too. If a very efficient process could be found using sugar beet then sure, but at the moment it wouldn't work very well if my understanding of the technology is correct.

Nearly all of these proposals come down to efficiency versus the scale you need to work on to achieve that level of efficiency. The only businesses we should be looking at are ones that are efficient on the scale that we can generate (ie a relatively small scale). Things that work very well for large countries mightn't work well at all here.

Jackie laughlin

Nesf,
I take it you mean that you have no objection in principle to the state owning and running an enterprise.

I read Porter many years ago. The problem is that there are strategic and/or local considerations. The route you seem to be going leads to unqualified support for neo-liberal gloabalisation. OK, this is off topic.

By the way, the argument against ethanol production in Ireland is the same as that against sugar production in Ireland.

My overall point is that Green politics cannot escape left Vs right decisions.

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Nesf,
I take it you mean that you have no objection in principle to the state owning and running an enterprise.

Essentially, I’ve no objection in principle to the state owning and running enterprises that the private sector couldn’t provide. Generally speaking these are enterprises that provide public goods. The Government should always own the railways in my opinion, along with the power distribution network and it should provide roads (though it doesn’t necessarily need to provide and maintain all of them) and similar. The Government shouldn’t necessarily own the power companies or the train companies. Private companies will never build roads or lay power lines out to villages in remote rural areas because they’d never make a profit out of it, the Government need to step into this gap.

Arguably the Government should also heavily sponsor R&D in areas that we’ll benefit from and not only leave it to the private sector to do all of the innovation (though arguably the private sector is more efficient at doing it).


Where I disagree with a lot of more left wing thinking is in that I believe that the Government should be relatively “small”. If the private sector can do the job it should be left do the job. Some things it will never be able to provide fairly and that’s where the Government needs to step in but it shouldn’t automatically do things. The problem here is that people think that we should have an Irish plant for everything and not use foreign plants to recycle our waste. Personally I think that if a bottling plant in Northern Ireland can recycle our waste for us at a cheaper price than if we ran our own plant that we’d be foolish not to use it. On the other hand if we could recycle the waste cheaper ourselves we’d be foolish not to set up a plant here (be it public or private depending on which is needed).

Jackie laughlin

Nesf,
I'm way off topic but I reckon that you are a socialist; you seem to believe in a mixed economy. Very few do these days. My few remaining doubts about your politics can be easily cleared up.

Having established a profitable state enterprise, is it a matter of principle that it be privatised?

When a private enterprise capitalises on State investment (your money and mine) in roads, R&D etc, should they be expected to put something back?

If it could be shown that direct labour (state employment) produced a better and/or cheaper product/outcome, should that be the course taken?

By the way, you can't be serious about private/competing train companies in the light of Britain's experience; there's now huge state subsidy to run fantastically inefficient and dangerous services.

Moreover, you do realise that ESB prices have been RAISED in order to encourage private competition?