'Don’t let high paid consultants take either your common sense or your democracy away from you.' : Doctor Paul Connett.
On Saturday 1 March, BBC Radio Shropshire invited John Collis of Veolia to answer questions on the proposed incinerator. This was occasioned by a public meeting Safe Waste in Shropshire held the night before which had been addressed by Dr Dick Van Steenis, an independent health campaigner.
During the programme, Mr Collis dismissed Dr Van Steenis as just another of the occasional anti-incineration experts who 'pop-up from time to time' and then leave the country (this must invalidate their work, presumably). He specifically mentioned Professor Vyvyan Howard and Paul Connett in this context.
For the information of Mr Collis, Professor Vyvyan Howard is living in Belfast and is still working on links between incineration and health. Dr Paul Connett does indeed work in the USA and he has just produced a chapter on Zero Waste v. incineration for a forthcoming book. Here is an extract (a link for the full article can be found at the bottom of the piece).
Thanks to the member of Safe Waste in Shropshire who got in touch with Dr Connett and found this information.
Extract from: 'Zero Waste: A Key Move towards a Sustainable Society'
by Paul Connett, PhD
Our current age is sleep walking. Most of us living in Western societies have nearly
everything our parents and grandparents ever dreamed of – except one thing,
sustainability. We cannot share our current consumption patterns with the future. We are
living on this planet as if we had another one to go to. A little thought should make us
realize that, as far as raw materials are concerned, we simply can’t run a “throwaway
society” on a finite planet.
Waste is the evidence that we are doing something wrong. Landfills simply bury the
evidence and incinerators (by whatever fancy name they are called) simply burn the
evidence. We have to face the real problem: our task is to fight over-consumption and its
most visible manifestation: the throwaway ethic. Instead of trying to become more
sophisticated about getting rid of waste, we have to stop buying things we do not need,
and industries have to stop making things, which cannot be reused in some way.
Meanwhile, not only is the throwaway society presenting us with a local waste crisis, it is
contributing to the global crisis. It is important to see what has caused this crisis and how
a Zero Waste strategy can take an important step towards addressing the issue. We need
to move from a linear society to a sustainable society.
Conclusions
Incineration is not necessary. There is a better alternative strategy, which is not only
better for our health, but is better for the local economy, and for our planet.
However, there remains an obstacle, which I call “the bad law of pollution.” When we
compare communities, provinces or countries, “the level of pollution increases as the
level of corruption increases.” The more corrupt your community the more polluted it
will be. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the city of Naples, Italy.
Fortunately, there is “the good law of pollution,” which states that “the level of pollution
decreases as the level of public participation increases.” In short, we need to clean up the
political system in order to clean up our environment.
Nowhere is this corruption more apparent than the continued promotion of mega-landfills
and incinerators. A few people make a huge amount of money from building and running
these entities but the rest of the public foots the bill in countless ways.
However, the one good thing that comes out of these projects is that it galvanizes the
public into vociferous opposition. It is this passion, and the networking it generates,
which provides the push for the alternative zero waste strategy. In the last few years in
Italy this networking has received a huge boost from Beppe Grillo, a former TV
comedian who is capable of drawing 10,000 people at a time to meetings where he uses
his wit (along with recruited scientists) to educate millions on waste and other pressing
social and technical issues.
Today, nowhere is the struggle between the mindless political pressures for incineration
and the counter citizen pressure for Zero Waste more apparent than in Italy. The world
watches its response to the Naples crisis. Will invested interests succeed in getting
communities to build incinerators or will its citizens demand the kind of creative
leadership in these matters that the world once saw from Italy in artistic and scientific
matters during the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution?
Three final messages.
I always end up my public presentations with three short messages.
The first message is directed towards CITIZENS. Don’t let high paid consultants take
either your common sense or your democracy away from you.
The second is directed towards POLITICIANS. Put your faith back in people. Without all
waste solutions will fail. Give us source separation and door to door collection systems
and we will not let you down!
The third is for ACTIVISTS. Have fun! This is essential if we are to avoid burn out.
http://www.americanhealthstudies.org/zerowaste.pdf
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