Green Party seeks rethink on waste disposal strategy of Carlow council

A Green Party member of Carlow County Council is to seek a new debate on the authority's support for incineration as part of …

A Green Party member of Carlow County Council is to seek a new debate on the authority's support for incineration as part of a regional waste-management strategy.

Cllr Mary White said pressure must now be put on all the relevant local authorities to rethink their waste-disposal strategy following last week's decision by Wexford County Council to reject incineration.

The thermal treatment option is part of the waste-management strategy drawn up by the South East Regional Authority which is seeking new ways of disposing of the 350,000 tonnes of waste produced in the region each year.

Five of the region's six local authorities had approved the plan before a public campaign against it was mounted, culminating in Wexford's decision to reject it by 19 votes to one.

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Ms White said she would raise the issue at Carlow County Council "and try to initiate a debate on a more sustainable way of getting rid of our own particular waste mountain here in Carlow, rather than go down the road towards incineration".

She claimed that far from being a universally proved technology as described by its supporters, incineration of municipal waste using energy was an experiment which had left citizens of industrialised countries with a legacy of unacceptable high levels of dioxins and related compounds in their food, their tissues, their babies and their wild life.

As well as incineration, the SERA strategy, drawn up by consultants, addresses the need for more recycling and reuse of waste which is currently dumped in landfills. Opponents of the strategy claim, however, there would be little incentive to pursue "green" methods of dealing with waste once an incinerator was in place.

Chris Dooley

Chris Dooley

Chris Dooley is Foreign Editor of The Irish Times