How to hit 50% target is burning issue

PUBLIC SERVICES won the minds if not the hearts of deputies when it proposed the Suez waste plant.

Tactically, it may have been right to concentrate on persuading 47 States members rather than 60,000-odd islanders when promoting an unpopular idea, but at some point it needed to bring everyone else on board too.

And all the indications are that PSD is a long way from winning the trust of the public and a significant minority has gathered some 9,500 signatures with an anti-incinerator petition.

This is not an example of where you can argue the department did not do its homework – it has come up with an evidence-based solution that has been subjected to much more intense scrutiny than all of the alternatives being trumpeted put together.

But despite all that background, the department is failing to get its message out there.

Even minister Bernard Flouquet offering to resign if the proposed £93.5m. plant fails to deliver has something of a hollow ring given that the plant working is not what people have an issue with – the size, cost and emissions are.

Having focussed attention on winning the vote, the department might feel aggrieved that so few politicians have come out to support it since, although nailing your colours to that particular mast is no vote winner.

What might just help public perception of the department would be laying out a credible investment programme to boost recycling up to the 50% target.

That is meant to be reached by the end of this year, but it is short odds that Deputy Flouquet will be telling the Assembly late this year that we are not there yet.

Faced with questions on this target last week at the beginning of the States debate, the minister had a clear opportunity to lay out the department's vision to meet the resolution made by the States in January 2007. He did not.

We heard that the amount of household recycling had risen from 26% when that vote was taken to 36.5% in 2009 and it would have been 39% but for the green waste fire at Chouet.

In some ways, chasing these figures is slightly dangerous – his speech also revealed there was only a 2% drop in the amount of waste being sent to landfill between 2008 and 2009 at a time when the economy was seriously damaged and that household waste actually increased during that time.

But the target is there and it is one that needs to be hit to save spending an extra £16m. on another module for the Suez plant.

So how does PSD intend to claw its way up another 11% on household recycling and an estimated 9% on commercial?

Initiatives for this year will be discussed by the department's board this month and should be implemented soon afterwards.

'They include assistance for those islanders who are unable to use the existing facilities, improvements to the current bring-bank sites and the provision of facilities in more convenient locations, particularly around St Peter Port,' said Deputy Flouquet in the States.

'We are also investigating collection schemes for Town businesses and are working with the parishes, retailers and the commercial sector to help drive forward these initiatives to increase recycling this year.'

In other words, if anyone was hoping for a eureka moment, they were disappointed.

Money might be tight in the States, but that £16m. figure should be weighing very heavily on anyone who argues you can do this by paying peanuts.

And then there is also the great unknown of what waste a new environmental pollution law will drive back into what needs to be dealt with.

That was also hinted at in Deputy Flouquet's speech.

'We know that some is currently disposed of in ways that may not be permitted once the provisions under the new environmental law come into force later this year.'

And as Guernsey stews over this, Europe has moved on. New EU regulations came in this month that require battery retailers to provide collection and recycling facilities for their eventual disposal.

Everything from AA cells to mobile phone batteries must be separated from household rubbish and placed into special bins in shops or other recycling points.

Guernsey may not be part of the EU but the good neighbour principle should arguably still apply – that and the fact sending these things to be incinerated is a bad idea given what they contain.

It is just one of the many issues PSD is grappling with and something on which an announcement is expected.

What we hear from the department on recycling later this month – whether they are schemes with serious figures attached or simply hopeful ideas – will be another benchmark to measure the success or otherwise of Public Services' handling of this issue.

Much has clearly been achieved – but some feel much more needs to be done.