Lost in an exercise of percentage-based targets

WHEN you talk about the history of the waste strategy, some very awkward shuffling on seats ensues.

Especially now as the two boards try to get the eye-watering financials through the States.

They want to look to the future, not face any awkward last-minute questions about whether they have come up with a cost-effective solution or not.

How did Guernsey get here?

It proposed, worked on and then ditched two on-island solutions along the way.

The last, Suez, was also predicated on all the high recycling levels that the current export option also champions.

For what its worth, Suez was a 25-year design, build and operate solution at a cost reinflated to 2016 levels of £225m. The combined capital and operational costs of the latest strategy is nearly £300m. for five years less.

Guernsey spent £11m. tendering for the two incinerators, it has spent an incalculable amount of staff and political time on the issue, it has also spent money on interim and temporary schemes such as kerbside, yet more cash on managing the waste pile at Mont Cuet, as well as taking a huge chunk of land at Longue Hougue largely out of commission while it danced around coming up with the final solution.

Most who have followed the waste debates will know that the era of cheap solutions is over.

Landfill is not sustainable.

We have been told for years our bills will be going up significantly, but that does not soften the blow of the latest figures.

Remember too that when the States speaks about an average rise from £2.15 a week to £7 for a household, it has been ramping up the charges to build up waste funds above and beyond the costs, since around the time of the

Lurgi energy-from-waste plant proposal.

There will be challenges in the States on the way forward – and it is right that the spending is scrutinised, however late in the day. It is because there are still changes that can be made that will not threaten filling up Mont Cuet.

And if you wanted to really push the point, the report going to the States next month acknowledges that you could carry on using Mont Cuet until 2021 at the current rate of fill – you will just then be faced with a potentially costly exercise of finding somewhere to deal with green and special/hazardous waste.

As politicians enter the chamber in February, they will have to ask themselves whether Guernsey has got lost in an exercise of blindly chasing percentage-based recycling targets, because the whole strategy is based around hitting 70% recycling – although now with a slight delay of arriving there by 2030.

This matters because the only way of getting there is by separate kerbside collections of food waste. While the capital costs of the strategy made the headlines early on, now up from £29.5m. to around £33m. and no longer including on-island treatment of food waste or a materials recovery facility, it is the operational cost rises that really hurt.

They are up £42.6m. on what was predicted in 2014 to around £266.2m.

Kerbside recycling, which will include food waste and now glass, has nearly doubled since the issue was last debated to £39.9m.

Value for money?

What about the costs of getting the waste ready and then exported, up by £32.5m. to £89.3m. over the 20 years.

Value for money?

With a decent scrutiny system in place there would have been an in-depth, alternative look at this – instead the danger is it will be done on the hoof in the States with plenty of opinion but fewer facts, all while the proverbial gun is held to the head.

There is talk too of a political move to keep on-island food waste treatment in the mix so that Guernsey can benefit from what is produced.

This comes back to the philosophical shift to thinking of treatment waste as a resource. Guernsey's strategy is now all about paying to shunt it off-island for other communities to benefit from the power and heat that is produced in the treatment process.

The Jersey option also will not go away – there is certainly plenty of noise from over the water about it still being a better choice.

The depth of that information will not be before the States, just a reiteration that Sweden was cheaper and more robust because there are other plants in the network to send the waste to should there be a problem.

It is also not subject to the political will of others.

The rising capital and in particular operational costs are interesting in another way.

Back when export was favoured over an on-island solution in 2012, it did so on the promise of tiny upfront capital costs (some £4m.) and operational costs that were greater but still favourable in the long term.

Of course there were other factors, and the visual and local environmental impact were chief among them, coupled with flexibility, but there is no doubting the significant shift in those costs makes the on-island solution more attractive again.

Treated waste is going to be exported in the short-term – that will not change – what happens to it beforehand might, in terms of how things such as kerbside are handled and whether we press on with food waste now.

In the longer term, there are going to be break points in the contract.

This means it is vital there is proper ongoing scrutiny of export and those responsible are held to account not only in terms of published key performance indicators but also promised costs – because the option of Guernsey-based infrastructure never goes away.