Newly-implemented strategy has major hurdles to clear

I write this in praise of the waste strategy, but with some caveats.

For many years Guernsey’s way of dealing with waste was unsustainable, inefficient and downright dirty.

Rightly, the world has moved away from landfill and all the emissions it created, in the same way people no longer travel to England on steamships to jump on a steam train.

Some will always yearn for the past, probably imagining it like some Constable painting with a shimmering setting sun and idealised countryside – but that was always in so many ways an artist’s illusion.

Equally this is not an easy strategy to love because some of the people behind it when unfiltered by the PR machine come across as so patronising and dismissive of genuine concerns – particularly when it comes to the costs, but also the practical impact on some households.

That coupled with last week’s inability to pick up all collections undermines something that the whole island needs to buy into.

The States’ Trading Supervisory Board has been proven right to give a long lead-in time before the whole waste package is in place.

Imagine a world where everyone was paying for the privilege of not having their black bags collected, or were putting them out on the wrong day because they were unclear about what to do.

This has given plenty of opportunity for STSB and the douzaines to answer a string of questions from the public about what goes in which box or bag and when to replace faulty kit, to tell the contractors not to smash glass and to counter a string of misinformation that can be so destructive in a period of change.

The reality of separating out waste is not as bad as the horror stories would imply, indeed many people had already embraced the idea, and this makes it easier for others as well.

There has to be some flexibility in the arrangements for communal waste areas on estates and flats and that has been shown and will develop.

This is not, as some would argue, experimental. This is the type of system that works elsewhere.

Some people will always leap to the extreme reaction first, even before trying something unfamiliar, especially when their views are echoed back to them on social media.

But the reality remains that if you embrace the new system, you can save yourself money – not as much as you should have been able to if the charges were structured correctly – and someone will come to your house to pick up just about everything you produce.

The consequence should be much more awareness about excess waste and innovation in how to reduce it, which can only be a good thing for households, the wider community and the environment.

It would no doubt be easier to stay as we were.

Certainly for the people who are threatening to burn everything, bury it or chuck it down the toilet or a cliff.

Thankfully last week showed that they are a tiny minority – and there always will be one.

We had fly-tipping and burning with the current cheaper arrangements, people who thought bring-bank sites were there to take whatever they wanted to dump, for example.

What we need to see next is innovation and flexibility, especially when it comes to obvious pressure points, for example at Christmas time.

If the States and waste contractors are dogmatic about when they pick up food waste and recycling around these periods, the whole strategy loses the goodwill it relies on to be a success.

Now this waste strategy is wrong.

Guernsey is wrong to be paying to ship a resource off-island, with all the emissions costs that entails, so that a community in Sweden benefits from it.

This out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude is a travesty.

The island has precious few resources beyond its population’s intellect anyway.

We want independent and self-reliance, but plug into France for our electricity and will now rely almost entirely on others to dispose of our rubbish.

We all pay a premium for that, a cost that naturally disproportionately impacts on those on the margins.

This at a time when the UK is heading towards destroying ties with Europe with consequences we as yet cannot know.

It is also still to be tested in terms of value for money.

The collection system could have been rationalised and householders less squeezed, if, for example, there was a single contractor on the collection rounds.

We have little evidence that the deals struck for the capital infrastructure, or the shipping costs, were the best achievable.

That should come in time and is needed to show the public the extra money being taken from them was worth it.

For now it is all about implementation.

It is clearly early days, with major hurdles still to clear.

This next month or so is crucial as households go through the fortnightly cycle and see it fit into their daily lives, or not.

Then the machinery needs to be switched on and start working down at Longue Hougue.

We have to jump smoothly through Christmas.

And then people start seeing the impact on their bills and how they react to it.