Could reclaiming land solve waste disposal issues?
A RECENT report in the Guernsey Press warns that we all face a 225% increase in our waste collection costs (from £2.15 to £7 per week) to meet 'recycling targets'. ('Kerbside recycling cost projected to be £39.9m', 18 January) How can such a vast increase be justified? There seem to be two issues: 1, to meet some arbitrary recycling target 'consistent with those in the UK and EU' and 2, that our existing landfill site will become full in the coming years.
Dealing with the first point: as Deputy Peter Roffey says in your article, we cannot justify recycling targets becoming semi-religious goals, which must be met no matter what cost to Guernsey. We have already seen such stupidity costing the UK taxpayer excessive costs, way more than other countries that don't follow such ridiculous targets. (It seems the individuals concerned with promoting these targets just know their world view is the only correct way to think, no matter the cost to their community.)
As for shipping this 'sorted' waste overseas on ships – has the cost of pollution from burning ship fuel oil been taken into account? The proponents of this scheme may well have made global emissions worse, while pretending that we have made them better here.
The whole global warming religion is increasingly being recognised as a scam (the US Energy Information Administration has been monitoring carbon dioxide emissions in the period from 2005 and discovered that they have actually gone down in this period).
To get round this inconvenient truth the scientists and green advocates (who make their living from this scam) have rebranded the issue as 'climate change'... so whatever happens in the future, in anything measured goes up or down, this is 'climate change'.
The second point of having enough space on island for our waste, either requires additional landfill or some other solution. This is not an area I have any strong thoughts about, but have we looked at the cost of 'reclaiming' land from the sea (as they do in Holland and other areas), putting in a new barrier (rocks/piles) and then infilling this over the years with all our waste?
Eventually we would have a growth of our landmass and whereas this may not be suitable for building, we could plant trees/bushes and create a new recreational space for the benefit of islanders.
As we fill in this area over the years, we could extend the infill area and grow the island more and more... we would thus be using our waste for a creative benefit to our island and the cost of developing such a project could create jobs on island rather than paying millions of pounds off-island for other countries' benefit.
I think we need such creative thinking for our own on-island solution, rather than trying slavishly to follow other countries' example.
C. RYAN,
Les Traudes,
St Martin's.
