Respect Creation: Do not Burn it

Respect Creation: Do not Burn it. Part 2

by Sean McDonagh

The decision by An Bórd Pleanála on March 4^th 2003 to grant permission to Indaver Ireland to build an incinerator in Duleek against the advice of their senior planning inspector, James Carroll, is a black day for the people of Meath and their environment. It also shows that democracy which ought to reflect the will of the people is a sham when it come in conflict with corporate interests. Within the next five years this black cloud will spread across all of Ireland if an Bórd Pleanála and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) are allowed to have their way to litter the country with incinerators. These decisions will have enormous implications for the health and well-being of this and every future generation that will live in Ireland. As we will see later in this article our government is proceeding with an incineration programme which will cause human health and environmental problems while our neighbours in Britain have quietly decided to shelve their plans to build incinerators.

Like our chaotic transport system I ask - do we always have to get it wrong?

Instead of dealing with waste in a sensible way through reducing it and recycling we in Ireland are poised to take the lazy option in the way we deal with waste. There are plans to build at least seven municipal waste incinerators, one to dispose of animal carcasses and one national toxic waste incinerator. Driving around the country one can see signs with the skull and crossbones in almost every county declaring that this community does not want an incinerator. Communities are being divided and I am sure committed Christians have been asked to take sides in the debate about incineration. I hope, in this article, to give some reasons for opposing the building of incinerators at this time using every single non-violent method to make sure our voices are heard.

It is interesting that during the same week the Catholic Church in Ireland has begun to encourage Christians to be good stewards of our environment. The first Pastoral Letter by an Irish bishop on the environment, entitled Lent 2003: The Whole of Creation Groaning…. was published by the Archbishop of Cashel and Emily, Dr. Dermot Clifford. He called on Christians to be concerned about their deterioration of their environment.

There is a growing body of teaching on the environment from both the World Council of Churches and the Holy See. In 1990 Pope John Paul II wrote that "Christians in particular realize that their responsibility with creation and their duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith"2.

In a talk on January 17^th 2001 the Pope's tone was more challenging as he called for an "ecological conversion" to avert a global ecological disaster.

However, if one looks at the regions of our planet, one realizes immediately that humanity has disappointed the divine expectation. Above all in our time, man has unhesitatingly devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted the waters, deformed the earth's habitat, made the air unbreathable, upset the hydrogeological and atmospheric systems, blighted green spaces, implemented uncontrolled forms of industrialization, humiliating -- to use an image of Dante Alighieri ("Paradiso," XXII, 151) -- the earth, that flower-bed that is our dwelling.

It is necessary, therefore, to stimulate and sustain the "ecological conversion," which over these last decades has made humanity more sensitive when facing the catastrophe toward which it was moving. Man is no longer "minister" of the Creator. However, as an autonomous despot, he is beginning to understand that he must finally stop before the abyss[1]1 .

In the 1970s and 1980s it was often said that Catholic social teaching was our best kept secret I would suggest that our teaching on the environment is an even a better kept secret. I have been asked on a number of occasions to speak about incineration. I have endeavoured to do so in the light of my Christian faith. What follows are some of the arguments I have put forward in opposing incineration as a waste management strategy.

Dump or Burn?

Those who promote incineration often challenge a community by asking whether the people would prefer an incinerator to a dump? The assumption is, of course, that by opting for incineration the landfill is precluded. This is untrue. A basic law of physics is that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Incinerators only transform matter. In other words each atom that enters the incinerator escapes either through the chimney, or is deposited in the ash.

What goes out the chimney contaminates people, the land and the food chain. If heavy metals like cadmium, lead and mercury are burned these contaminate the ash and make it much more toxic than the original volume of rubbish, much of which is organic and ought to be returned to the soil. This toxic ash must be deposited in a landfill. If these landfills are not properly sealed toxic materials can leach into the water table poisoning the water for generations. Ironically, the more modern an incinerator is, in terms of sophisticated filters designed to minimise air pollution, the more toxic the ash. Often this ash is be classified as hazardous waste and has to be disposed of in special landfill sites. So you cannot have incineration without landfill unless, of course, you spread it around elsewhere. On July 3^rd 2001 The BBC2's Newsnight programme reported that highly contaminated incinerator fly ash and bottom ash were used in buildings in Byker, Newcastle and in breeze block type buildings and road aggregate at the Edmonton incinerator in London. The mixture contained a variety of toxins which included arsenic, cadmium, mercury, lead, zinc, nickel, copper and dioxins3.

Waste does not disappear when burned

The belief that if we burn things they simply go away is completely erroneous. Breaking things into fine particles has the effect of vastly increasing their surface area and therefore their ability to pollute. A single lump of waste weighing one pound would have a surface area of 44 square inches. When the same pound is broken into fine particles, its combined surface area grows to 9900 square yards (approximately two soccer fields). This fact is important for several reasons. The incinerators act as synthesizers and therefore compound the waste problem because other deadly toxic substances, not found in the original waste stream, are produced in the combustion process. At temperatures ranging from 400 to 1600 C complex organic molecules break down into basic atoms. Then the combustion gas cools as it travels up the chimney stack where some atoms recombine to form new, and often more hazardous, compounds. Hence fine particles, with their large surface area, provide an inviting place for pollutants like dioxins and furans to attach themselves to before they are being released into the air.

These particles can also become coated with toxic metals cadmium, arsenic, chromium and zinc. Some of these fine particles remain airborne for long periods of time and travel long distances, even hundreds of miles, before settling on land or water. This is why an incinerator can pollute the environment way beyond the immediate area where it is operating. These ultrafine particulates (less than 0.05 microns) are highly reactive. They increase the coagubility of blood and therefore increase the possibility of cardiovascular diseases. The reason for this is that these particles travel deep into the lungs to where oxygen exchange occurs. It now appears that the methods used to reduce the emissions of nitrogen oxides from the incinerators may increase the levels of particulates in the emissions. Little research has been carried out in this area and nothing should be done at this point in time, like building incinerators, to compound the problem.

Creating Dioxins and Furans

Dioxins, and their closely related organochlorine cousins furans, are created when you burn organic matter, newspapers and plastic wrapping or any kind of synthetic material. Dioxin is the collective name for numerous toxic chlorinated compounds that are undesirable by-products of the combustion process and chlorine industry. There are 75 different dioxins and 135 different furans. Some dioxins like TCDD -or 2,3,7, 8-tetracholorodibenzo-p-dioxin, are particularly poisonous. The first time many people would have heard of dioxin was as the contaminate in the herbicide Agent Orange which was used to kill foliage during the Vietnam War in order to flush out the Viet Cong soldiers.

In contrast forest fires create very few dioxins. So dioxins and furans are a very modern phenomenon. Research from core sediments found little evidence of dioxin before the 1930s. Dioxins are also produced during the manufacturing of certain pesticides and the bleaching of paper. As the ecologist Sandra Steingrabers puts it "dioxins and furans are not the natural-born children of fire. They are the unplanned, unwanted offspring of modern chlorine chemistry"4.

Proponents will argue that the new generation 'state of the art incinerators' operate to very high standards. Despite these claims even modern incinerators spews dioxins into the air. They contaminate the land and subsequently the food that is grown on this land. Dioxins accumulate in the tissue of grazing animals like cows. They, in turn, pass the dioxins on to humans when they consume dioxin-contaminated milk or meat. Furthermore there is no safe levels for dioxin exposure. Recent research indicates that it can disrupt biological process at even a few parts per trillion. Babies in the womb and young children are most vulnerable. Increased levels of dioxins are associated with decreased intelligence, suppression of the immune system and interference with the hormonal system of the body. The blood/brain barrier is only fully developed at the age of six months. This is why babies in the womb and in the first few months after birth are so sensitive to the effects of these fat-soluble chemicals.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the statistics used by advocates of incinerators to prove that they are not a health hazard normally relate to laboratory tests or those carried out under supervision. But in the real world things are not so neat, clean and tidy. This is what researchers from the US EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration discovered in a 1990 study. They found that the level of emissions achieved under laboratory conditions, or even in a commercial incinerator being inspected by prior arrangement by a regulatory authority are likely to be far lower than those routinely emitted during normal operations. They made 62 unannounced visits to 29 incinerators around the country. 69 percent of the facilities were found to have violated their emission's license. Risk assessment procedures for chemicals generally only focus on the impact of individual chemicals. There are only a few studies that focus on the synergistic impact of a number of chemicals. Dr. Liz Cullen states that to test the most common 1,000 toxic chemicals in unique grouping of three would require at least 166 million different experiments and would take 180 years to complete. So one can readily understand why the United Kingdom National Research Council has stated that "there is a dauntingly wide spectrum of inadequacies and uncertainities inherent in the process of risk assessment, each of which alone, could fatally compromise risk assessment procedures" 5. Approximately 250 chemicals are released from incinerators.

Danger to Human Health and the Environment

Incinerators pose a threat to human health and the environment. Dioxins are fat soluble so they can easily fool the cell membrane and gain access to the nucleus and the DNA. A report from the United States' Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1994 stated that dioxins cause cancer. The same report also stated that the effect of dioxins on the immune and reproduction systems was much greater than previously thought. It now appears that dioxins disrupt a variety of organs known as the endocrine system. These include the testicles, the ovaries, the pancreas, the adrenal glands, the thyroid, parathyroid and the thymus. The impact of endocrine disruptors on animals can be disastrous - thyroid dysfunction in birds and fish, decreased fertility in birds, fish, shellfish and mammals, metabolic abnormalities in birds, fish and mammals, demasculisation and feminisation of male fish. The report claimed 95 percent of dioxins found in humans in the US could be traced to one form or another of incineration. The Dutch National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection came up with similar findings. They estimated that waste incinerators can be held responsible for 80 percent of all dioxin emissions into the air in Holland.

These health concerns were confirmed by study published in The Lancet on May 25, 2002. It carried a report that increased exposure to environmental pollutants may slow adolescent sexual development. The study was carried out in Belgium. 200 17-year old teenagers were recruited, one group from a rural control area, the other from two suburbs polluted by a lead smelter and incinerators. The teenagers who lived near the incinerators matured later sexually and testicular volume was smaller in boys from the suburbs than in the control group.

Dr. Jan Straessen of the University of Leuwven said: "Biomonitoring of adolescents is a sensitive method to track exposure to common environmental pollutants…. Youngsters are especially vulnerable to a large number of noxious agents".

He said that the finding suggested that current environmental standards were insufficient to avoid measurable biological effects, which could indicate disorders in adult life 6.

A Health Danger: Contaminates the Food Chain

In November 1999 the Irish Doctors' Environmental Association (IDEA) opposed building an incinerator at Kilcock because of its negative impact on human and animal health. Doctors like Elizabeth Cullen, the joint secretary of the Irish Doctors' Environmental Association (IDEA), are opposed to incineration for a number of reasons. First of all there is no baseline medical database on public health like blood tests, tissue samples, respiratory examinations against which any alteration in environmental quality could be measured in the future. Without this data any increase in cancers, immune diseases, problems with endocrine glands will be dismissed as anecdotal. Secondly, dioxins are persistent organic pollutants and they bioacculumate in the food chain posing a health risk to this and future generations. They also biomagnify. According to the authors of Our Stolen Future concentrations of a persistent chemical can be 25 million times higher in a top predator, such as a herring gull, than in the surrounding polluted water7. This is why even seemingly minuscule amounts of chemicals such as PCBs or dioxins are so dangerous especially for babies in their mother's womb.

In May 2002 Dr. Cullen told a meeting of people opposed to the proposed incinerator at Ringaskiddy in Cork (in May 2002) that "it does not make sense to burn these chemicals which will combine in the furnace, releasing unknown compounds, whose composition and effects we know little about into the environment" 8. Furthermore Dr. Cullen points out that of the 100,000 chemicals on the European market, there is insufficient toxicity information available for even the most basic risk assessment. Writing in October 2002 she states that only 21 risk assessment are publicly available9.

The Experience of Fred de Baere

Cold statistics are helpful but no facts are as compelling as meeting someone whose life and that of his children has been blighted by emissions from an incinerator. In August 2002 a Belgian anti-incinerator campaigner, Fred de Baere, his wife, Kristine, and son David visited Ireland and spoke at meetings organized by anti-incineration groups. His story is not just one of pain and suffering but also of his strength of character in researching what happened to his family.

He is certain that incinerators have caused major health problems for many people during the past 20 years, though the impact often did not show up for 10-15 years after the incinerators were opened.

His own story of pain began when he returned to Sint-Niklass (Belgium). This is a relatively industry free area of Flanders. In the mid 1970s an incinerator with the capacity to burn 55,500-ton, per year was built less than two miles from the city centre. Between 1977 and 1988 the incinerator operated with limited filtering. Ash was stored and transported in open containers.

Fred married in 1977 and in 1979 his wife suffered a spontaneous abortion after being pregnant for three months. One year later his wife became pregnant again, this time with twins. After eight months she entered hospital for delivery to find that the twins were dead. The doctors who carried out tests claimed that both incidents were mere accidents. In 1981 a daughter was born who, at the time, seem very healthy. She is now 21 and doctors have discovered that she has suffered from hormonal imbalance and only has a period twice a year. In 1996 a son was born who suffers from a genetic effect associated with dwarfism. De Baere is convinced that all these events and the high incidences of cancer and hormonal disruptions that he has documented in the vicinity of the incinerator are during toxic emissions. He campaigned for the closure of the incinerator at Sint-Niklaas but has had little success with politicians. Recently he has brought his case to the courts. The court has directed that the incinerator be closed at the end of 200210.

In August 2002 the World Health Organisation urged governments to establish an immediate inquiry into the effects of endocrine-disrupting (EDCs) chemicals on human and animal populations. The report acknowledges that there is strong evidence linking reproductive abnormalities in populations of birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians with endocrine-disrupting chemicals. It is also felt that EDCs have contributed to the increase in breast, testicular and prostate cancers among humans and the decline in sperm count. The report details a large body of evidence pointing to the way wildlife has been harmed by exposure to EDCs, including industrial chemicals such as phthalates, dioxins as well as herbicides, insecticides and fungicides11. Many researchers now feel that there is a toxic time bomb ready to go off and that everything possible ought to be done to decrease the level of toxins in the environment 12.

Incinerators will undermine Ireland's reputation for clean food

This is why building incinerators in places where agriculture is an important element in community life and the economy is madness both from a health and economic perspective. Most of the dioxins are delivered to humans not through breathing them in air but through eating food or drinking milk from areas where dioxins are present. If there is even a slight doubt that food may be contaminated in any way the supermarket chains will not source food from such an area. Thus farming in the area will be undermined. At the moment Ireland has lowest dioxin levels in milk in Europe. A good reputation for producing chemical free food will become more and more important as the 21^st century unfolds and as scientists and doctors learn more about the negative impact of the cocktail of human-created chemicals that are already in the environment.

If the authorities decide to build nine incinerators in Ireland every part of the country will be affected by emissions and we will then lose our reputation for producing clean, fresh and healthy food. Even now it ought to be clear that the future of Irish agriculture will not be in mass production of foods. Given the size of our farms and the cost of inputs we cannot compete with large ranches in the US and Australia. We ought to be aiming at niche markets, especially the production of high quality, clean food. Irish people are already well placed in the speciality food markets. Thirty-five Irish speciality food companies won 90 medals, including 13 gold medals, at the Great Taste Award in London in August 2002. The awards covered a wide range of products. These included breads, cheese, beers, meats, chocolates, preserves and fish. This market is now worth over euro 250 million and has a potential to grow by over 65 per cent according to Bord Bia13. Building incinerators will have a negative impact on this potentially lucrative market.

People do not want incinerators built in their areas. An MRBI poll carried out in South Tipperary in June 2002 found that 70 percent of the people are against including incineration as part of a waste management strategy in the South East. According to The Irish Times (July 9, 2002) Wexford County Council also rejected incineration. Despite this Minister Cullen continues to promote incineration, under the guise of thermal treatment, as part of the waste management strategy. The minister might consult with his colleague in Britain to find out why plans to build 130 incinerators have been "quietly shelved after fierce local opposition"14.

Locked into Incineration for 30 Years

Once a decision to incinerate is taken a community is locked into this way of dealing with waste for at least 30 years. The plant will require a steady flow of waste to make it viable financially. Operators typically demand a contract with local or national government to supply them with a minimum amount of waste to burn over protracted periods such as 25-30 years. Naturally such contracts remove the incentive to prevent the production of waste and, furthermore, close down the possibilities of developing new technologies to deal with waste in a more sensible way in the future.

Incinerators Have no Place in a Country that is Attempting to Live Sustainably

Sustainable development calls for alternative approaches to waste management. These begin by attempting to prevent waste in an effort to conserve natural resources which are precious and will be needed by future generations. The next step in the process is to promote policies that reduce waste to a minimum. This will involve working with people who create waste, especially those in the manufacturing, building and retailing sections of the economy. Waste that cannot be prevented or minimized should be reused, repaired, recycled or composted. “Hard-to-recycle materials, like tyres, drywall, plastics, insulation, glass and biosolids, can even by disintegrated be intense sound waves into fine powder for easier reprocessing 15.

Animal carcasses can be dealt with through a technology known as alkaline hydrolysis which reduces the animal carcasses to residue bones and a sterile liquid effluent. This technology which was developed in the United States produces no harmful pollution to air, land or water. The process is also relatively simple. It involves loading the animal or tissue into a vessel and adding measured amount of alkali, proportional to the amount of tissue in the vessel. Water is added to cover the tissue material and the vessel is sealed tight. The contents are heated while the digestion solution is continuously circulated. The digestion cycle is normally three hours at 150 celsius operating at more than four bar pressure. The solid and liquid residues of the digestion process are sterile. Current research indicates that alkaline hydrolysis can deal with BSE-like agents and other infectious agents. It also reduces the volume of the material by 97 percent.

The digestor vessels can be produced in a range of sizes, from laboratory units with a 14 kilo capacity to a 3173 kilo capacity designed for a number of large animals. Every meat factory could install and run such a digestor which would mean that carcasses would not have to be hauled over long distances to a single incinerator like the proposed on in Rosegreen, Tipperary. Alkaline hydrolysis is also more cost effective. The cost per tonne for a 3175 kilo capacity is euro 64. This compares very favourably with incineration which costs euro 237 per tonne.

Ethical Issues involved in incineration

In the natural world there is no such thing as waste. During the 3.5 billion years of life on earth God, working through the extraordinary process of evolution, saw the natural world evolve from single-cell organisms to the wonder and diversity we find in the world today. During millions of years nature 'learned' that the only viable way to continue and enrich life on earth was by recycling everything. What was waste for one species became food for another in a diverse and stable ecosystem. Humans technologies, instead of imitating natural ones, decided to break this sustainable cycle and produce goods that don't thereby creating high levels of waste. As the economy has heated up in recent years there has been an exponential increase in waste. Globally and here in Ireland we have become a throw-away society. But this reckless behaviour is both unnecessary and cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet. This means creating the maximum wealth with a minimum of materials flow. Industries will be forced to mimic ecosystems in which one “company will feed upon the nontoxic and useful waste of another”16. It will also mean overhauling industrial designs so that no waste is created in the first place by the manufacturing process. Scores of examples are given in the book Natural Capitalism.

On May 23, 2002 the UN Environment and Development Programme published a report called The Global Environment Outlook. 1200 scientists collaborated in the work which surveys, from an ecological perspective, the past 30 years and looks forward to 2032. It makes chilling reading and the message is clear. If we continue in a business-as-usual way allowing market forces to determine everything then by 2032, 70 percent of the Earth surface will have suffered severe impact from human activity. About one quarter of the current species will have been driven into extinction. Resources will be severely limited and much of humanity will be living in poverty. The message of the report is that we have got to change or else we will leave a blighted planet to the next generation. We are now living as if we are the last generation of humans to inhabit that planet.

But incineration supports and canonizes everything that is wrong about our present destructive way of living. As I have written above the public authorities will be committed to supplying waste to the incinerator even if new technologies are developed to facilitate resource recovery. Once waste is burned it can no longer be used. Over the next decade or so public attitudes may change towards waste production. Legislation from Europe and the national governments will, most probably, insist that companies assume responsibility for the whole life-cycle of their products. Xerox’s worldwide re-manufacturing operations boosted earnings by about $200 million over the past three decades 17. An EU Directive on waste from electronic and electrical equipment (known as WEEE) bans the disposal of fridges, freezers, microwaves and computer equipment in all landfills. All countries will soon have to set up collection systems for old equipment, and the manufacturers of computers or any other electronic item will have to pay the costs of collecting and recycling their products[1]. Companies like that run by Mr. Padraic Delany of Material Asset Management are trying to recycle every component of WEEE waste. They aim to reduce this type of waste and in the process make money18.

According to Eoin Scannel in Ireland the typical composition of a household bin is 19.5 percent paper/cardboard; 5.5 percent glass; 11.9 percent plastic; 3.5 percent metals; textiles 2.9 percent; 32.9 percent organic matter; others 23.8 percent19. In 2002 the recycling company Repak achieved 33 percent recycling of packaging waste20. In February 2003 Ireland had still one of the worst recycling rates in Europe even though in some parts of the country consumers are paying over 500 euros for their bin collection. Despite a lot of rhetoric from the government on recycling many areas of the country still lack basic recycling facilities according to Liam Reid in The Sunday Tribune ( February 2, 2003). In Donegal and Longford there are no facilities for recycling paper, plastic or cardboard. Segregated collection only takes place in one third of the counties At the moment we now recycle 15 percent of our rubbish. This is very low compared to 40 percent recycling rates in many European countries[2].

In future companies will be obliged to manufacture their products in such a way that they can be easily recyclable. The declaration of “The Factor Ten Club” begins with the prophetic words “within one generation nations can achieve a ten-fold increase in efficiency with which they use energy, natural resources and other materials” 21. Already “Factor Four” (a 75 percent reduction) efficiency has been championed by the governments of Norway and Netherlands.

If the present predictions about the efficiency of nanotechnologies are anywhere close to the mark waste will be reduced even further in the next few decades. Nanotechnology takes its name from the fact that a nanometer - one billionth of a metre - is its basic measuring unit. To appreciate how small nanotechnologies will be one has to remember that the average human hair is 80.000 nanometres . In October 2002 IBM announced that their researchers at the Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California had built the smallest computer circuit ever built using individual molecules of carbon monoxide. A spokesperson said that one circuit is so small that 190 billion could fix on a standard pencil-top eraser. IBM researchers have for a number of years been looking for an alternative to silicon-based semiconductors which are found in modern computers. IBM said that the "molecule cascade" technology enables it to make logic elements 260,000 times smaller than those used in silicon-based semiconductor chips. IBM admits that it will be some years before this technology is used in products like mobile phones and computers. But IBM and presumably other companies are heading in that direction 22. If incinerators are built now in Ireland they will still be operating and demanding high volumes of waste to keep them in operation. Hence the country will not be able to gain from the new productivity-oriented industrial revolution that aims to do more with less.

The Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen, claimed on “Morning Ireland” ( July 5^th ) that unless we build incinerators to deal with our waste we in Ireland will soon be wading knee deep in waste. In the 1880s many people in London and New York felt that their cities would be drowned in horse manure. A short-sighted politician could have called for a huge investment to mechanically sweep the streets each night into drains underneath the roads of London and collect all the manure in one area. Such a technology could have incorporated the most sophisticated swivel designs but it would have been redundant within two decades as a new form of transport- the automobile- changed everything. The same kind of revolution is now underway in the area of resource and energy use and management. The Irish Governments ought not to promote obsolete ways of dealing with problems. Instead they ought to use their fiscal policy to promote innovation that protect, both human health and the environment. Governments need to give leadership by rewarding those companies that promote the efficiency and longevity of products.

In Denmark, for example, landfill taxes increased the reuse of construction material from 4 to 82 percent in less than a decade. This is twenty times greater than the average 4 percent that has been achieved in most industrial countries 23.

It is important to remember that a faulty economic assumption has helped create mountains of waste. It was believed that natural capital and human capital were of little significance compared to the finished consumer item. Economic theory dealt with extraction and manufacturing costs and profits. Little thought was given to the natural world that was mined in the first place and which was to become the final resting-place for waste. These were somehow freely available. As natural capital enters into the economic equations and places to put 'waste' run out the traditional economic paradigm will be seen to be very short-sighted. There is an urgent need to change it and replace it with an adequate economic understanding that values both natural capital and people.

Choices will be forced on us

In the present economic climate it is foolish to think that there will be money to fund both incineration and the elaborate infra-structure that is necessary to support alternative ways of managing waste. A high capital investment in incinerators will scupper all other developments. This is already happening. Recycling grants to local authorities are being cut by euro 5 million 24. Even larger cutbacks will appear if the public finances deteriorate much further and a comprehensive incineration programme is in place. As a consequence Irish citizen, will also be forced to pay a tax on waste production long after such wasteful production methods and consumption patterns have been phased out elsewhere. Does anyone think for one moment that the restrictions which An Bórd Pleanála placed on the Duleek incinerator, in terms of the destination of waste and the tonnage which can be burned each year will survive for one day if the government feels that money cannot be devoted to recycling on an on-going basis? Remember the promises before last May's general election! They didn't even survive the summer of 2002. Given our relatively small population we in Ireland ought to be opt for zero waste policy.

According to Tom Prendeville writing in The Irish Times, August 30^th 2002 zero waste has five characteristics:

1. There is a need to redesign products and packaging. We must plan in advance to limit product resource consumption, toxicity and waste. We also need to recover materials through re-use, recycling, or composting. This means that products must be designed for the environment not the dump or incinerator. As we saw above Ireland has still one of the worst recycling rates in Europe. It has gone from 5 percent to 15 percent in the past three years but this is still woefully inadequate. High charge for landfill will change behaviour but we still need adequate recycling facilities around the country. In some places householders have to travel up to 20 miles to recycle their bottle, cans and paper [3].

2. Producer must be held responsible for the waste and negative environmental impact of their product or packaging. At the moment that responsibility is passed on to the consumer. If this is taken seriously manufacturers will redesign products to reduce the use of materials and in a way that facilitate, recovery and recycling.

3. We need to invest in an adequate infrastructure to promote waste reduction and recycling. Scarce financial resources ought not to be ploughed into building superdumps or incinerators. If we went down this road in a serious way we could divert 90 percent of Irish waste from dumps or incinerators.

4. Subsidies or tax breaks for wasteful and polluting industries must be phased out and given to clean energy alternatives. We must use fiscal policies to drive change in the way we use and dispose of natural capital. The imposition of euro 15 on plastic bags in February 2002 led to a massive change in peoples' behaviour. Such initiatives have been praised internationally. A similar tax on other consumer items will encourage recycling and waste minimization.

5. Handling waste in a rational way can create jobs and new businesses. Wasting materials in a landfill or incinerator also wastes business opportunities that could be created if those resources were preserved. According to the Institute for Local Self Reliance report Wasting and Recycling in the United States 2000, "on a per-ton basis, sorting and processing recyclables sustain 10 times more jobs than landfilling or incineration". The report notes some recycling-based paper mills and recycled plastic product manufacturers employ 60 times more workers on a person basis than do landfills.

There was great dismay in Meath and Louth after the March 5^th2003 decision by an Bórd Pleanála to give permission to Indaver Ireland to build an incinerator in Carranstown, on the Meath/ Louth border. The cynical nature of the decision by an unelected body such as An Bórd Planála is illustrated by the fact the Bórd rejected the recommendation of its own planning inspector, James Carroll. Carroll's report stated that permission for the incinerator should be refused on a number of grounds. It is to be built in a wrong place on a strategic green belt, not zoned for development. Its peripheral location in the north east is 'seriously flawed'. Mr. Carroll pointed out that agriculture, both grazing and tillage was the predominant land use in the area and that a national school was situated 1 km east of the site. Finally it goes against the Government's Strategic Planning Guidelines for the greater Dublin area[4].

Spiritual reasons for living lightly on the earth

There is also a spiritual reason for living in a less destructive way. In his January 1, 1990 statement on the environment Pope John Paul II saw clearly that a throw-away, consumer culture was destroying the earth. He stated that " modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it take a serious look at its lifestyle. In many parts of the world society is given to instant gratification and consumerism while remaining indifferent to the damage which these cause…. Simplicity, moderation and discipline as well as a spirit of sacrifice must become part of everyday life, lest all suffer from the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few" 25.

From what I have written it is clear that there are serious dangers to human health and the environment from incinerator emissions and ash. In that context the precautionary principle should prevail. In January 1998 a group of activists, scholars, scientists and lawyers met at Wingspread, home of the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wisconsin, to discuss the precautionary principle. The group was convened by the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN). The Wingspread definition of precaution contained three important elements, namely the threat of harm, scientific uncertainty and preventative, precautionary action. The Wingspread statement on the precautionary principle reads as follows "when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity rather than the opponents should bear the burden of proof. The process of applying the precautionary principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action at all"

It would seem to me that given the serious health and environmental risks involved in incineration the precautionary principle would preclude building incinerators.

Intergenerational Justice

There is an added ethical concern which involves leaving a toxic legacy to future generations. Moralists in the past have not felt the need to discuss questions of inter-generational justice for the simple reason that few people thought that one generation could wreak such havoc on the planet so as to seriously endanger the well-being of future generations. Now moralists are asking: Does this generation have the right to use up all the fossil fuel in the world, erode its topsoil, deplete the ozone layer, build up nuclear waste, destroy tropical forests, hasten climate change, leave a toxic legacy to the next generation so that one fifth of the world's population can today live in affluence? Future generations have the right to inherit a world as fertile, beautiful and healthy as the world this generation inhabits. This surely involves protecting biodiversity and ensuring that a cycle of poison should not be left to plague future generations.

Call to Solidarity with the Poor and the Endangered Earth

At the heart of an earth and human-centred ethic there must be a call to live more lightly on the earth and to work for a more just and equitable human community. At the moment a mere 20 percent of the world's population consume 80 percent of the world's resources. Much of the current development-thinking is based on the assumption that, in time, people in the Third Word will enjoy the same levels of affluence as those of us in the First World. Now we know that our finite world cannot produce these resources and, more important still, the earth's processes would be unable to survive the impact of even attempting such a course of action. 10 billion people living as affluently as we do would wipe out the world's forests in about 15 years and accelerate global warming to take just two examples. The truth is that the survival and well-being of the human and earth community depends on whether we in the First World are able to live dignified, fulfilled lives on about one-tenth of the resources we now use. We have the scientific knowledge to be able to do this but at the moment lack the political will to do it. Surely the Churches, with their traditions of asceticism, ought to be able to give a creative lead to encourage people to live more simple and creative lives for their own well-being and that of all future generations.

Waste prevention will offer businesses opportunities to achieve savings in terms of the cost of raw materials, energy and disposal charges. This is why the targets set for waste reduction in the recent Irish government's strategy for sustainable development are woefully inadequate. The plan is to reduce waste product by 20 percent by the year 201226. Other countries like New Zealand are much more ambitious. They have embraced a zero waste goal. In that plan all waste is seen as a potential resource for something else.

Finally, we ought also to be concerned about poisoning land. In our Judeo-Christian tradition land is one of God’s most precious gifts to humankind. The second account of creation in the Book of Genesis tells us that God’s involvement with humans does not end with creating them. Immediately ‘the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east and there he put the man he had fashioned’ (Genesis 2.8). God instructed the man to till and to keep the land (Genesis 2:15). The Hebrew words used here have overtones of service, protecting and defending the land from harm. The tradition of stewardship has emerged from this perspective. Every seven years land was to be allowed to remain fallow in order to regain its fertility (Exodus 23: 10-11). The cultivators were only God’s tenants and it was clearly recognised that there were restrictions on what they could do with the land. The Land must not be sold in perpetuity, for the land belongs to me and to me you are only strangers and guests (Leviticus 25:23).

Land is also at the heart of our Christian faith. Each time we celebrate the Eucharist we bring bread and wine to the altar. In the Offertory Prayer we recognise that it is “fruit of the earth and work of human hands”. Bread comes to us from the fertility of the land, the skill and hard work of the farmer, miller and baker. This ‘fruit of the earth and work of human hands’ sequence is the ideal relationship that ought to exist between humans and the rest of creation. It is based on a mutually enhancing relationship rather than on one of exploitation and destruction that is what building nine incinerators around the country would mean.

In the Eucharist we bring gifts from our land, bread and wine, that are destined to be transformed into the Bread of Life and Cup of Eternal Salvation – the Body and Blood of Christ our ultimate source of nourishment as Christians. If we continue to pollute our lands then these precious gifts will also be contaminated with the fingerprints of sickness and death. How then, we might ask, can this tainted wheat ever become the Bread of Life for us? Finally with St. Paul in the Romans I think we can say that in the face of incineration the poor of the earth and 'the whole of Creation Groans…