Next week Birmingham Friends of the Earth (along with other interested parties) will be giving evidence to the scrutiny committee's Municipal Waste review.
If you wish to read in detail a lot of the work we've done on this, then it's on our website, but I just want you to grab this opportunity to get your councillor to feed in to this review, too. I have been made aware that councillors have today received details of the terms of reference of the review, so will know it is happening and can respond if they wish.
If you are unhappy with the current system, do not want black bags whose contents get strewn everywhere, would rather we moved away from burning rubbish and creating 280 000 tonnes of CO2 per year from the incinerator to a system where we get maximum value for money out of the resources we have, please contact your councillor today and ask them to put this case.
Email us via campaigns@birminghamfoe.org.uk if you want advice on what to say.
The campaign to save environmental protections within the planning system was taken up by many organisations this autumn and we played our part in pointing out the damage that will be done if developers just have free reign to build what they want where they want.
Friends of the Earth gave us the campaign slogan "Talk half as much rubbish" earlier in the year, but we found most people didn't associate David Cameron with their bins (strange as it may seem), so we put our focus on lobbying the council to halve the amount of rubbish. We got about 800 signatures on a petition for food waste collections and better recycling, as well as producing reports on the waste system and the damage done by the incinerator. We are now engaging with the Municipal Waste Review being conducted by the scrutiny committee to whom we'll give evidence in January.
This was the tenth year we've done a Santa Parade in Birmingham for Buy Nothing Day. This year we got a big piece on the radio about consumption and Christmas as well as press coverage and lots of people dancing round the streets with us :-) This video provides pictures from many of those ten years and the radio piece:
As part of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition, we always put on events to raise awareness of what is happening amongst the public and politicians. This year it was a screening of the film Dirty Oil at the BMI, followed by a discussion.
The talks in Durban weren't as bad as we feared they might be, but still haven't done anything yet to prevent runaway climate change. Here's Andy Atkins of Friends of the Earth talking about it:
All that makes it even more important that our Final Demand campaign makes a big impact both on the way the energy market is run and the carbon emissions it's responsible for. We are hoping to get thousands of signatures to show the government that people really want a shift in power away from the Big 6 with people taking control over producing their own energy, not just pouring money into shareholders' pockets.
This shot is from Bristol, but we are all ready to hit the streets of Birmingham next year and make a real difference to the carbon emissions of retailers by getting them to close the doors. We have the materials and just need an army of volunteers to go round speaking to shopkeepers. Let us know if you want to help.
The last slide is for our wonderful volunteers, without whom, none of this would happen:
Yesterday, I was allowed to attend a visit to the paper mill run by Smurfit Kappa along with members of the scrutiny committee of Birmingham City Council. Beforehand, they visited the incinerator in Tyseley (to which I was not allowed to go on the behest of Veolia - wonder why).
As the council delegation was substantially delayed at their incinerator visit, I was able to ask quite a few questions before they got there and found the hosts very obliging and willing to talk about a range of environmental subjects. Mostly, though they were proud to be in this place where recycling has been taking place for about 150 years (there will apparently be some sort of celebration of this next year).
It turns out that they are quite happy with the current system of how paper and card is collected in boxes for kerbside collection, so long as it's not mixed with other recyclable materials (glass, tins plastic). They are happy to take all types of paper and cardboard and it all gets turned into one type of material (the outer layer on cardboard boxes, which you can see here on massive rolls.
I'd never been to a recycling plant before, so to see the scale of it was quite impressive. I realise that there are economies of scale from collecting all types of paper together, but it does seem a bit of a shame that better quality paper all gets turned into the lower grade stuff for cardboard boxes. Is there nowhere in Birmingham that makes recycled office or toilet paper? How far does that have to travel?
We are continuing our work to prepare evidence to give to the committee for the Municipal Waste Review when we want to propose a transformation of what's done in Birmingham and move to a resource recovery economy rather than a waste disposal system. See the articles on our website for more information.
Yesterday I was at a conference and when I said I had to rush off to do some media work setting up interviews about today's biofuel flight was asked ((I don't remember the exact words) something about being negative and fighting against things all the time.
I was slightly taken aback, because I see Friends of the Earth as a solutions organisation that has a clear idea of a better way to do things and fights for that. The previous high profile media story we had was about Bike Trains which was one of the most positive things we've done and created lots of smiles as well as highlighting some serious issues about Birmingham's road system.
We have also done some really positive work that's gone into the "What a Waste" report that we put together along with the Chamberlain Forum. We have to combine that with pointing out the problems with the way things are done currently and particularly with the Tyseley Incinerator, but there would be no point in fighting against the incinerator and current refuse collection service if we had no idea what would be better to go in its place.
With airlines and countering their greenwash it is a bit more difficult, though, as apart from not flying in the first place, there is no real green alternative. Does that mean we should stay silent and stop campaigning against airport expansion?
Certainly not. It may not be the most fun, rewarding and successful bit of the campaigning we do, but highlighting the extreme stupidity in claiming biofuels are a green solution for aviation really has to be done, because if we don't who will protect the people who need the land for growing food and the species whose habitat is being lost to massive monoculture plantations to feed the West's addiction to flying?
Highlighting the small amount of good practice in sustainability is important to encourage more of it, but stopping the stupidest, worst practice happening is even more important, because the effects of that can be truly devastating on people's lives and the health of the whole planet.
Last week, we held a round table discussion with the Chamberlain Forum including representatives from residents' groups and community recyclers to talk about the issues of waste in Birmingham connected to our campaign to Halve Rubbish.
During the discussion, people were invited to put their thoughts onto post-it notes, in a similar way to how people might be tweeting comments in other meetings. They were collected and written up afterwards to provide an interesting snapshot of the thoughts of the participants, so here they are:
Zero Carbon FC. What do they do with the rubbish from playing fields?
‘Nature’ is good at recycling.
A Birmingham Problem?
Success story on paper.
‘Rubbish Capital of the Midlands’ – Incinerator strategy.
Rats because of the way we deal with waste.
Hidden cost of waste includes fires/fire service.
Fires of rubbish – how much could the fire service save per year without them?
Waste is co-produced.
Waste = Misplaced resources.
Bikes are incinerated when they go to HRCs! That’s crazy. How many other useful things?
Rubbish is mixed up waste.
Litter is rubbish that is scattered.
There is always waste, what matters is what we do with it.
‘System’ puts stuff in the wrong place.
Separation is the key.
“Compost is the most valuable resource in the world”. Proper job.
Council can make it easy or make it difficult for communities to recycle.
Decentralise: lots of little local solutions – avoid ‘grand plans’.
What is the optimum number of AD plants for Bham?
Council could help by providing sites for community recycling in town centres. How can this be facilitated?
Legislation to prohibit recyclable products (food waste, cardboard etc) in landfill will stimulate the need for recycling. Is this imminent?
Local Green Fund – get people in Bham to put money in! £40 per person will do it!
No point exchanging nuisance social problem with a bigger one of deprivation. Economic development is the key.
I was invited along to give evidence to the scrutiny committee of Birmingham City Council last week. There was a pre-meeting in the week before, which is kind of like a rehearsal so you understand what to do on the day when it's in public and as it was my first appearance of this kind, I was quite glad of that and also the briefing I got from the helpful staff members - I certainly am not one to dismiss the worth of public servants.
Our work on the core strategy had certainly not gone unnoticed - our 25-page response to the consultation is available in the downloads section on our website - so I produced a summary of this for the committee and was asked to speak in response to what Sandy Taylor (Head of Sustainability and Climate Change) said to the committee in his report.
There is work to congratulate the city council on - their work on Combined Heating and Power (CHP) has been very good in the centre of the city and there was also a report on this, while the Birmingham Energy Savers project is truly pioneering and not only will it have a great effect on the homes concerned, but should also sustain a considerable number of local jobs, too. I saw my role at this meeting partly as one of saying "look what can be done when you show some ambition, so let's have more of it".
The biggest areas of controversy in what I said turned out to be on supporting local shops v supermarkets, the incinerator (which some councillors still believe is green!!) versus other forms of dealing with waste and transport, as these are the areas on which the council is doing worst in terms of sustainability.
After so many defeats in fighting off supermarket planning applications recently, the council had to be challenged on why they talk about boosting local shops, but do nothing to protect or support them. There was some support for this amongst the elected representatives, but Cllr Deirdre Alden took issue with this "idealistic notion" that we can go back to have corner shops within walking distance as most people can't afford to shop there! We're not just talking about corner shops, though, but vibrant local shopping streets with different types of independently owned retailers. People would in fact, find that overall this would be just as affordable and if you take out the need for a car to get there, that's even more money saved. See Tescopoly on food poverty.
The same councillor also challenged me on the incinerator, as she'd had a tour of it and been informed by Veolia that it was in fact very green as it generates electricity. In fact, I informed them that from a climate change perspective, incineration is worse than gas- or coal-fired power stations for generating electricity! I suggested that what we need is a truly ambitious programme of community recycling ventures all over the city, dealing with our resource use to make sure nothing is wasted, creating jobs and stopping the health-damaging emissions from Tyseley.
Cllr Alden also seemed to think that because there are places with no reliable bus service now and because the roads are too dangerous to cycle on (she fell off once and will never cycle again), that we won't be able to get people out of cars. Fortunately there are other people on the council with a better understanding of integrated transport, but unless the most ambitious parts of the city's vision for movement, connected city and cycling strategy are out in place urgently, not only could we suffer more gridlock as recently, but when oil prices rise even further, some people are going to be really stuck!
Are we going to get more ambitious measures from the council to hit their CO2 reduction targets? I really hope so, but it needs to be an ambition that is taken on by the whole cabinet, not just the officers and one or two members.
