As we know, The Boy Dave (M) is insisting that we all collect our food waste so that it can be digested. This is to stop the production of methane. Janice Turner is unimpressed:
But the slop bucket is, as the linguistically retarded say, a big ask. I know it would be nifty if my rotting food didn’t sit in a landfill producing methane and melting glaciers. I’m excited by Mr Miliband’s plan to gather the nation’s leftovers into a giant stomach-like engine whereupon it could be anaerobically digested to create useful biogas. (With the tasty sounding byproducts “digestate” and “liquor”.) Yet when I read the part I will play in this laudable enterprise, my visceral reactions are “eeew!” and “bleugh!” First, you cannot, of course, line your caddy with an incompostible plastic bag. Newspaper is suggested but that gets soggy and inevitably, unless you enjoy the smell of Eau de Dump Municipal, you will have to bleach your caddie – with that enviro-bleach that doesn’t work. Or, according to the website of Richmond upon Thames Council, who have pioneered food waste collection, just take all your food scrapings outside after each meal, wrapped in paper “like you do with fish and chips”.
The big food bin in the yard (should you have a yard and whether flat owners will have to keep their festering food indoors is not clear in Mr Miliband’s plan) will need hosing out from time to time, sluicing away the midsummer maggots.
Those are just some of the problems, of course.
A much greater problem is that the entire idea is unneccessary. For, you see, we no longer dump food into landfill and then allow the methane to escape into the atmosphere. From Hansard:
Mr. Morley: I will, indeed, try to answer all the questions that have been put to me. The hon. Member for Vale of York asked about methane. In fact, the landfill regulations contain requirements for methane to be collected for use in energy production. That relates not only to landfill, but to some technologies that also produce methane.
See, this is not in fact a problem….
Miss McIntosh: Without wishing to detract from anything that the Minister has said, perhaps he will deal with something he has already touched on—the fact that the Environment Agency is responsible for taking off methane gas. The figures on Northern Ireland in the explanatory memorandum are dramatic. Some 20 per cent. of the gas causing global warming is methane and 25 per cent. of UK methane emissions come from landfill. Does he see it as a growing problem?
Mr. Morley: I regard it as a declining problem, because the bulk of methane problems relate to older landfill and methane collection was not engineered from the very beginning. Of course, retrofitting methane collection is difficult. Under the terms of the landfill directive, modern landfills require methane collection, and all future landfill sites will routinely be built with methane collection facilities.
So, err, The Boy Dave (M)’s plans are entirely unnecessary. In fact, they will not reduce methane emissions one iota, not by one molecule. Older landfills will still be producing methane from what is already in them. New landfill sites will be collecting the methane and using it to create power.
So, the question becomes, why are we setting up this vastly expensive system of anaerobic biodigesters, insisting on homes being repositories for rotten food, when we have already solved the problem? Stick it all in a hole in the ground and collect the methane?
By the way, saying that the European Union makes us do this is true, but an insufficient explanation. What must be explained is why we agreed to this rule being imposed upon us. Further, why is no one telling us that this is the reason, why are the details of what is going on being hidden from us?
Anyone?
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