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Friday, 30 May 2008 |
• It’s a good name for dustbin: ‘poubelle’ with its hint of a
fine stink, was the name of the Préfet de Paris, Eugène
Poubelle, who in 1883 was the first to require the
organisation of domestic waste into covered containers.
• The average person in France chucks 450kg a year, and
we’re only talking domestic waste, making a total annual
figure of 26 million tonnes, of which 39% goes into holes
in the ground, the Centres d’Enfouissement.
• France’s domestic waste has doubled over the last 40 years
and is currently rising by 1% a year.
• At any one time, 10,000 rubbish disposal lorries are
traipsing the average 40 to 50 kilometres to a treatment site
of household waste.
• France dumps ‘only’ 13.5 million tons of rubbish into
landfill, about half the quantity dumped in the UK, for a
roughly similar population.
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Friday, 30 May 2008 |
When the Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, the damaged
and leaking heart of the accident was hastily covered with
concrete and steel over the sand and chemicals which had
been dumped on the blaze. This ‘sarcophagus’ has been
leaking continuously and a French construction company,
Novarka, is to start work on a new and massive replacement
this year. A vast steel structure, high enough to hold the
Statue of Liberty, is to be built to one side of the site, and will
then be slid on rails over it. Its arch will weigh 20,000 tons,
and will measure 345 feet tall, 840 feet wide and 490 feet
long. The work should be completed in 2012 and should last
100 years, resisting tornado or earthquake damage which
could at any moment bring down the old, cracked cover.
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Friday, 30 May 2008 |
The Centre National d’information indépendante sur les
déchets (CNIID), speaking of the incinerator alternative to
landfill, says that, of the 133 incinerators in France, many are
due to close, since European directives on standards came into
force. To bring the rest to the required safety levels will be very
costly and not necessarily effective.
The CNIID is backing all efforts to do away with
incinerators, major polluters in themselves, and producers of
dangerous cinders. The trouble is that tighter regulations about
dumping mean that fewer and vaster sites are easier to manage.
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Friday, 30 May 2008 |
On the subject of holes in
the ground, it is the
moment to give a thought to
CCS – Carbon Capture and
Storage. Next month, the
International Energy Agency
(IEA) will be publishing
‘Energy Technology
Perspectives 2008’, which
examines the current
technology for CCS and its
viability.
In mid-May, the IEA
announced from Paris the
establishment of a
Regulator’s Network. The
idea is to raise awareness of
ways of reducing carbon in
the atmosphere and the
importance of doing so to put
a brake on climate change.
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Friday, 30 May 2008 |
The Association Rapasse, a
French/English group in
Saint-Laurent-de-Ceris
(Poitou-Charentes), has been
fighting against a project for a
dump of so-called ‘banal’
industrial waste.
The planned site included
the headwaters of some of the
rivers in the Charente. Now
its demand that permission
for this be refused has been
upheld. The members are
ecstatic.
Their campaigns have
varied from blocking traffic
to publicity drives, to pushing
awareness of the problems
of waste beyond the
boundaries of their own
particular gripe.
The commune of Saint-
Laurent-de-Ceris has taken
on board the need for a major
drive to reduce its own waste
output, and anticipates
piloting equipment to help in
this venture.
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