Sunday, January 11, 2009

What a waste!


Take one story, add another, mix in yet another. Then add some more information, do some arithmetic, stir well and you have a Booker column.

This is about the craziness of paying to sort and store waste paper instead of treating it as "biomass" and burning it for energy, all the while planning to build new biomass generation plants using wood chips grown specially on prime agricultural land in the UK, and making up the balance by importing more from Canada.

This is yet another example of the madness and inefficiency of our government, which could get more energy from waste paper than 10,000 windmills. However, there is a greater madness. It is still far cheaper to use landfill and recover some energy from burning off the methane – with the added bonus of recovering unusable land.

Readers will be encouraged, though, to learn that our gifted and socially responsible opposition is on the case, adding to our growing confidence that a change of government will put us in new and competent hands.

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