The Waste Incinerator at Edmonton
Whilst I was in IKEA, I took this picture of the waste incinerator at Edmonton.
The Waste Incinerator at Edmonton
To some the incinerator is controversial and some such as Greenpeace want it shut down.
The solution to a lot of rubbish is recycling, but then the proportion recycled in London is lower than in many other parts of the country. It is probably easier to get people to sort their rubbish in larger sizes of dwelling, as they have more space for the various bins. So at the end of the day, there will be either a lot of waste for landfill or incineration. Hackney tries hard and the recyclers are a sensible bunch, but are all of the residents.
So whether people like it or not, there will always be a need for incineration.
Perhaps we should follow the Austrian solution.
Fridenreich Hundertwasser was a controversial Austrian artist and architect.
I remember seeing somewhere that he didn’t like incinerators, so Vienna asked him to see if he could do better. He came up with the waste powered heating system at Spittelau powered by waste.
District Heating System at Spittelau
It certainly looks better than Edmonton.
So perhaps we should get the best artists and architects to design incinerators and other buildings like power stations and sewage works so we can be proud of them. Isn’t that what Joseph Bazalgette did with Abbey Mills? Obviously, we must also get the technology right, so the only things that emerge from the plant is energy and clean air and water.
A properly designed plant would be so much better than the alternative of landfill.
The other technology we need is an automatic system that sorts rubbish into the various types of recyclables and what must be buried or burnt. But that will come in the next few years!
I’m also very much in favour of rewarding councils that recycle a high proportion of their waste. trucks are easily weighed on leaving and return from the depots, so it is easy to work out how much rubbish is recycled overall. You could even work it out on a round-by-round basis and reward the operatives and residents appropriately.
But I am against weighing individual bins, as that is unpopular on the one hand and could lead to all sorts of unsavoury practices on the other.
I do think though, that it might be possible to incentivise people to recycle bottles and akuminium cans, by paying a collective bounty to the area round the recycling points. I laid out my thoughts here.
The Third Man
I hadn’t seen this film before and as BA had a large number of films on the entertainment system, I chose to watch it. It is a marvellous story, but you’d expect that as it was written by Graham Greene, an author that is always worth reading. He’s actually a good read if you don’t like long books, as some of his best are about two hundred pages. They are just as fresh as when they were written.
The film is good and often rated as one of the best films ever made. It was shot in the ruins of Vienna and mostly at night or in the sewers, so to call it a dark film would not be an understatement.
Years ago, I met a man called Roland Landman, who was in The Guards and they were some of the soldiers who liberated Vienna from the Nazis. He said that the city was in a dire way and for example, if you wanted a woman, that would cost just two cigarettes. We don’t know what poverty is!
There was talk that Austria would end up under Russian domination and according to Rolnad it was touch and go, whether the Austrians decided to throw in their lot with the communists. But he told the story of the Major in the Irish Guards, who said that the people needed entertainment and that being Irish, they should organise a horse race meeting.
Everybody thought he was barmy, but they did.
The finery came out, everybody had a good time and Austria stayed in the West.
Whether this tale is true or not, I do not know, but after seeing The Third Man last night, I can understand it a lot more.
Let’s hope we never go through any more wars like that.
The Anonymous Widower 