Beat up on Biomass

After nearly 28 years of general fence sitting; rarely holding an opinion and being easily swayed to and fro by those held by others - (cue: evolution music -Richard Strauss' sunrise fanfare from sprach Zarathustra) I am forming an opinion. About biomass. Well, kind of.

Having spent 8 weeks working on MRW, I have surprised myself by manifesting a fierce fondness for scrap, waste and recycling in general (because the little blighters at the lower end of the quality heap can't stick up for themselves - so don't mess with me) to the general disinterested bemusement of normal people, who don't engage in our dialogue. And I am a newbie to the industry; so I don't claim to be a walking Britannica.

BUT. I have to say I really support the arguement that there exists serious uncertainty around the use of biomass. Yes, it would be great if we could stop feeding landfill holes (and creating great grassy hills to sunbathe on when the weather picks up) and send all non recyclable waste to be burned to generate energy. So what is the point of these biomass plants being built with systems that can only burn high quality, or new/virgin fibre? Am I being dim?

Do we have enough trees to feed these biomass plants - has everyone forgotten that we need trees to be able to breathe on this planet? How long will it be before all the dedicated biomass feedstock trees are fed to the hungry animal and we reach that point of having to wait a year or two for more trees to mature? Or will we start savagely cutting the lives of baby/kiddie trees short to meet the sector's insatiable appetite. A tad dramatic, I'm sure. But, still I must have a point - this is my first opinion; for god's sake.

The waste hierarchy is not all rubbish. There is sense to it. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. I note the omission of 'Landfill' from this model. So! In my capacity of surrogate protector and advocator for all non recyclable and heavily contaminated waste material, I say this: burn the little blighters.