A public meeting is held in Derry Londonderry (54
degrees North, 7 degrees West), on the topic of waste management and
the various approaches taken to it across the world. This is hot
because of the concerns of citizens at the prospect of a large-scale
gasification plant which will take in waste products, convert them to
gas and incinerate that gas, with waste sent out a chimney stack and
into an ash pit.
There was a similar plan in the early nineties, by
industrial giant Du Pont, to build a waste incinerator and bring
waste from many regions. Health concerns were raised by the plan.
Public meetings took place. Public representatives wrestled with the
challenge of waste management. A successful, citizen-led campaign of
opposition caused Du Pont to withdraw their plans.
The notion developed in me that I
was of this place and that I would take charge and do something about
it. That this was my city as much as anybody else’s and that I was
going to let my voice be heard, now and into the future. I was going
to make a difference. It was up to me. The city – Derry - was up
to me.
There were public representatives in
attendance at the recent meeting.
Eventually their experts will have to make recommendations to
relevant committees and to the
full City Council.
Sometimes I wonder at the timing of events. I wonder
if there’s a big clock out there turning and ticking away and that
events occur when the time is right, even when we don’t know it. I
feel this about the job. I was at a meeting today, after speaking to
Tony. The full department. A major review of the council waste
management policy is to be launched. Everything from wheelie bins to
toxic emissions and pipes spewing effluent into the river. The whole
grubby underbelly of the city’s life. And I sat there and made my
contributions. Spoke my piece confidently. One of only two women at
the meeting. People listening to me, making notes on the pages I’d
circulated. Asking me questions.
The public meeting was informative
and challenging. There was good evidence from international speakers,
in the room courtesy of the everyday magic of Skype. They spoke of
waste reduction and job creation successes in San Francisco, Italy
and in Wales, Scotland and Magherafelt. A City Council worker spoke
from the floor and described a new recovery facility, which created 4
new jobs and a welcome service.
I wasn't nervous in the ordinary
sense of that word. I was tense, ready, prepared. I'd done the work.
Just one phrase could cause me grief. Zero Emission Site. That was
the one to get across. Now that I'm on the inside of the waste
management problem, if I want to see off incineration I've got to box
clever. I've got to prove other alternatives and I've got to prove
them against two further tests. They've got to make money and they've
got to win votes.
This
idea of recovery and designing-out waste at the front end is the
realistic, modern way forward.
I presented my vision of a thriving eco-industrial
park where the city's minimised waste was managed largely by
conversion and re-manufacture into useful goods. I gave a timetable
aiming at a zero emissions site and I projected up to five hundred
new jobs. It was music to my audience's ears.
Such parks exist all over the world. Fewer and fewer
gasification/incineration plants are being built in America. Towns
and cities in Italy have turned their backs on what was named as
'old' technology. Responding to waste at the front end rather than at
the back end is the modern way.
If we think there's a machine we can put crap into and
get gold out of, we're codding ourselves.
If I had a success with the
council, surprising Paddy, other officers and the councillors
themselves, then it was only because I cannot live 'on the outside',
as if I was a spectator of nature. I am a macroscopic being, embedded
in the physical world. These pages record the everyday dialogue I
write between myself and the world.
There are no easy options.
I have no grand powers to overtake
the laws of thermodynamics, which say that time's arrow goes in one
direction and that disorder and waste increase as time goes on. That
affronts me, both as a scientist and as a person.
But there is optimism.
I am an expert in waste. A new set of initial
conditions for my life and for the future. It will never be a smooth
curve. Chaos makes sure of that, but the fractals, the apparently
irregular, complex shapes and trajectories generated in the chaotic
geometry of my life, will be mine. And they will be beautiful.
A Sudden Sun: novel; Dave Duggan; Guildhall
Press; Derry, 2012
