The Rubbish Dump Of Europe

On the scale of rubbish ideas, the one by which Europe's rubbish will be shipped into Puerto Alcúdia for incineration at Son Reus in Palma is one of the more rubbish you are likely to come across. This, at any rate, is how the approval by the Council of Mallorca to permit the importing of combustible waste from other countries is being styled and is being styled, moreover, with a rare show of local political unity, Alcúdia's Partido Popular mayor having been on the phone to the environment councillor to tell her to forget the whole idea and politicians from parties to the left having waded in with their own objections.

The first question that came to mind when this was all first being announced was not to do with whether it was right or wrong to bring this rubbish to Mallorca but why on earth it was going to be shipped into Alcúdia. Palma has a ruddy great port that is much closer to Son Reus, so wouldn't it make more sense for the rubbish to be offloaded in Palma? Pere Malondra, leader of PSOE in Alcúdia, has implied that it would cause more of a fuss in Palma because there are that many more people to make a fuss. He may well be right. The feeling is that Alcúdia's being kicked around.

There again, Alcúdia is both an industrial and a passenger port, though there is a legitimate issue as to whether the industrial element should be expanded when Alcúdia already receives gas and coal for the butane plant and the power station and when it is also a port for the export of material (especially wood) for recycling on the mainland and which has a habit of being piled up and becoming an eyesore in August because mainland plants reduce operations on account of holidays, so causing a backlog (so to speak) in the shipping of the woody refuse.

The logistics of transporting the waste aside, the rhetoric has gone into overdrive. Mallorca will be the rubbish dump of Europe. It will be environmental and economic suicide. Less emotional has been Mayor Terrassa's observation that the waste doesn't fit with the tourism image of Alcúdia. Which is true, but equally nor do the rotting old power station (absurdly supposed to be partially preserved as it represents industrial heritage) and the coal trucks that shuttle between the port and the current power station.

As there seems to be no intention to import the waste during the summer, the tourism argument loses some strength. Malondra has asked, though, whether what is wanted is the promotion of tourism to tackle seasonality or the importing of waste. Which is a fair point, or would be if one could be convinced that something was genuinely being done to tackle the absence of tourism out of season.

There are, as is the norm with Mallorca's politicians, some pretty odd things being said about the waste import. María Salom, the president of the Council of Mallorca, has come out with a belter. She has observed that in Germany there are treatment plants which take waste from other countries, as would be the case at Son Reus, and that the Germans who come to Mallorca would know that this is perfectly normal. Erm, yes, María, German tourists and indeed tourists from other countries might know that it is normal to treat waste in their own countries but it doesn't follow that they would consider it normal as a backdrop to their holidays on what the Germans have long insisted on calling the "paradise island".

There is undoubtedly a disconnect between Mallorca, the paradise island, and Mallorca, a place with industry. It does seem incongruous that there should be an enormous and expensive waste-treatment plant on the paradise tourist island, but something has to be done with waste even on a paradise island.

It is the scale of the waste treatment, however, that goes to explain why Mallorca is about to become the recipient of some European rubbish. Tirme, the company which is owned by among others Endesa and which has the concession (a monopoly one) on waste treatment until 2041, has invested vast sums in incineration at Son Reus. This investment has placed its activities under the environmental-watchdog microscope. GOB, for example, has accused Tirme of concentrating on incineration instead of recycling. Friends Of The Earth say that its capacity for incineration exceeds the level of waste that is generated on Mallorca.

María Salom has pointed out that Tirme was given the go-ahead by the previous (non-PP) administration to invest some 300 million euros in new incineration plant, an investment, the environmentalists would argue, that was unnecessary. But having ploughed the investment in, Tirme needs its payback. According to Salom, Tirme has been seeking an increase of 50% in its charges for waste treatment. These charges filter down to the town halls and ultimately to taxpayers. An alternative - the only alternative, says Salom - is the import of waste and payments from other countries which will mean that Tirme doesn't have to impose its increase.

But is Salom entirely accurate in her reference to the previous administration? The person who she says gave final authorisation for work on the new incinerator was Marilena Tugores of Els Verds (the Greens), and she said so in an interview with the Mallorcadiario website on 8 September. Yet Tugores only assumed the role of environment councillor in February 2010. It may have fallen to the Greens to oversee the incinerator coming on-stream (purely because someone had to step in when all politicians from the discredited Unió Mallorquina were booted out of positions), but the Bloc, which includes the Greens, and PSOE's Francina Armengol, former president of the Council of Mallorca, have made it clear that it was the Matas PP government at the fag end of its administration in 2007 which had authorised the incinerator, the investment and the extension of Tirme's contract to 2041.

These contradictory versions only add to the political arguments that the importing of waste is engendering. In Alcúdia, the arguments are primarily to do with tourism, but they go very much wider and raise other questions, such as why did Tirme invest in new incineration facilities if they weren't really necessary.

The new plant is said to be one of the most advanced in Europe and the treatment of the waste will not, says the present environment councillor, Catalina Soler, smell or be dirty. However, ecologists argue that incineration, while it reduces the amount of waste, leaves contaminants that are harmful to humans, animals and vegetation. The Balearics association for licensed environmental scientists believes that the import should not be an option for an island with a "fragile ecosystem".

The import is, therefore, raising once more the whole issue of how Mallorca should deal with waste from whatever source. Tirme has invested in incineration, one imagines, as it believes that it is a cheaper option than recycling, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Tirme is right. Moreover, it removes waste, unlike landfill, and can generate some energy. But environmentalist groups like GOB would maintain that Tirme devotes far too little of its own energies on recycling, which is part of its obligations. By concentrating on incineration and making massive investment that was arguably unnecessary, it has required a means of getting a payback - the import of waste.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Going To Waste

Between the two town halls of Alcúdia and Sa Pobla, the company Tirme, which provides rubbish-treatment services on Mallorca, is owed in the region of 4.6 million euros. The amount is divided roughly evenly between the two administrations, a difference lying with how much interest they both owe (Alcúdia more than Sa Pobla).

This is not the first time that Tirme has gone in pursuit of outstanding debts from town halls. At the end of May, Inca got a demand for not far off two million. Just one strange aspect of the non-payments is that they relate to the period from 2008, in the case of Alcúdia, and from 2009 where Sa Pobla is concerned. How many other town halls are similarly in debt to Tirme? And if there are others, but even if not, how does a company operate when it is not being paid such vast sums?

Alcúdia and Sa Pobla are both negotiating payment terms, and the respective administrations are of course blaming the previous administrations. Which seems fair enough, but, just as one wonders how Tirme copes with not being paid, one wonders how it is that town halls can apparently just not bother paying. Sa Pobla is also in for about 1.35 million to three other service providers, including the rubbish collectors.

One gets the impression that the whole business world in Mallorca - that which has anything to do with the town halls or other public bodies - is surviving on the promise that they might one day actually get paid. But promises don't amount to a great deal and they certainly don't amount to cash flow or reassurances to lenders, if they are applicable.

Tirme, though, isn't quite like other businesses. Most would find 4.6 million plus the couple of million from Inca and whatever else might be outstanding rather too much debt to bear. Tirme doesn't. Or doesn't appear to. This may be because of who owns it - Endesa, Iberdrola, Urbaser and FCC. Tirme is also a monopoly, and its concession for waste treatment lasts until 2041.

Tirme's monopoly position is understandable in that its operations do demand heavy investment, so it has every right to be able to expect to have a period in which it can make a return on its investment. But not everyone is happy with this monopoly nor with how Tirme prioritises its investment and its operations.

A key part of Tirme's remit is recycling. Mention the R word and you can be sure that one organisation will prick its ears up: GOB, the environmental pressure group. In August, GOB issued a statement attacking Tirme for what it claimed was the company's concentration on incineration as opposed to recycling. GOB maintained that recycling plants were operating well below capacity, while the ovens were going full pelt in optimising as swiftly as possible the investment on incinerators at the Son Reus plant in Palma. Moreover, reckoned GOB, the incineration was allowing for the generation of electricity that was being commercialised.

GOB has accused Tirme of engaging in misleading marketing where its operations are concerned and has accused the Council of Mallorca, which, and truly bizarrely, has managed to extract a reduction in the cost of waste treatment for 2012 of slightly less than two centimos, of complicity.

But then, the story of waste management and treatment is far from straightforward; you wouldn't expect it to be, because nothing ever is in Mallorca.

In January this year, the anti-corruption prosecutors embarked upon the so-called "Operación Cloaca". This had to with allegations of false accounting centred on waste management operations sanctioned by the Council of Mallorca. Of those detained at the time, and I would make it perfectly clear that Tirme was not implicated in the Cloaca investigation, was an executive with FCC-Lumsa, one of the companies with a concession for recycling collection; FCC, which is a shareholder in Tirme.

Cloaca highlighted the dual system of waste collection (door to door as well as from green points) which had resulted in effect in payment for recycling doubling. Cloaca also revealed that town halls had been pressurised by an individual at the Council of Mallorca into adopting this dual system.

What Cloaca also highlighted was the sheer complexity of arrangements for waste management on Mallorca. Perhaps town halls simply don't understand what it is they are meant to be paying for. Now, though, Alcúdia and Sa Pobla accept that they have to pay Tirme. But you wonder how many other town halls owe the company and whether the reason for non-payment has been more than just an inability to pay.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Throwing It All Away

Rummaging through the waste bins, recycling reality has finally struck in Alcúdia. Fines, in other words. Fines, and more fines. Several years after the Germans invented the art of examining the contents of bins in the wee small hours in search of recycling miscreants, a similar local zealotry has surfaced. Given that these things tend to be rather half-hearted by comparison to ultra-efficient Germanic control, it is doubtful that quite the same pernicketyness would be applied here, but the rubbish polizei is on the watch nevertheless. 600 euros it will cost bars, shops etc. if they do not recycle correctly, and this goes - apparently - for cardboard boxes that are not put into the paper containers, which would be a positive step were it not for the fact that there probably simply aren't enough containers. As far as I am aware, this fine fining scheme has not been extended to households - yet. It might not be such a bad thing if it were to be. If there is seriousness as to recycling, then it needs to be done seriously. The casualness with which bottles or plastics can find their way into the general rubbish container or bags of different types of material get shoved into the plastics one undermines the whole scheme. But given the communal nature of rubbish, it would require some evidence to ever prove who put what where. On Alcúdia's Mile, apparently, plod saw a bar putting things incorrectly into a container, passed on the info to the town hall's watchdogs who then came and issued a warning to the bar concerned. In the words of the watchdogs, "we don't want to have to fine you", which is very noble of them, and they are apparently going to provide individual recycling containers, thus making it easier for the bars but also making it easier to prove - or so the theory would go were it not for the fact that someone from another bar, or just a passing drunk, might come along in the wee small hours and put something that shouldn't go into the container of another bar.

It is perhaps also worth issuing a reminder that street selling, both buying and selling, is verboten and subject to fines. Bars that allow the likes of the luckies to ply their trade can cop a two-grand fine. And to actually buy something - be it a CD, sunglasses, jewellery - can also lead to the collar being felt and a fine (to 500 euros) being imposed. Them's the rules. Don't necessarily expect the tour reps to issue warnings to unsuspecting tourists, as they probably won't know themselves. So let me do it for them.


Talking Italian
That was what they were doing. If you didn't know, the fine L'Italiano down the Siesta end of the Mile is now also in the port. They've taken over Bogavante. Serie A is seeking a breakaway, and the local Italians are doing their own breakaway - into the frontline of Alcúdia where, further along the road, is Piero Rossi's original place. At the new Italiano was an old friend who had dropped by. Mauricio, one-time of La Trattoria in the port and Momo's in Alcanada. He is moving back to Como next month. One of the nicest of people, barely recognised him as he had cut off the long hair. He will be teaching at cooks' school back in Italy.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Brilliant. The Decemberists: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3Ce9md96g). Today's title - oh God, I keep saying I won't do them again, but ...

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Plastic People

The marathon article about Real Mallorca the other day had a number of gaps. Deliberately, as it was long enough as it was. I am indebted though to a letter-writer to "The Bulletin" for raising an issue that I didn't pursue in that earlier article - that of the environmental aspect of Paul Davidson's proposed plastics recycling factory, the one that appears to play such an important part in the strategy for Real Mallorca.

The letter refers to the "outrage" of the recycling plant. Maybe it is, but maybe there is another side to the story. There is much science surrounding plastics recycling, some of it aimed at reducing or eliminating the environmental and health damage that can be a by-product of the recycling process. For example, there is one process being developed which seeks to remove the impurities both of the recycled product and also of the CO2 that is used in the process; the CO2 itself would be recycled, leading to an "environmentally benign procedure"*.

Nevertheless, there is an environmental question mark over the recycling process, and one does have to wonder if the Davidson plan has fully taken account of the environmental lobby in Mallorca; much of it is of an extreme environmental Carlist** nature. Have Mr. Davidson and his associates actually run the whole thing by any authority or is it, as it were, a pipe dream, given Mr. Davidson's success with pipes and tubing? The letter-writer also refers to the logistical sense of locating a plant in Mallorca; it's a fair point. To make economic sense, a plant would require the importing of much waste. Yet, not only is Mallorca typically an exporter of much of its waste for recycling, one of the business problems for plastic waste recyclers in other countries has been the actual shortage of waste. This stems, in large part, to a lack of consumer education, and nowhere is more lacking in this regard than Mallorca, and one imagines also on the mainland.

Despite the strength of the environmental voice on the island, the consumer-side mechanics of recycling are not well developed. Just to take plastics. Here you don't get numbers to denote different types of plastic. The local household here places its waste in different communal containers - general and garden; glass; paper; plastic and tin cans. Once, when the plastics truck appeared, I asked the chap if I could chuck in the legs of a broken plastic garden table. No problem. And yet, the chemical make-up of those legs is almost certainly not of a recyclable nature or wanted by a recycler. The US numbering system informs the consumer as to the type of plastic and its consequent recyclability. The easiest and most recyclable plastic products are things such as bottles for water and drinks, shampoos, detergents and those made from polystyrene. Others, e.g. shower curtains, film (as in cling film for example), supermarket bags and Tupperware (and garden tables), are, for differing reasons, not welcomed by recyclers, simply because of the low possibility of actually recycling the stuff. The best way of getting rid of them, other than chucking them in with the other plastics or general waste, and hoping no one notices, is to return them to the manufacturer who then has the headache as to what to do with them.

In Germany the system is altogether more rigorous, one of the strictest you can find. It was Germany, surprise, surprise, that originated the household waste Gestapo that comes and roots around in your containers to check that the waste is in order. The vast municipal dumps in Germany are like open-cast factories of control and organisation. First, they check the contents of your car boot and you have to pay for certain things. Second, you are instructed as to which enormous skip you must go to for which item of waste. Third, there are camp commandants barking out instructions to anyone foolish enough to try and deposit the wrong item in the wrong skip. But at least you know what to do. Every last conceivable product is allocated its own waste treatment.

By contrast, here, as with many other things Spanish, they make a lot of the recycling deal and then can't really be arsed to see it through. Take that exporting of Mallorca's waste. You may recall me mentioning before that during August a vast mountain of waste had grown next to Alcúdia's commercial port. It was there because the recycling firms on the mainland were on holiday. It was perhaps rather indicative of an apparent indifference. There are dumps here, but where is another matter. Whether many use them I very much doubt. One of the first "cultural shocks" on coming to Mallorca was with the disposal of garden waste. I had gathered together several sacks of the stuff, then thought where's the tip. It was only then that I realised you chucked it in with the general household stuff. Great. Much has been made of the increases in "rubbish tax" as a means of paying for more recycle processing, but quite what happens with the stuff that is collected I am not sure. For instance, I don't know if any plastics are currently being recycled on the island. I presume not as, of the stuff that grew into that mountain in Alcúdia, much of it comprised plastic bottles, the main constituent of the current consumer plastic recycling effort.

As a consequence of a not wholly efficient method of collection, lack of labelling, education and enforcement as well as apathy and laziness (you want to see the amount of plastic and glass that gets tossed into the general container), much that might otherwise be ready for recycling ends up as landfill. I have said before that the system here is excellent because you can just chuck any old thing in the rubbish, but I do get pangs of guilt. And all of these things contribute to costs of sorting and to the shortage of certain items, as with plastics for recycling. Which brings us back to the Davidson recycling plan. A lack of "raw material" is one thing, but one must ask if the exporting of plastics to the mainland is because of the absence of a recycling plant or because the island does not want it in its own backyard. Has the Davidson plan got some in-principle agreement or does it lack legs - plastic or otherwise?

* The quoted words come from an article on the emagazine.com website, a good resource for recycling and other environmental issues. I acknowledge this site and the sciencedaily site as sources of some information in the above - http://www.emagazine.com and http://www.sciencedaily.com.

** Carlism was a movement against liberalism in nineteenth-century Spain and which promoted a pure and traditional Catholic state.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Depeche Mode - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHMhQOU1fE. Today's title - by one of the great weird American bands; maternal.

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You Abandoned Me

In the water-borne wake of the floating bottles and cups of Alcúdia's canals comes another load of old rubbish, a substantially greater load of old rubbish than anything of the channels around The Mile. By the commercial port there has been and is an accumulation of old garbage that would have an alternative contemporary sculptor salivating at the potential for symbolic end-product. Want rubbish; here it is. Cars, plastic bottles, wood adorn the port' area. 15 metres in height and 60 in length; a voluminous square meterage of the discarded and unwanted.

Eyesore for even the blind, but it is not what it might sound. This is not some large-scale fly-tipping but the final resting place but one for material destined for recycling on the mainland. It comes from all over the island and waits to be shipped. It is the wait that causes the blight on the landscape, though we are assured it is all decontaminated and therefore blight-less. The reason for the wait is that everyone's gone on holiday, including, most importantly, the companies that do the recycling. Everything stops in August and consequently it just piles up until the chaps have got back and unpacked their vacation suitcases. So it's something that is tolerated for a short period, but for how much longer can it be repeated?

The commercial port abuts the site of the old power station, the one that at some point is meant to be the shiny new edifice of questionable arts and science tourism. As importantly, the commercial port is in the process of development and enlargement so that it can accommodate cruise ships. Welcome to Alcúdia, welcome to the island's recycling mountain. One doubts that they mention that in the brochure. Why can't they erect some form of warehouse to conceal it? Perhaps they will.

Then there are the neighbours. What neighbours, you might ask? In fact it is difficult to see the rubbish if you are a neighbour, but these neighbours are a story in their own right. Did you know that there is a small enclave of dwellings that was established for workers to serve the old power station? Head away from the roundabout by the commercial port and one can anticipate the villas and smart residences of Alcanada, but before one gets far there is, tucked away off the main road, the Poblat GESA.

This small urbanisation has been there for 50 years. It is a dismal collection of whitewalled cottages with green shutters, an open space that once had a small school and roads suffering inattention. It looks abandoned, and the people who live in the cottages that are still occupied, are complaining about just that - abandonment by GESA. And there are suspicions as to what GESA might have in mind for these tenants. If one goes along the road to the neighbouring butane factory, there is open space to the right with a large estate-agency sign saying for sale. Behind this land is the poblat.

Whatever the situation, the poblat is a curio of local housing and planning. It is not the only one. Nearby is the Poblat del Marquès de Suances. It too is a bizarre relic of what looks like little more than prefab housing. Like the Poblat GESA, it is not something one would normally see; there is no reason to go there. Yet these small urbanisations are a reminder of histories and stories that lie hidden from the normal tourist and real-estate brochurisation of the area.

* Acknowledgement to the "Diario" over the past two days for some of the information above.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?", Pete Seeger (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhlOJm9nkwM). Today's title - first line from what?

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