John North: A space of waste

IT was a passing reference in every sense of the word, and not very original at that. Chronicling way back on March 4 a walk through the mid-Durham villages of Coxhoe, Cassop and Quarrington Hill, we observed that the refuse disposal site above Coxhoe was a tip.

There it might have been left, history for the hedge back, but for our old friend Brian Myers, the Durham County Council cabinet member responsible for waste management.

Being somewhat small in stature, Brian is now known in those corridors of power as The Little Waster - a reference purely to his portfolio, of course.

He also has some big ideas, one of which was to persuade the column to write about rubbish, thus inviting intemperate headlines like "What do you think of it so far...?"

We finally took the tip trip on Tuesday, not just to the site near Coxhoe, but to something called an aerobic digester at Thornley, a few miles away.

"Bring your wellies, it might be clarty," warned Brian, which after recent rains was liking saying it might be Christmas in three weeks.

He himself wore polished black shoes and a tie with a "Simply irresistible" motif. "I bought it myself," he said.

Also in the welcoming party were John Wade, the council's business manager for waste management, and councillor Joe Armstrong, chairman of something called the overview and scrutiny committee.

"We're looking at ways of making waste a resource, not a nuisance," said Joe.

Councillors Myers and Armstrong are also much involved in a project to reduce the number of plastic carrier bags - 65 million a year in County Durham alone - each of which will take 400 years to biodegrade.

"We're going to be up to the naffs," said Joe, meaning mud not carrier bags. It is doubtless the municipal expression.

A couple of Environment Agency boys were sniffing about, too, though they wouldn't have smelled much. "Everyone assumes that these places stink but there's really nothing at all, it's just like another industrial unit," said Joe.

Mind, it wasn't exactly lilies of the valley, either.

Durham County Council and its partners are nonetheless winning an enviable reputation, waste not want not, in such matters. Far from burying their heads in the environmental sand, the council is trying to bury far less in great big holes in the ground.

Waste management is identified as a council priority alongside education and adult care and tagged with a three Rs policy of its own - reduce, re-use, recycle.

Joe Armstrong said, probably not for the first time, that he remembered the wise words of the old Indian chief: "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."

He also said that they'd had 2,000 visitors through the digester, which probably could have been better phrased.

Almost shielded from the road, Coxhoe is a huge operation licenced to bury up to 310,000 tonnes of waste each year but now with growing emphasis on the recycling race - spurred by an expected Government land fill tax of £35 a tonne by the end of the decade.

When the site at Todhills, near Bishop Auckland, closes in a few years, Coxhoe will take all the county's buried waste. Already, 17 per cent is recycled; they aim much higher.

There's a green waste recycling site, steaming like so many giant garden bonfires as the stuff is moved from heap to heap; another for wood waste which is recycled into little pellets - "like chicken manure", said John Wade - a third for aggregates, like marble.

The green waste becomes compost, for which they're seeking a commercial buyer but which is already sold at civic amenity sites.

Last year, the Coxhoe site produced 134,923 tonnes of aggregates for the construction industry, recycled 7,452 tonnes of green waste and supplied wood pellets to power stations, schools, factories and homes.

It also, they claim, makes a very successful cat litter.

It is an extraordinary and an unlovely landscape in the quarry bottom behind the high hedges, but a fascinating one for all that. If they can arrange tours of crematoria, couldn't they arrange tip trips, too?

John Wade said they were working on it, had had school kids round the digester. "In the last three years, the Government has set recycling targets and we're beating them easily. We've a lot of which to be proud already.

The reason more local authorities don't push it is that it's a lot more expensive than landfill but that's just not sustainable long term, especially at £35 a tonne. If business doesn't look to recycle its waste more, we will eventually run out of space, but if we're going to do more we very much need the Government's help to cut down on packing materials.

So much is double wrapped. Waste has grown by three per cent a year nationally and that's totally unacceptable. Another problem in the future is going to be finding a market for all that we recycle."

They've also made a Government bid for funding for more digesters, like Thornley's. Thornley, said Brian Myers, was their pride and joy.

Closer to the villages of Wheatley Hill and Shotton Colliery than it is to Thornley, the site seemed a bit more complex - a euphemism meaning we didn't understand much of Angus Bowman's guided tour.

Angus, a man said to be passionate about waste, has also shown around junior school children, who proved much more receptive.

"There was one wanted to know about everything that moved. I almost killed him," he said, cheerfully.

He's been there two years, talks of moisture concentration, biological filters and neutral Ph.

The upshot, usually, is more compost and soil conditioner, and it's all very clever.

"Three years ago, the likelihood was that you buried everything in the ground, now the emphasis is ever more on recycling. It has to be.

We're really turning things around here, probably ahead of any county in the country. People were waiting for us to fail, without doubt, but we didn't."

Carbon dioxide? "There's a tiny amount, but I'm emitting more standing here talking."

That's what you get, at any rate, for calling a refuse disposal site a tip. A case, as probably they say in Durham County Hall, of read, learn and inwardly digest.

Return of the incredible hulks

STILL the hulks of those concrete ships continue to be raised - in particular, the prosaically named Creteblock, sunk off Whitby.

Fellow columnist Harry Mead, near enough omniscient on Whitby and the surrounding moors, sends pages from his book A Prospect of North Yorkshire, which record that though two concrete lighters - an ocean going oxymoron - were built after World War I at the Whitehall Shipyard in Whitby, the Creteblock began her days in Essex.

After a short and unspectacular military career, she was bought by Smiths Dock and used as a tug on Teesside until about 1935, when the company moved her to Whitby.

Used briefly as a fishermen's store, she became an eyesore. Ordered to move the concrete cadaver, Smiths Dock patched her up and arranged for her to be scuttled in deep water. She began taking in water and was beached off the scaur.

Chip off the old block, the wreck is still visible at low tide - forlorn, says Harry - amid a big bed of mussels.

David Pratt, in Bishop Auckland, reports another concrete wreck off Harris, in the Western Isles. Alan Betteney, whose book on ship building in Stockton and Thornaby began this improbable odyssey, reports buoyant sales thanks to the column.

A related exhibition is now being staged at the Green Dragon Museum in Stockton.

LAST week's little nickname competition has attracted a substantial entry and several complaints. The photograph of The Old Groaner wasn't Bing Crosby, as it should have been, but Frank Sinatra - who was Ole Blue Eyes.

According to the Penguin Dictionary of Popular Music, says John Severs in Durham, Bing earned the soubriquet "from his adopted style, as if he was singing in a rain barrel".

There is also a suggestion that Ted Heath was Leonid Brezhnev and, from Graham Bland in Darlington, that the photograph of guitarist Eric Clapton was, in fact, someone from a tribute band - "they who flesh their taxi driving wages".

Many other readers have kindly pointed out that Tina - "inexplicable" among many nicknames for Margaret Thatcher - stands for There Is No Alternative, one of the Iron Lady's favourite sayings. Norman St John Stevas is held responsible.

Though Graham insists that the competition is null and void, there'll be a winner next week.

...and finally, a note from the faithful June Luckhurst offers a reminder of one of the true highlights of the run-up to Christmas - coffee and carols at Newbiggin-in-Teesdale Methodist chapel, Tuesday, December 9 at 10.30am.

The oldest Methodist church in continuous use, the wonderful old building has had an excellent year despite an anxious start, says June.

"One of the highlights was the Pennine Pilgrimage, especially the singing of In Loving Kindness Jesus Came. As you had David Armstrong beside you, you will know what I mean."

Next Tuesday's event includes solos from Colin Priestley, dialect readings from Kathleen Teward and enough mince pies to choke a stable full of donkeys. Like the pies, very warmly recommended.