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• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

Can I ask John and Victor, do either of you think that recycling rates in relation to municipal waste disposal will be helped by scrapping wheelie bins?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 13 November 2002

That's of course talks about sensible use of wheelie bins. On the other hand to go around talking about removing all wheelie bins would surely be crack-pot.

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Mr Duffy, I'm not going to question your professionalism. I presume you are perfectly professional in the job you do and you do it honestly. But you say you give robust advice to the Mayor. Now you saw this paper that we got yesterday from the Mayor's staff, the London Waste Action stakeholder, and it was as I said yesterday a very mature and a very balanced paper. Would you agree with that? Secondly, you have said that you have a presumption against incineration and the Mayor has a presumption against incineration and no doubt, as you said that you...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Will you continue a dialogue with the boroughs, not only with ALG? Because they're going to be in difficulty, you have to appreciate that. The long-term contracts are cheaper and yet you are suggesting that they should have short-term contracts. And of course it's very difficult to get the infrastructure, to get someone to put up all that capital on a three or five year lifespan.

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Can I ask you, Mr Duffy, to keep more of an open mind on how we deal with residual waste because I think it's wrong to close off any avenue at this time. Now that's not saying that I'm for incineration, but just keep an open mind as to how it can be disposed of.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

It follows from that that I imagine you wouldn't be minded to support further applications for incineration unless you were satisfied that the technology was safe and that the communities that might be affected by new incineration proposals were satisfied that they wouldn't suffer any detriment?

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

One of the things that the government has done is to set a target of some 45% of household waste to be recovered by 2010. Now recovered, as I understand it, for those purposes includes incineration.

• Question by: Bob Neill
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

And as I understand it, what you envisage is that more use of the new technologies would be something that hopefully could set people's minds at rest as to what happens to residual waste?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Can I ask how long this is going to take, because you know that the local authorities are now hard up against the line that they have to fulfil contracts and they have to sign contracts now. So how long is this going to take? And if I can quote you the first paragraph of this report we saw yesterday, which I thought was an excellent report and I think better than the ones we've been doing, 'There should be no presumption against incineration or against any recovery techniques and there should be a willingness to explore all options in...

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 14 November 2001

Thank you. We were told yesterday that Smugglers Way cost £150 million in today's costing. Can you imagine the cost that's going to be needed and is the Mayor going to explore where these funds are going to come from?