THE DEVELOPERS behind St Austell’s planned eco-town have not ruled out using energy from a proposed incinerator at St Dennis.

Eco-Bos, the company behind creating five small eco-towns across disused Imerys mining pits in St Austell and ‘clay country’ area, has confirmed that it will look at harnessing energy and heat created by an incinerator to fuel homes built as part of the eco-town.

Eco-Bos is made up of clay-mining giants Imerys, Egyptian developers Orascom, and the Eden Project – a leading light in sustainable resources, and at the forefront of eco-friendly ideas.

The revelation has sparked anger among objectors to the incinerator who claim Eden’s involvement contradicts its ethos.

However, a spokesman for the Eden Project said it is not against incineration per se, as a method of dealing with waste, but would favour, smaller and more local incinerators.

Cornwall councillor Dick Cole said it was nonsense for Eden to associate itself with the incinerator.

“The Eden Project claims to be a leading figure in green technology and yet through its association with Eco-Bos it’s quite happy to associate itself with a mass-burning incinerator for St Dennis.

“If the eco-town initiative and the Eden Project want to have any credibility at all, surely they need to distance themselves from the incinerator proposal as a matter of urgency.

“The incinerator is not sustainable, it’s backward looking, and we should be doing something much better in the 21st century,” he said.

However a spokesman for the Eden Project said the tourist attraction was not against incineration and how to deal with waste was a complex and pressing issue.

The spokesman said: “At the Eden Project we are not against waste incinerators as part of a palette of solutions, although we believe they should be local and small scale, but we recognise that the difficulty with dispersed solutions is that local objections cause even more barriers.”

Chairman of St Dennis Anti-Incineration Group (STIG) Pat Blanchard said the statement by the Eden project appeared to contradict Eden founder Tim Smit’s comments last year at a meeting of the St Austell Chamber of Commerce when he questioned the building of a mass-burning incinerator.

Mrs Blanchard said: “It is hard to believe that Eden is now considering endorsing the incinerator through its partners in Eco-Bos.

“If they are, perhaps they are not aware that the incinerator is incompatible with the Green Cornwall initiative and the Carbon Reduction programme. It would generate over 173,000 tonnes net CO2 every year, it is on a greenfield site and would depend entirely on road transport, requiring the construction of a dedicated haul road.

“There would be no pre-sorting of received waste, and any recyclables concealed in black bags would be destroyed. These facts alone would appear to be in direct conflict with the ethos of Eden.”

The idea of using the incinerator as an energy source for the eco-town was first mooted at the county’s most expensive planning inquiry into Cornwall’s Energy Recovery Centre, when SITA’s planning consultant Tim Greenwood let slip that discussions had been ongoing between SITA and Imerys.

At the inquiry in August Mr Greenwood even produced a letter dated from 2009 which proved discussions on the subject had taken place. Closing statements by all parties will be heard at the planning inquiry from October 5 to 7 in the One Stop Shop Council Offices in Penwinnick Road. The final decision is not expected to be made until Autumn 2011.