Current ‘dump it or burn it’ mindset, can only be resolved by moving away from incineration and landfill and aiming for a zero waste policy, say campaigners.
Building new incineration facilities would undermine the UK’s drive to increase recycling as well as releasing toxic and greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous ash, says The United Kingdom Without Incineration Network (UKWIN).
Incineration is the burning of waste and can reduce the volume of waste by as much as 90 per cent but releases pollution in the form of dioxins, formed by the burning of chemicals that contain chlorine.
A report from Friends of the Earth last year estimated the UK was wasting £650 million and generating 19 million tonnes of avoidable carbon dioxide every year by sending resources that could be recycled to landfill or incinerators – with textiles and plastics the biggest offenders.
However, there are Government plans to increase the number of incineration plants with supporters citing how heat released from the combustion can be recovered and used to generate electricity, heat, steam or hot water; in a process known as Energy from Waste (EfW).
In response to a Defra consultation on the future of waste, UKWIN says the UK should strive to achieve a sustainable zero waste economy that does not rely upon increasing incineration capacity and also called for an end to waste contracts that incentivise incineration.
‘We need to prevent over-provision of incineration capacity at both regional and national levels for social, economic and environmental reasons. We do not need any new incineration capacity to achieve a zero waste economy…building new incinerators would be counter-productive.’
Undermining zero-waste
UKWIN chair Tim Hill said that burning discarded material went against the principle of zero waste.
‘The evidence shows that incineration has no place in a zero waste economy. Incineration wastes money and valuable resources. UKWIN believes that the current ‘dump it or burn it’ mindset undermines sustainability and is fundamentally hostile both to enhancing the environment and to the Government’s other objectives.’
UKWIN called for the introduction of an incineration tax starting at a minimum of £40 per tonne to ensure economic benefits reward recycling, composting and anaerobic digestion alternatives and tax breaks for charity shops, community groups and social enterprises working to reduce waste.
The campaign group also said incineration was not an alternative to preventing landfill and that only a ‘small faction’ of our waste is non-recylable and that we should be aiming to phase out such waste rather than relying on burning it.
‘If we realise the true genius of zero waste then we can expect to witness the fulfilment of our shared vision of a UK without incineration,’ said UKWIN national coordinator Shlomo Dowen.
Source: The Ecologist