Greens call for action against incinerator
Wednesday, 03 March 2010
SITA UK Ltd has applied to the Environment Agency for a permit to allow them to operate a mass waste incineration facility at Severnside.
"This is an environmental disaster," said Ricky Knight, Green candidate for the Bristol West parliamentary seat.
"We should be producing much less waste and recycling more, not burning rubbish and releasing harmful gases into the atmosphere.
"Waste incineration encourages councils not to bother with recycling or reducing waste.
"This is not the message we should be sending out."
The Green Party in Bristol objects to the plan for six reasons:
1) Incineration encourages more waste
Incinerators need a regular feed of rubbish. Authorities that have chosen incineration, have correspondingly low recycling rates. Contracts also tend to be very long (at least 25 years), meaning that we will have no way to adapt positively to changes in the waste make-up and volume.
2) Incineration generates energy inefficiently
Incinerators that only generate electricity produce more greenhouse gases than gas-fired power stations per unit of energy generated. We are very unlikely to get a Combined Heat and Power incinerator which would operate at 50-70% efficiency. The market is more likely to want to build an electricity-only incinerator, which will operate at around 27% efficiency. Incineration does not generate renewable energy - burning plastic just substitutes one fossil fuel for another.
3) Incineration wastes energy
Recycling saves far more energy than is generated by burning waste because it means making fewer new things from raw materials.
4) Incineration wastes resources
Stocks of raw materials are finite. We should be doing all we can to recover and recycle valuable materials from our rubbish, rather than turn these materials into a 'fuel'.
5) Incineration causes pollution
Smoke, gases and ash from incinerators contain harmful dioxins which are a cause of cancer. There are also a lot of heavy metals left in the ash. A plant located at Severnside is going to have an effect on the whole of Bristol and beyond.
6) Incineration does not make waste go away
Incineration reduces waste to around 40% by weight, 25% by volume. Much of the toxic ash needs to be disposed of to hazardous landfill.
"We have to wake up to our wasteful society and reduce what we throw away," said Alex Dunn, Green candidate in Bristol North West.
"Love Food Hate Waste tells us we throw away 8.3 millions tonnes of food away each year alone - that's a third of the food we buy," Alex said.
Ricky points out that we can all play our part: "Start at the supermarket: hand back unnecessary packaging. If enough of us do it, they will be forced to change.
"I firmly believe it is possible to reduce our production of domestic and industrial waste significantly.
"We are still so far behind many of our European neighbours - Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Holland already recycle over 50% of their waste, compared to our national average of a measly 9%," Ricky said.
There are many other processes that are far less dangerous, like pyrolysis, gasification and auto-claving, he added.
"I still have my faith in the old faithfuls: Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle - and Compost. No toxic emissions there!"
The Green Party encourages people to make comments about the planned incinerator in writing by 12th March 2010 to The Environment Agency, Permitting Support Centre, Environment Permit Team, Quadrant 2, 99 Parkway Avenue, Sheffield S9 4WF.