Why hundreds of thousands of tonnes of recycling are going up in smoke
7th March 2021 | Recycling
When it comes to planet-friendly habits, recycling is by far the UK’s most popular, with 87% of householders claiming they do so regularly, according to the Waste and Resources Action Programme. But an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches into where our rubbish goes, and the role played by energy-from-waste incineration plants, has found that millions of tonnes of our carefully sorted empties are simply being burned after they’re collected.
Freedom of information requests reveal that, on average, 11% of rubbish collected for recycling is incinerated. In some areas the figures are far higher: 45% in Southend-on-Sea and 38% in Warwickshire. The Dispatches team also found a direct correlation between regions tied into incineration contracts and low recycling rates. In England, more waste is now burned than recycled – 11.6 million tonnes were incinerated in 2019 while 10.9 million was sent for recycling. There are 48 energy-from-waste incinerators across the country, and industry figures show 18 more are planned.
Recycling
Despite householders’ enthusiasm for recycling, rates in England remain in the doldrums – at 45%, according to government figures, the same level as in 2017, and a long way from the revolutionary shift in waste and recycling promised by the environment bill (postponed to the next parliamentary cycle). Meanwhile the push for industrialised nations to become circular economies, using reuse, recycling and better design to tackle pollution, is beginning to guide policy elsewhere, notably the EU’s Green Deal.
In the past, objections to incineration largely centred on air quality and public health concerns, but the focus has shifted. In the age of net zero and ahead of COP26, today’s campaigners are looking at emissions and insisting that the green claims of the incineration industry are subject to scrutiny.
Other energy producers have to publish their total carbon dioxide emissions, yet the energy-from-waste industry must account only for the C02 from burning fossil-based waste such as plastic. It does not report emissions from food and garden waste, known as biogenic C02. The industry also says that by diverting waste from landfill (considered the worst possible outcome in waste orthodoxy) and claiming back a percentage of the embodied energy from the rubbish by generating electricity, energy-from-waste technology represents a low-carbon electricity source.
More information available on the website below
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/07/revealed-why-hundreds-of-thousands-of-tonnes-of-recycling-are-going-up-in-smoke