The UK is currently grappling with a waste mountain which sees more than 100 million tonnes of rubbish produced every year in England and Wales alone. England recycles or composts just 23 percent of household waste, one of the lowest rates in Europe, and landfill capacity is rapidly filling up as the vast majority of municipal waste ends up buried in the ground. Meanwhile, overall volumes of household waste continue to grow at up to three percent a year and the Government has no targets for waste prevention. Add to this a series of European Union laws requiring deep cuts in the proportion of recyclable waste going to landfill, and you have the recipe for a waste crisis.
The Government has responded with a new waste strategy, which is based on much wider use of incineration and proposes the building of 22 new municipal waste incinerators, more than double the current number currently in operation. Although incineration has enjoyed positive publicity recently thanks to energy-from-waste policies, critics say that the re-use, recycling or composting of waste are far more efficient ways to save energy and resources. Incinerators also work against higher recycling rates, since they are operated through long-term contracts that require constant inputs of waste, and produce toxic ash.
Campaigners advocate two broad sets of policy to manage the UK’s waste challenge – one to maximise the fraction of waste that is recovered and reused; the other to minimise the total amount of rubbish produced in the first place. But in contrast to Sweden, Denmark and California, the UK has steered clear of the incentives and targets which could, for example, reduce surplus packaging or increase plastics recycling rates.
Campaign groups fighting new incinerators or landfill sites, or the expansion of existing facilities, face a tough battle. Despite the health problems reported near many incinerators, ranging from asthma to cancer, the Government does not accept that incinerators are linked to negative health impacts. Furthermore, breaches of the ‘safe’ chemical limits imposed upon incinerators are often missed by regulators’ infrequent monitoring. Local authorities also favour incineration as a low-cost, low-imagination way of meeting their waste targets. In other words, local residents can present perfectly legitimate grounds for opposing incineration, but do not see their concerns taken into account.
Despite this, indeed perhaps because of it, campaigns against waste facilities are often energetic and tenacious, and attract wide public support. As for all grass roots campaigning, fighting waste plans requires good technical knowledge of the planning, regulatory and legal systems. The Manuka Club supports a number of groups protesting against incinerator projects.
