This month's Climate Column from Climate Action Stokesley and Villages asks if waste to energy incinerators are a ‘green’ alternative to landfill or are there better options.

In the UK as a society – individuals, businesses, services – we currently produce waste at an ever increasing scale. The average English household produces almost one tonne of waste per year. In 2021, this was 23.1m tonnes. In the past much of this would have been disposed of in landfills but this can lead to environmental pollution and health problems if poorly designed, and as waste can take hundreds of years to break down, the problems of landfills affect future generations.

Incinerators, such as the local Allerton Waste Recovery Park, have been developed as an alternative to landfills. This has been processing waste from York and North Yorkshire councils since 2018, reducing ‘black bin’ waste going to landfill by about 90 per cent, combining the removal of metal and plastics for recycling, a digestion plant to treat organic waste producing biogas for energy production and the remaining waste burnt to produce energy.

(Image: Climate Action Stokesley and Villages)

Already over eight per cent of the UK’s waste is burnt on Teesside and a much larger waste to energy incinerator has been proposed at Redcar to take waste from across the North East. Developers say that this will provide a sustainable, safe and affordable solution for treating the region’s general rubbish as well as producing energy.

Waste to energy incineration has been promoted as a ‘green’ alternative for creating energy and about 3.1 per cent of the UK’s energy currently comes from waste incinerators. However, many health and environmental concerns have been raised about waste to energy incinerators, with Scotland and Wales having already banned any new incinerators. Recent BBC analysis demonstrates energy from waste is the dirtiest way the UK generates power, producing the same amount of greenhouse gases for each unit of energy as coal power, which was halted in the UK this year.

(Image: Climate Action Stokesley and Villages)

Organisations which oppose the development of new waste incinerators are concerned that they release both pollutants and potent greenhouse gases. Whilst there are stringent regulations around the management of toxins, it has been found in a report for the Greater London Authority, that incinerators do contribute to Nitrous Oxide and particulate matter concentrations, both of these pose risks to our health and our environment.

There are also concerns that burning waste does not address the avoidable initial production of waste, de-incentivises recycling and other means of utilising waste. For example, three per cent of household waste is ‘disposable’ nappies and there has been new technologies developed to repurpose or upcycle them for road building – nappies can be cleaned and pulped, the resulting fibres are added to bitumen, which glues together asphalt road surfaces, now several new roads in the North East were originally nappies.

An obvious but overlooked solution is using the ‘waste pyramid’ (see diagram) and reducing waste at source by reducing our use of packaging, reliance on single use plastics, and making items which last longer, changing our ‘throw away’ culture, after all, there is no ‘away’.

Producing energy from waste incineration is not a long-term sustainable solution – better ways forward are in your hands.

Visit climateactionstokesleyandvillages.org to find out ways to reduce your waste.