Indymedia York

Incinerate OR recycle

If an incinerator is built, the City of York Council and North Yorkshire County Councils will have to sign a contract tying us into burning a certain amount of waste for a number of years. Yet at the same time the Councils want us to reduce the amount of waste we produce in the first place.

Waste going into an incinerator has to include flammable materials such as paper and plastics, otherwise it simply would not burn. But those materials could and should be recycled. You can't have a successful waste reduction and waste incineration programme going at the same time.
Incineration doesn't destroy waste

Incineration is the process of converting thousands of tonnes of potentially useful materials into toxic dust.

Every year in the UK, we produce millions of tonnes of domestic waste - over 100,000 tonnes in York. We chuck it in the bin and wait for the council to collect it. The majority is landfilled or burnt in one of the 15 municipal incinerators around the country. Many people assume it has been destroyed.

But it is one of the fundamental principles of science that matter can never be destroyed; it can only ever be transformed. Incinerators do not destroy waste. They simply turn it into ash and gases. Our rubbish still exists. We may see less of it, but we still have to bury the remains - or breathe it in.
Incineration is waste of energy

According to Friends of the Earth "incinerators are extremely inefficient generators of energy producing more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than old-fashioned coal-fired power station." You preserve far more energy by reuse and recycling than you could ever generate by incineration.

Greenpeace says that "incinerators are about 20% efficient in converting heat into electricity. The puny output is a tiny fraction of the energy required to remake the products and packaging they destroy. Most of the heat generated in the incinerator comes from burning plastic and paper. Burning plastics is effectively burning fossil fuels. Burning paper wastes energy and natural resources. Energy from waste is a waste of energy."
Incineration is a known health hazard

Burning waste releases a cocktail of dangerous chemicals. Some of the chemicals we cannot even name yet - let alone know their impact on human health and the environment. The Councils’ own analysis found that this option was the most damaging to human health of all options they examined.

Some of the effects of the chemicals that are known to be emitted by incineration include cancer, liver failure, abnormal sexual development, damage to the nervous, immune and respiratory systems, as well as acid rain and climate change.

A well-designed modern incinerator can keep the levels of many of these known toxins down to a very low level if it is well run. Unfortunately the recent history of incinerators in Britain demostrates that all too often, they are not very well run at all?

more from York Residents Against Incineration http://www.noburner.org.uk/