Ask the Government to stop wasting money
20 July 2010

Government departments are trying to slash their spending in order to cut the deficit.

There is big potential to save money through dealing with our waste more sustainably.

Nearly £2 billion of private finance initiative (PFI) funding is currently allocated to planned large waste infrastructure projects.

These projects would also require huge amounts of money from council tax payers for decades to come.

The majority of PFI waste projects are incinerators, which:

contribute to climate change.
destroy precious recyclable materials.
create far fewer jobs than recycling.
represent very poor value for money for tax payers.

Gone to waste

At the moment England dumps and burns over £650 million of valuable resources each year.

Our research shows that if material currently being landfilled or incinerated was recycled instead, it would:

save money.
slash emissions equivalent to 6 million cars.
reduce the need to import materials from abroad.
create tens of thousands of new UK jobs.

The Government must stop wasting public money on incineration.

Instead they should prioritise comparatively low-cost options such as:

effective, high quality, source separated recycling systems.
anaerobic digestion.
reuse services.

Act now

Please email Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State for the Environment.

Ask the Government to stop wasting money

Dear Secretary of State,

Here's an example you can use (but personalising this message would be much more effective).

I am very concerned that the Government is giving councils 2 billion pounds of taxpayers' money to fund PFI waste projects, many of which are likely to include incineration. New incinerators will require a fixed amount of waste every day over their 25-30 year lifetime, meaning that we severely limit our future opportunities to maximise recycling rates and the anaerobic digestion (AD) of separately collected food waste. They also represent very poor value for money for tax payers. DEFRA modelling already predicts that there will be too many residual waste plants (like incinerators) built by 2020. But this prediction is likely to be an underestimate, as they have assumed that waste will grow in volume - in reality it is reducing - and that recycling rates only reach 50%, when it is clear that much higher rates can be achieved. The more excess plants there are, the more they will suck in waste that should be recycled or go to AD. For example, a number of European countries, e.g. Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, now have too many incinerators, and don't recycle as much as they could. Work carried out for the Treasury in the past has shown that the environmental damage from incineration is higher than for landfill; we believe this justifies the creation of an incineration tax, which would also raise money for more positive public spending. Technologies for residual waste treatment should be flexible, able to scale down capacity as recycling rates increase (e.g. as food waste collection spreads) or waste volumes decrease (as has happened in the recession), and should be based on approaches with the best resource efficiency and climate performance. We must aim for true 'Zero waste', not just zero waste to landfill. In addition to stopping public funding for incineration, we can save money and create green jobs by prioritising effective, high quality, source-separated recycling systems. For example, the Waste and Resource Action Programme (WRAP) has helped UK businesses develop 100% recycled PET bottles, creating both jobs and a market for this material, which used to be dumped. In summary, I would urge you to protect funding for recycling and anaerobic digestion - including the great work WRAP is doing in creating new markets for recycling. At the same time, the Government should stop funding wasteful incineration and bring in a new tax on incineration, to complement the tax that is already in place on landfill.

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Ask the Government to stop wasting money20 July 2010

Ask the Government to stop wasting money

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Ask the Government to stop wasting money
20 July 2010