The UK Government and local authorities are currently looking at burning
more waste from households, shops and offices in incinerators. This
would mean literally sending valuable resources up in smoke, as well
as increasing pollution levels and losing the chance to increase employment.
In recent years, most UK waste has been landfilled (that is, buried
in huge holes in the ground, for instance in old quarries.) In many
areas, especially urban ones, there are few suitable landfill sites
now still available, which means that local authorities are looking
for alternatives. However, neither burning waste nor burying it is the
answer - instead, we need to be recycling materials, and finding ways
to waste less in the first place.
Most of these new proposed incinerators will be equipped to generate
electricity from the heat produced by burning the waste. Some of them
will also use some heat directly to heat buildings. Hence they are not
being called 'incinerators', a word which people associate with pollution
problems, but 'waste-to-energy' or 'energy-from-waste' facilities.
Superficially, the idea of burning waste to generate useful energy
sounds environmentally sensible, and this is certainly how the new incinerators
are being marketed by their operators. But Friends of the Earth opposes
incineration of waste, including that with energy recovery. This is
for three main reasons:
This briefing looks at these reasons in depth, at some of the financial
and employment implications, and at Friends of the Earth's recommendations
as to the way forward.
Waste or resource?
We still live in a throwaway society. For example:
Although we call the materials we throw away 'waste', this is a rash
judgement - most of it either does not need to be produced in the first
place, or could be reused or recycled as a useful resource.
It is very important that instead of wasting resources we use them more efficiently. Recent research published by Friends of the Earth shows that, for an environmentally sustainable and equitable future, we need to reduce our consumption of wood products (including paper) by 65% by the year 20105 and of non-renewable resources (like aluminium, steel and cement) by around 80% by 2050.6 This is not because resources are about to run out in the near future (although we potentially do have this problem with oil7), but because of the effects of the current fast rate of consumption. For example:
Preventing these kinds of impacts means making things last twice as
long and using half as much. Wasting much less and recycling much more
is an important place to start.
Incineration and recycling - are they compatible?
If we build incinerators, we are not only quite literally sending resources
up in smoke, but also accepting that we do not need to reduce wastage.
Because building an incinerator has such high capital costs, incinerator
operators typically require contracts with local authorities to supply
them with a minimum amount of waste to burn over a long time - 25 to
30 years. In some cases, if the local authority does not supply the
full amount of waste required, it has to pay the incinerator operator
to compensate for their profit shortfall. This assurance of return on
investment is a logical requirement from the incinerator operators'
point of view, but once incineration is established as an area's mode
of waste management, it hampers waste reduction and recycling measures.
The incentive on the local authority will be to ensure enough waste
is produced, not to ensure that it's reduced.
An example of this has occurred in Cleveland. In mid-1995 Cleveland
County Council (now reorganised into unitary authorities) signed a contract
with a waste company to supply at least 180,000 tonnes for incineration
and 80,000 tonnes for landfill each year. There was a 'shortfall' of
12,000 tonnes in the first year of the contract, and the authorities
have thus incurred penalties of £147,000. The Associate Director
of Environmental Services at Stockton Borough Council has said “essentially
we are into waste maximisation”, and that they are constrained
by the contracts from doing even a modest amountof recycling.10
The incineration industry and the Government argue that incineration
and recycling can exist side by side. This is because their aspirations
and targets for waste reduction and recycling levels are much less ambitious
than is necessary. Some incinerators have facilities for removing glass
and metals. But if paper and plastic waste were minimised and recycled
as much as possible, in most areas there would not be enough left to
make incineration financially worthwhile. If there is less waste a smaller
incinerator is required. The costs of some pollution abatement equipment
are the same irrespective of the plant to which they are fitted, and
can be a high proportion of the costs of a small incinerator11,
potentially making small incinerators uneconomic.
Similarly, although it might appear that incinerators would not affect
recycling of metals and glass, in practice there would be little incentive
for separating out these materials, since they can go through the incineration
process.12
Energy from recycling, not energy from waste
By recycling instead of producing goods from raw materials, substantial
amounts of energy are saved. Recycling cuts out the energy consumption
associated with the extraction and initial processing of raw materials.
In addition, the recycling process itself is often more energy efficient
than production from raw materials. Energy can be obtained from incineration,
but this is less than can be saved by recycling. The most recent European
waste strategy assumes that in general recycling is preferable to incineration
in energy terms.13
A Canadian study found the following figures for energy saved by recycling
materials as opposed to burning them.14
The savings still apply when the energy used to transport materials
for recycling is taken into account - this energy is relatively insignificant.
|
Studies on individual materials yield similar results. In ten out of
eleven analyses on paper, recycling has been found to result in lower
total energy use than incineration (although possibly more carbon dioxide
emission - but this is changing with the UK using different fuel mixes
and would change further if recycling mills were built in urban areas
and used more sustainable energy sources).15
16 The most
recent report looking at greenhouse gas emissions from different waste
treatment options for different materials found that recyclingis preferable
for paper, cardboard, plastics and metals. Interestingly it also suggested
that landfill is better than incineration for plastics and some papers
(for example newspaper) because the carbon is trapped in the landfill
rather than released in the environment17.
And a study by the British Plastics Federation has found that recycling
of plastic cups is preferable to incineration in energy terms.18
Different studies in this field obtain different results. This can
depend on the scope of the study. For example, a comparison of the amount
of energy used at manufacturing versus recycling plants should include
the energy needed to extract the raw materials to make the virgin products,
but does not always do so.
Air pollution
Incinerator chimneys emit organic substances such as dioxins, heavy
metals such as cadmium and mercury, dust particles and acid gases such
as sulphur dioxide and hydrochloric acid. These can have the following
health effects:
The permissible limits for emission of these substances (apart from
dioxins) have been tightened by a European law which came into force
on 1 December 1996. The European law does not specifically set limits
for dioxins but a limit for these has been set by the UK Environment
Agency. This means that all working incinerators in the UK will operate
to standards more stringent than previously. New European legislation
will tighten the standards further, and other countries are already
operating to higher standards. For example, standards for dioxin emissions
in the Netherlands are ten times more stringent than the new UK standards.20
A recent report for the European Commission, which was prepared to help
them consider how tough the new standards should be, suggested that
for every tonne of municipal waste burnt between £21 and £126
worth of environmental and health damage is caused (depending on the
location of the incinerator)21.
For some of the pollutants, (such as dioxin and cadmium), the overall
amount of the pollutant in the area, some of which willcome from the
incinerator and some from other sources, is not taken into account when
the incinerator emission limits are set. Because of this it is often
not possible to tell whether the incinerator emissions will lead to
unacceptable exposure or not. Moreover, for pollutants where the overall
impact is allowed for (such as with particles and lead) the standards
do not take into account the fact that two or more pollutants might
act in combination to produce a greater effect than they would singly.
Monitoring for dioxins (and also for heavy metals), is done at intervals
- for example, twice a year.22
The amount of each pollutant will vary depending on the particular composition
of the material going into the incinerator at any given time and the
temperature of the incinerator. To get the most favourable results it
is likely that the operators will ensure that ideal conditions are present
at the times of the tests. This may not always be the case at other
times the incinerator is operating.
Incinerator ash
One of the main arguments put forward for incineration is that it saves
on landfill space - but a significant amount of ash is produced. When
waste is landfilled it is compacted. According to the Government's own
waste strategy, the ash produced by incineration occupies 40%-50% of
the space that compacted unburnt waste would.23
Therefore, whilst it is often said that the ash occupies only 10% of
the volume of unburnt waste, this figure is misleading as it applies
to uncompacted waste.
The ash is toxic; the toxins include heavy metals and dioxins. This
particularly applies to ash which is 'caught' by pollution abatement
equipment and prevented from going up the chimney, known as 'fly ash'.
However, the main volume of the ash - 'bottom ash' - also contains some
toxins. Most of it goes to landfill, and this means that the pollutants
may eventually leak into groundwater, from where it is virtually impossible
to clean them up. Moreover, the heavy metals are present in a form where
they are more liable to leach if they are in ash than if they are in
unburnt waste.24
An incinerator has impacts other than local pollution on the community
where it is sited. Traffic congestion and noise arise from the lorries
transporting waste to, and ash away from, the incinerator. The incinerator
itself is unsightly. And property values and local businesses (such
as food processing, which needs to maintain confidence that its products
are not contaminated) may be adversely affected.
Dioxins
Dioxins are a by-product of burning chlorine-containing materials,
such as PVC plastic. Dioxins have a particular set of properties which
make them worthy of special consideration:
There has been considerable debate over just how much risk to health
they pose. However, everyone is now unavoidably carrying a certain amount
of dioxin in their bodies as a consequence of living in the industrialised
world. Worryingly, some of the health effects described earlier in the
briefing are seen in people with levels of dioxin not much higher than
the amount many people have anyway.25
This does not prove that the dioxin is definitely causing the
health effects. But it should not be necessary to wait for definite
proof - the 'precautionary principle' should be applied and no more
avoidable dioxin should be added to the environment.
The UK Government considers that there is very little health risk from
current levels of dioxins. This belief is based on a particular 'tolerable
daily intake' (TDI) that it considers safe, which is also the one used
by the World Health Organisation. However, this TDI is based on assumptions
which, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, do not necessarily
stand up. For example, the safe intake is calculated is calculated on
the basis of experiments on rats, and does not make enough allowance
for the fact that dioxin breaks down in rats' bodies much more quickly
than in humans.26
The UK's TDI is about 100 times less stringent than the US Environment
Protection Agency considers to be safe for the non-cancer health risks
(such as reduced fertility, and endometriosis), and about a thousand
times less stringent than they calculate to give a cancer risk of one
in a million (their usual benchmark).27
It is not surprising that, at present, incineration appears to be a
financially attractive option for waste authorities which are hard pressed
for landfill space because at present, incineration appears to be a
cheaper option than recycling. However, incinerators could end up being
expensive white elephants for four reasons:
Investment in recycling, on the other hand, will pay off more and
more as recycling infrastructures and markets for recycled materials
develop. It also creates far more jobs than either landfill or incineration
- see below.
But regardless of the current financial situation, local authorities
do not have to go for the cheapest option for waste disposal - the Department
of the Environment says “Under the Environment Protection Act 1990,
local authorities, in their role as waste disposal authorities, are
not required to accept the lowest tender for their contracts where an
alternative offers environmental benefits.”30
Waste management and employment
Once they have been built, incinerators create few jobs compared with
recycling. A New York study found thefollowing31:
Jobs per one million tons of waste processed
|
The British Newsprint Manufacturers Association found that recycling
of newspapers would create three times as many jobs as incinerating
them. In addition, a higher proportion of the jobs created by incineration
were associated with building the incinerator, so they were not permanent
jobs.32
A strategy drawn up for London suggested that increasing recycling
in London to around 50% by 2005 would create around 15,000 jobs33.
First, there are many ways of using materials far more efficiently
than we do at present. And it is not just Friends of the Earth calling
for this. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has
estimated that a ten fold increase in efficiency of material throughput
is necessary.34
For example, we need to design products to carry out the same functions
using fewer materials, and to be durable, repairable and have reusable
parts. We need to make much greater use of recycled materials. We need
to replace products with services (for example, nappy washing services
and tool hire), and we need to start asking ourselves how much we really
need. All of this would mean less in the dustbin.
Secondly, the waste we do produce needs to be recycled to a far greater
extent than happens at present. It has been estimated that around 80%
of household dustbin waste is recyclable or compostable35;
this estimate allows for practical and economic factors. Recycling saves
materials and the waste created by obtaining raw materials, saves energy,
and most recycling processes are less polluting than raw materials processes.36
In parts of the USA, Canada, Japan and Germany recycling levels of
between 50-75% have already been achieved.37
It can be done here too. For example, the city of Bath has already reached
the Government's target of recycling 25% of household waste, and Leicester
City has recently set a target of recycling 40% of household waste by
2000. The London Borough of Sutton is recycling 19%, and aiming for
50% by 2001.
Soiled paper (eg that which has been in contact with food, or paper
that has been recycled the maximum number of times and is no longer
good enough quality for further recycling), can be composted or anaerobically
digested. These processes also deal with food and garden waste. They
can produce a useful product (compost or soil conditioner) and are more
flexible (in terms of plant size) and less polluting than incineration.
Local Authorities have a very important role to play in sustainable
waste management. We recommend they do the following:
Incineration is a backward-looking technology - it allows us to continue
with our throwaway habits, instead of looking to the future when we
will be conserving resources much more carefully than we do now. It
also adds to pollution of both air and land, and may turn out to be
very expensive.
Building incinerators now commits us to this wasteful way of managing
resources for several decades hence.
Don't let the future go up in smoke!
Incineration Campaign Guide, February 1998, £15
Landfill Campaign Guide, July 1997, £15
Waste - A5 16 page booklet/leaflet, Friends of the Earth, 1996, £0.50
Don't throw it all away - Friends of the Earth's Guide to Waste Reduction
and Recycling, 50 page book, 1992, £3.45
All the above can be ordered from:
Publications Despatch, Friends of the Earth, 56-58 Alma Street,
Luton, LU1 2PH
Tel 01582 482297 (2pm-4pm)
Send payment with your order - P&P is free
return to text
1. Making Waste Work - A Strategy for Sustainable Waste Management
in England and Wales, Department of the Environment, December 1995
return to text
2. Real Value from Packaging Waste - A Way Forward, Producer Responsibility
Industry Group, February 1994
return to text
3. Packaging Recycling Worldwide, Duales System Deutschland, March
1995
return to text
4. Mass Balance and the UK Economy, Peter Jones, Environmental Excellence,
1995
return to text
5. Wild Woods! - Save the World's Forests, Public Information leaflet,
Friends of the Earth, October 1996
return to text
6. Tomorrow's World - Britain's Share in a Sustainable Future, McLaren,
Bullock, Yousuf, Friends of the Earth, Earthscan, 1998.
return to text
7. Living Dangerously - the Earth, its Resources and the Environment,
H D Holland and U Petersen, Princeton University Press, New Jersey:1995
return to text
8. Scandinavian Scandal - Friends of the Earth Press Briefing, 1996
return to text
9. Living Dangerously - the Earth, its Resources and the Environment,
H D Holland and U Petersen, Princeton University Press, New Jersey:1995
return to text
10. ENDS Report, November 1996
return to text
11. Waste Incineration - IPC Guidance Note, October 1996
return to text
12. Monitoring the Impact of Bring Systems on Domestic Waste in the
UK, Warren Spring Laboratory, August 1993
return to text
13. Review of Waste Management Strategy, European Commission, COM
(96) 399, 30 July 1996
return to text
14. Recycling versus Incineration,: An Energy Conservation Analysis,
Sound Resource Management Group, Ontario, September 1992
return to text
15. Critique of 'A systems approach to materials flow in Sustainable
Cities; a case study of paper' by Leach et al, Friends of the Earth
, 1998.
return to text
16. Towards a Sustainable Paper Cycle, International Institute for
Environment and Development, 1996
return to text
17. Greenhouse gas emissions from municipal waste management draft
working paper, US EPA, ICF Incorporated, 1997.
return to text
18. ENDS Report, December 1996
return to text
19. Draft Chapter on Dioxin Risk Characterisation, US Environmental
Protection Agency, May 1994
return to text
20. Europe's Environment - The Dobris Assessment, European Environment
Agency, 1995
return to text
21. Economic evaluation of the draft incineration Directive, ETSU,
European Commission, 1996.
return to text
22. Waste Incineration, IPC Guidance Note, Environment Agency, October
1996
return to text
23. Making Waste Work, Department of the Environment, 1995
return to text
24. Making Waste Work, Department of the Environment, 1995
return to text
25. Draft Chapter on dioxin Risk Assessment, US Environmental Protection
Agency, May 1994
return to text
26. ENDS Report, April 1996
return to text
27. Economic evaluation of the draft incineration Directive, ETSU,
European Commission, 1996.
return to text
28. EC working paper on the incineration of waste, February 1998.
return to text
29. The Waste Manager, October 1994
return to text
30. Energy from Waste - Department of the Environment, November 1996
return to text
31. Jobs in a Sustainable Economy, J Renner, Worldwatch 1991, cited
in Working Future, Jobs and the Environment, Friends of the Earth, 1994
return to text
32. Recycle or Incinerate - the Future for Used Newspapers: an Independent
Evaluation, British Newsprint Manufacturers Association, 1996
return to text
33. Towards a London waste strategy - overview, Environment Agency
and LPAC, 1997.
return to text
34. Towards a London waste strategy - overview, Environment Agency
and LPAC, 1997.
return to text
35. Towards a London waste strategy - overview, Environment Agency
and LPAC, 1997.
return to text
36. A Review of the Environmental Impact of Recycling, S M Ogilvie,
Warren Spring Laboratory/DTI, 1992
return to text
37. Materials Recycling Week, 22 November 1996
First published February 1997,
updated February 1998
Published by Friends of the Earth Ltd
Friends of the Earth England Wales and Northern Ireland
26-28 Underwood Street
London N1 7JQ
Telephone 0171 490 1555
Email: info@foe.co.uk
Content
Contact details:
Friends of the Earth
26-28 Underwood St.
LONDON
N1 7JQ
Tel: 020 7490 1555
Fax: 020 7490 0881
Email: info@foe.co.uk
Website: www.foe.co.uk
Waste Team
Last modified: June 2001
