Archived press release

Foe slams environment agency incineration forecasts

22 January 2001

Friends of the Earth has written to Environment Agency (EA) chair Sir John Harman criticising the EA's recent forecast that up to 69 massive municipal waste incinerators will be needed across the country [1] each burning 300,000 tonnes of waste per year. FOE disputes the figure and calls on the Agency, which admits that the health impacts from incineration are unknown [2], to concentrate its efforts into reducing waste and increasing the UK's woeful recycling rate instead. Local people throughout the country are already campaigning against proposals for huge incinerators.

In its letter to Sir John Harman, FOE outlines a number of criticisms of the EA's 10 regional Strategic Waste Management Assessments (SWMAs), published late last year. The reports:

• use the outmoded technique of 'predict and provide' that proved so fatal for road-building;
• assume that municipal waste will grow at 3% per year for the next 20 years, resulting in 80% more waste by 2020 - although there is very little evidence to support this;
• vastly underestimate the level of recycling and composting that can be achieved.The Environment Agency suggests that at best the UK can only recycle 33.8% and compost 7.9% of municipal waste by 2020. Yet already the Netherlands recycles and composts over 60%, and Germany recycled and composted 48% of its municipal waste in 1996. [See table [3]]. Even in the UK, a recent recycling trial in Colchester, Essex achieved a recycling rate of 57% after just 3 months.

Sarah Oppenheimer, Waste Campaigner at Friends of the Earth said:
“Residents across the country will be rightly furious that the Environment Agency,which is supposed to be championing the environment, is planning for dozens of incinerators to be built. Rather than burning used natural resources we should be putting more effort into producing less waste and increasing the amount that can be recycled. The Environment Agency should be putting its efforts into matching the recycling achievements of our European neighbours rather than condemning valuable materials to these industrial bonfires.”

NOTES:
1. Environment Agency forecasts of incinerators needed (Strategic Waste Management Assessments).

3. International recycling rates. Source: FOE

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust