71% of city rubbish burned – mostly as fuel for power

More than two-thirds of Sunderland’s rubbish is burned, one of the highest rates of incineration in England.

Campaigners have called for a tax on incineration due to the amount of pollution it causes.

Between April 2017 and March 2018, 88,553 tonnes of Sunderland’s rubbish was burned, according to the latest Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs figures.

That was 71% of the local authority’s waste. The vast majority was used as fuel to generate heat and electricity at specialist energy from waste power facilities.

Across England, burning rubbish is becoming more common. Now around 42% of the country’s waste is incinerated, compared to 30% three years earlier.

A cross party report, launched in July in the House of Lords, called on the Government to take oversight of the industry and introduce an incineration tax.

Research revealed that incinerators in England polluted more last year than a quarter-of-a-million lorries travelling 75,000 miles.

However, Libby Forrest, policy and parliamentary affairs officer at Environmental Services Association, said the wider use of incineration should be celebrated.

She said: “Energy from waste has increased because we are successfully moving away from landfill, which is more damaging to the environment.

“Energy from waste saves 200kg of CO₂ per tonne of waste diverted from landfill, and generates low-carbon power far more efficiently than landfill, contributing to renewable energy targets and energy security.”

The second most common way of disposing rubbish in Sunderland was recycling. In 2017-18, 35,923 tonnes of waste, 29% of the total, was recycled or composted.