How a third of recycling ends up in incinerator
MILLIONS of tons of rubbish that is painstakingly sorted and put out for recycling by British households is being sent straight to the incinerators instead.
More than a third of household recycling is burned rather than reused – a finding that will infuriate residents obliged to navigate complicated sorting rules.
In West Lothian, 27 per cent of the recycling is sent to an incinerator, while Southend-on-Sea, in Essex, burns 45 per cent and Warwickshire 38 per cent.
Professor Sir Ian Boyd, former chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told Channel 4’s Dispatches programme councils were ‘highly incentivised’ to burn waste because of huge investments in power plants fuelled by rubbish.
He said: ‘We end up a lot of the time creating a market for it, and therefore trying to generate more waste in order to generate the input for the power plants that we’ve made such large investments in.
‘The very last thing we should be doing when we throw something away is put it in an incinerator.’
Professor Boyd urged measures to ‘disincentivise’ burning, including an incineration tax.
The programme claims that 11.6 million tons of rubbish was incinerated in 2019, compared with 10.9 million tons recycled.
Britain has 48 waste-fuelled power plants and they emit more carbon dioxide than coal – 12.6 million tons a year, compared with 11.7 million tons from burning coal. This figure is set to rise further, once an additional 18 rubbish plants are built.
About 11 per cent of all rubbish put out for recycling ultimately ends up being burned.
Glasgow is hosting the UN Climate Change Conference this November, and the UK has committed to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent by 2030.
The Government told Dispatches it plans to introduce taxes aimed at cutting the amount of unrecyclable plastic ending up as waste.
‘We are very clear that incineration should be a last resort behind recycling and reuse,’ it said.
• Dispatches: The Dirty Truth About Your Rubbish, is on Channel 4 at 8pm tomorrow.
‘They emit more carbon dioxide than burning coal’