Why incinerating waste is bad for everyone

DESPITE everyone’s best endeavours to date, construction work has started on the Biffa/Covanta site near M1 Junction 23.

Readers will probably have seen the construction cranes. These are visible from many parts of Loughborough and Shepshed and give an idea of the scale of the eyesore that will evolve over the next two to three years.

We will continue to work with likeminded organisations, to scrutinise every aspect of the project and to press for changes in legislation to limit emissions from waste incineration and to expose the true environmental and financial costs of socalled “energy from waste”, namely:

■ Incineration harms recycling;

■ Incineration exacerbates climate change;

■ Incineration is a barrier to the circular economy;

■ The UK already faces incineration overcapacity;

■ Incineration harms air quality. At some point Biffa will realise that there is no future in waste incineration and we will see the incinerator on an episode of Abandoned Engineering.

In the meantime there is something residents should know - Leicestershire County Council is currently engaged in a confidential procurement process for residual waste disposal.

This could result in household waste from Charnwood Borough being sent, by the county council, for incineration at the Biffa/Covanta Junction 23 site.

The borough council has no say in how its waste is disposed of, because of the crazy split of responsibilities for waste collection – borough – and disposal – county. Residents can help by:

■ Ensuring you recycle, reuse and donate as much as possible.

This will minimise the amount of waste that you put in your grey bin, this residual waste is the stream that would be sent for incineration.

■ Asking your home and business electricity supplier(s) if they use “electricity from waste”.

Unless they can say unequivocally that they do not, consider changing your supplier to one that can.

For example, Charnwood Borough Council’s Big Switch does not consider energy from waste as green.

Energy from waste is not green because the incineration process releases locked-in carbon from plastics.

Each tonne of incinerated waste releases approximately one tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere.

If you would like to be kept up to date with our ongoing activities, please send an e-mail with mailme as the subject to: committee@laqpg.org.uk

The Committee, Loughborough Quality Protection Group