Wood-burning stoves: cosy but shameful?
Before Christmas, I watched the people next door knock a big hole in their wall, said Katie Gatens in The Times. Extension? DIY repair gone wrong? “Then a metal flue went up.” The neighbours had become one of the 175,000 households that install woodburning stoves each year – five times more than in 2007. Cosy and nostalgic, these stoves have become a “totem of suburban middle-class privilege”. But to some, they have also become a source of intense shame. Last year, the “vocal vegan” George Monbiot published an “astonishing mea culpa” in The Guardian, confessing that at his home in Wales, he had not one but three stoves. He had installed them thinking they were a greener alternative to gas heating, but had then discovered that woodand coal-burning stoves are actually the “single biggest source of air pollution in the country”.
It’s a serious problem, said Fiona Harvey in The Guardian. Only a tiny minority of homes have these stoves, yet they emit an estimated 17% of all PM2.5 pollution – the tiny particles that pass into the bloodstream, and that have been linked to a range of health problems, from heart failure to dementia. The Environment Secretary has been urged to tackle airborne pollution, but last week, Thérèse Coffey said she had no plans to ban wood-burning stoves. Instead, she is tightening up the limits on how much smoke new models can emit in “smoke control areas”, and has told councils to enforce the existing laws on smoke emissions more rigorously.
This news made my heart sink, said Georgina Fuller in The i Paper. Our wood stove is the heart of our home. And as we are one of millions of households without proper central heating, it’s also a vital, and relatively cheap, source of warmth. Now people like us face being fined, criminalised even. I don’t think there is much to fear, said Simon Kelner in the same paper. In the past six years, councils have had 18,000 complaints about smoke emissions, yet have issued only 17 fines. Officials are too busy keeping essential services going to patrol the streets for illegal log burners. But perhaps this latest crackdown will persuade owners like me – the 95% who do have other sources of heat – to do the right thing for the environment, and let their stoves go out.