Ministers must say yes to reduction and recycling, no to incineration

23 January 2008
Topics: Politics, Waste

Commenting ahead of tomorrow's (Thursday January 24) Scottish parliamentary
statement on waste, Stuart Hay - Head of Campaigns at Friends of the Earth
Scotland - said:

"Large-scale, mass-burn incinerators aren’t an acceptable solution to
Scotland’s waste problems and landfill addiction. Inappropriate investment
in waste to energy plants risks reducing incentives for waste prevention and
recycling, thus leading to unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions.

"The real priority and alternative to landfill [1] is waste prevention and
continued improvement of recycling facilities and rates. This means tackling
the causes of our waste problems at source such as over-packaging, a lack of
reusable or returnable containers, food waste and too few recycling
facilities for materials such as plastics.

"Some countries already recycle twice as much waste as Scotland [2]; this
shows that we still need more investment in the right facilities if we
aren’t to remain the dirty man of Europe. The Scottish Ministers should
continue to pursue the zero waste approach from their manifesto."

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS

[1] Summary of Friends of the Earth Scotland’s Position

We want to see:

A) Priority given to investment in waste prevention and recycling as the way
to tackle Scotland’s landfill, so materials are used more efficiently saving
energy and climate change emissions. The aspiration should be to create a
zero waste Scotland by 2025, where all materials are reused, composted or
recycled. Alongside waste reduction recycling levels of 60% could meet EU
landfill targets.

B) Avoidance of large-scale incineration because it would hinder efforts to
change the culture away from a throwaway society and to promote better
source segregated recycling. Incinerators also raise serious concerns for
local communities, waste precious resources, turning them to toxic ash and
generate unnecessary climate change emissions.

C) Avoidance of large-scale energy to waste plants which would breach the
proximity principle (dealing with waste close to the source).

D) Development of small-scale energy from waste plants, for example, using
anaerobic digestion to produce biogas from food waste, which can be used in
combined heat and power plants.

[2]   Scotland’s current recycling rate is around 30% whereas the
Netherlands and areas of Belgium (Flanders) are already recycling more than
65% of their waste. In the case of the Italian municipality Nichelino,
recycling rates jumped from around 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2006.

Scotland produces round 3.4 million tonnes is municipal waste per year. In
2006, we landfilled just over 2.4 million tonnes (around 71%) whilst we
recycled or composted over 900,000 tonnes (around 27%).

Figures released in November 2007 by the Scottish Environment Protection
Agency (SEPA) reveal that Scotland’s recycling and composting rate improved
to 29.8% for the year between July 2006 to June 2007. The recycling and
composting rate for the first quarter of 2007/2008 was 33.4%.

[3]   Evidence from England and Denmark shows that incineration can crowd
out recycling, especially where long-term contracts keep recyclable material
in the waste stream.

[4]   Research has shown that a standard energy from waste plant generating
electricity produces more carbon than even a modern coal power station.

[5]   One Energy from Waste facility in Perthshire has already been approved
and another is proposed for Dunbar East Lothian.

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