Letter: Burning issue
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Keith Paterson's letter (17 July) seeks to promote the packaging industry's fallacy that using municipal waste incineration to provide energy will solve our throwaway society's problems.
'Waste-to-energy' incinerators are not a solution. Greenpeace provided evidence to the now defunct Energy Select Committee that waste-to-energy schemes are a waste of energy; recycling of waste can save five times as much energy as waste incineration generates. Waste incineration creates pollution and competes with recycling and reduction of waste.
There is intense public opposition to the proposals for new waste-to-energy incinerators around the UK and people are not in favour of a 'solution' which allows business to continue as usual for the packaging industry while destroying future resources and polluting the environment.
The Government's inclusion of incineration in the Non Fossil Fuel Obligation, will no doubt make incineration even more attractive to the packaging industry (and incineration operators) as it is the electricity consumer who will subsidise the costs of investment in this polluting technology.
Yours faithfully,
MADELEINE COBBING
Toxics Campaigner, Greenpeace
London, N1
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