Memorandum submitted by the United Kingdom
Without Incineration Network (Waste 67)
Waste management practices are an important,
although oft-neglected, contributor to climate change. Waste disposal
drives climate change directly through the release of greenhouse
gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O)
from incinerators and methane (CH4) from landfills. Waste disposal
also drives climate change indirectly by depriving the economy
of reused, recycled and composted materials, thus requiring increased
extraction of raw materials, an extremely energy-intensive process.
Landfill taxes increase every year, and this has
provided local authorities and industry with the incentive to
divert waste from landfill. However in the absence of an incineration
tax in the UK valuable resources are being burnt. To raise waste
management above disposal and towards recycling, reuse and reduction
it is important that there are disincentives for both incineration
and landfilling. One such solution would be to introduce an Incineration
Tax that follows the increases in Landfill Tax.
The United Kingdom Without Incineration Network
(UKWIN) urgently requests that the Treasury investigates further
the prospect of introducing an Incineration Tax to prevent recycling
being undermined by a dash for waste burners. Not only would an
Incineration Tax help ensure that scarce resources are used more
efficiently, the Tax would contribute to achieving the Government's
target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Some incinerators generate energy, so-called
"waste to energy" or "energy from waste" incinerators.
But because waste prevention and recycling save energy, the energy
generated by incinerating waste is small compared to the energy
saved by recycling and reducing the same materials. For example:
recycling, rather than incinerating mixed paper, saves more than
nine times the amount of energy. Incinerating plastic generates
nearly three times more lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than
recycling plastic.
Studies have shown that incinerators emit more
CO2 per megawatt-hour than coal-fired, natural-gas-fired, or oil-fired
power plants. But their greatest contribution to climate change
is through undermining waste prevention and recycling programs,
and encouraging increased resource extraction. "Surcharges
on both landfills and incinerators are an important counterbalance
to the negative environmental and human health costs of disposal
that are borne by the public." [1]
The current situation appears perverse, with
taxes set at £32 and rising to £48 per tonne for landfilling,
whilst the Government actively supports incineration with typically
a £35/tonne subsidies for Private Finance Initiative (PFI)
funded waste burners. This creates a drive to burn waste that
should be recycled. Instead, the UK needs to create a graduated
scheme of taxation penalties and credits that drives sustainable
resource management. UKWIN would like to see the introduction
of an Incineration Tax set at half the landfill tax rate.
REFERENCE [1] See
Stop Trashing the Climate, www.stoptrashingtheclimate.org by Brenda
Platt (Institute for Local Self-Reliance), David Ciplet (Global
Anti-Incinerator Alliance/Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives),
Kate M. Bailey and Eric Lombardi (Eco-Cycle), JUNE 2008
United Kingdom Without Incineration Network
November 2008
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