We wrote to the SMH to complain about the huge advertorial sponsored by Veolia to promote waste to energy incinerators and we thought you might like to hear how Veolia are promoting incineration as the best way to manage our “waste”!
Dear SMH
Veolia’s recent advertorial published on World Environment Day is a huge green washing exercise designed to convince vulnerable Local Governments, state and federal politicians, regulators and members of the public to support an outdated industry that is being phased out by the EU due to the well-established impacts on the health of surrounding communities and permanent damage to the environment.
A recent review on Australia’s current waste management by Eunomia (Greenhouse Gas and Air Quality Impacts of Incineration and Landfill, Eunomia, January 2022) concluded that continuing to landfill waste would create less health and environmental impacts than burning “residual” waste for energy and a recent intergovernmental panel review of the UK’s waste to energy industry (Pollution from Waste Incineration, APPG on Air Pollution, UK, December 2021) recommended that no further waste to energy incinerators be approved in the UK.
Kirkman’s statement that “Once you industrialise waste management you tend to improve recycling and composting as well” is not true as experience overseas has shown that once waste to energy incinerators are embedded into the economy recycling actually ceases as the demand for incinerator fuel increases.
Waste to energy incinerators do NOT promote sustainability and burning waste for energy is not, and never will be part of a Circular Economy. This is because burning waste is a linear process – once you’ve burnt it, it’s gone. You can never recover and reuse those materials because resources are eliminated after just one conversion.
A true Circular Economy minimises the creation of “waste” in the first place and promotes the recovery and reuse of materials which are considered to be “new” raw materials after processing.
Kirkman’s article also fails to mention anything about the new bio plastics which are now widely available and can replace all the soft plastics currently in use – including for food packaging. There are many companies now manufacturing truly compostable products such as Biobag World see: https://biobagworld.com.au/ .
These bioplastics will breakdown to form compost – even if landfilled and meet the requirements of AS 4736-2006: Biodegradable plastics – Biodegradable plastics suitable for composting and other microbial treatment and AS 5810-2010: Biodegradable plastics suitable for home composting. These products are the future – not producing and burning ever increasing quantities of plastics.
The waste to energy industry promotes waste to energy incinerators as a clean and sustainable industry and claims the only material they want to burn is ‘unrecyclable, residual waste’. This is not true. It is not in incinerator companies’ interests to attempt to recover any plastics or other fossil fuel-based materials as this would reduce the amount of fuel available to burn. Worse, waste to energy incinerators kill off any attempts to recover materials for recycling as their demand to fossil fuel-based materials increases.
Simply put, waste to energy incineration comes with significant risks to our health, the climate, environment, and future generations owing to increased risks of cancer, miscarriages, infant mortality, developmental delays, reproductive issues, heart disease and respiratory illness. Deadly persistent organic pollutants and mercury are emitted from incinerators leaving a toxic legacy in the environment.
Waste incinerators are part of the fossil fuel chain emitting more GHG’s than coal, oil and gas per unit of energy. This says it all.
You can see Veolia’s advertorial here:
No More Incinerators 