by Zoe Knannlein
As the UK closed the doors of its last coal power plant in September 2024, the focus has now turned to the UK’s next dirtiest form of energy production: waste incinerators. While waste-to-energy incinerators have been controversial within the waste sector for years, the protest has been recently mainstreamed when the BBC labelled incineration as the UK’s dirtiest way to make power.
Waste-to-energy incineration has been heavily confronted all over the world by hundreds of groups and communities for several reasons. In the first place, concerns about health impacts on the local people and the environment have often been the trigger point. Neighbours to incinerators report devastating impact, such as in Runcorn, Cheshire, home to the UK’s largest incinerator, where operator Viridor paid a total of £1m to local families who had complained about noise, smells and other negative effects on their lives.
Air pollution from incinerators includes greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change. Shlomo Dowen from the UK Without Incineration Network (UKWIN) stated: “For every tonne of plastic that is incinerated, more than two tonnes of carbon dioxide are being released, as the carbon in the plastic combines with oxygen in the air to produce CO2…[Overprovision of incineration means that] people’s health is being jeopardised for no justifiable reason.”
Moreover, one of the main negative impacts that waste-to-energy incinerators have is that they harm recycling rates to keep their fuel source, seen not just in the UK but globally as well.“ There are already far too many waste incinerators across the UK, meaning that most of what is burned is material that could and should have been recycled or composted,” says Dowen.
In this sense, the incineration of matter that could have been recycled or composted also harms the UK’s progress towards a circular economy. According to the European Environment Agency: “One of the central pillars of a circular economy is feeding materials back into the economy and avoiding waste being sent to landfill or incinerated, thereby capturing the value of the materials as far as possible and reducing losses.”
As it stands, incinerators are three times more likely to be in the most “deprived and ethnically diverse areas of the UK,” further raising concerns about the impact of pollutants on vulnerable populations.
Despite these threats to the wellbeing of the UK’s people, environment, and economy, there are still currently 41 planned incinerators, 27 of which have obtained environmental permits. In November 2024, Olympic sailing team medallists on the Isle of Portland threatened to quit the site because of plans to build a £150m waste incinerator next to their base. A letter from the athletes to Steve Reed, the UK Government’s Environment Secretary, and Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, reads:
“The plans to build an incinerator raise significant environmental and health concerns, which we believe would harm the quality of Portland’s sailing facilities…We fear that the damage posed by an incinerator could force us to consider leaving Portland altogether.”
Hundreds of protesters gathered to demonstrate against the construction of the incinerator and its adverse effects on the Portland Port. Last October, the Stop Portland Waste Incinerator campaign group started legal efforts against the incinerator. Despite rejection by the Dorset Council, the plans for the Portland incinerator were still approved by the Labour Government in September of 2024.
At Edmonton in North London, redevelopment of the existing outdated incinerator has been halted. The project started in 2022 and was expected to open in 2025, but will reportedly be delayed until 2027. The North London Waste Authority (NLWA), who is leading the project, has blamed global inflation, expensive materials, and rising skilled labour costs as reasons for the project’s delay.
The new incinerator has been criticised by environmentalists for its increased size, which would increase capacity by 200,000 tonnes. Pressure on the NLWA to stop the scheme has come from members of the Stop the Edmonton Incinerator Now campaign.
Carina Millstone, a spokesperson for the group, said: “It’s not too late for the councils to safeguard their budgets, their climate, air pollution and waste targets, and do the right thing by their taxpayers, by pulling the plug on this outdated, outsized, toxic incinerator.”
The UK’s biggest incinerator at Runcorn in Cheshire is yet another example of an incinerator taking hold of a disadvantaged area. Pollution and disturbances from the incinerator, including flies, rats, smell, and noise, has led to a settlement of £1m ($1.2m) for 180 local residents, or about £4,500 per family after legal costs. The tradeoff? Their acceptance of a strict non-disclosure agreement (NDA) mandating their silence about the adverse effects of the plant.
Viridor, the waste management company that runs the Runcorn plant, refused to comment on the settlement agreement but claimed that the noise and odour of the incinerator remained well within regulations set by the Environment Agency. However, a BBC investigation found breaches of air quality controls increased both at Runcorn and across incinerators in England between 2019 and 2023.
The UK Government is finally starting to wake up to public concerns about there being too many incinerators operating across England. New measures were announced on December 30, 2024 cracking down on incinerators by raising standards. For any new incinerators, developers will have to prove that they will help to lower the amount of non-recyclable waste that’s being sent to landfill and show how the incinerator could be used to deliver heat to homes and/or businesses.
The UK Government has also been shifting focus towards waste that could be recycled but is instead going to landfill or incineration. Recycling rates in England have stagnated as individual households find that keeping track of separate bins is too complicated and that many materials are not being collected for recycling, including food waste and some types of plastic. The continued use of waste-to-energy incinerators threatens the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions goal. With the introduction of several new collection and packaging reforms by the Government to encourage citizens to separate their waste, as well as the transition towards a circular economy, the need for incinerators will be greatly reduced, with only 17.6 million tonnes of non-recyclable waste to be managed by 2042.
Despite the new and stricter regulations, many environmentalists are saying it’s not enough, and still call for a total ban on any new incinerators in England, including Shlomo Dowen from the UK Without Incineration Network (UKWIN).
“Not only do we need a complete ban on new incinerators, I think England needs an incineration exit strategy, like Wales and Scotland. We need to start looking at which incinerators should be decommissioned; those that are least efficient, most polluting, closest to where people live.”
UKWIN continues to advocate for a total ban of new incinerators in the UK, having extended invitations to candidates of both local and national elections to sign a pledge to support recycling by opposing incineration. Nearly 200 local election candidates signed the pledge, followed by 127 Parliamentary candidates, 11 of whom are now MPs.
Per the UKWIN’s findings, the only way to increase recycling rates is to send less to be incinerated. UKWIN has already stopped the construction of 70 proposed incinerators by working together with local anti-incinerator campaigners. For further change and action, they call for policy changes in the form of an immediate moratorium on new waste incineration capacity, a residual waste tax on incineration, and targets to reduce total and residual waste.
