A Parliamentary debate on waste incineration, open to any backbench MP, has been scheduled for Thursday 3rd April from 1:30pm – 3pm at Westminster Hall.
Please let your MP know about this opportunity to make the case against incineration by writing to them via: https://ukwin.eaction.org.uk/NoMoreIncinerators
The old argument about choosing between incineration or landfill is irrelevant, as even areas with higher levels of landfill have significant incineration capacity under construction and/or located nearby. Once those incinerators that are already being built enter full operation, England’s incineration capacity will have increased by more than 27% to reach a staggering 18.2 million tonnes.
To meet the 65% recycling target by 2035, and the statutory target to halve residual waste by 2042, we need to send less waste to incineration. This will become increasingly difficult if yet more incineration capacity is allowed to enter construction or if existing incinerators are allowed to expand.
In December 2024 the Government announced new standards, with new incineration projects expected to meet tests of combined heat and power and carbon capture and storage viability and to demonstrate a clearly defined need. However, measures that the Government announced to date only cover incinerators that have yet to obtain planning permission, and as Defra’s Capacity Note acknowledges there is some 9.5 million tonnes of additional incineration capacity that already has planning permission but that has yet to enter construction.
It is not good enough to simply ‘leave it to the market’ for several reasons, including the fact that the market itself is distorted by subsidies and externalities, and because all it takes is one weak link in the form of a vanity project that has secured funding and that ends up being built through inertia. Such an approach is especially concerning as it is the communities and the circular economy that suffer the most from incineration overcapacity, with those making the investment decisions often long gone by the time their incinerator becomes a stranded asset.
The stricter standards, celebrated by the Government, do not go far enough to reassure me that the harms caused by incineration – to air quality, soil quality, climate change, and the circular economy – are being eliminated. Adding carbon capture or heat export do not make incinerators circular. Incineration remains the ‘destroy’ element of a take-make-destroy linear economy.
While a ban on all new unbuilt incinerators and on the refurbishment of existing incinerators would be ideal, at the very least we ask MPs to push the Government to do the following:
- Revise relevant planning policies, as a matter of urgency, to align with the Government’s new standards, emphasising the need to prevent worsening incineration overcapacity, and to help protect and achieve the Government’s recycling and residual waste reduction targets.
- Call-in any existing incinerator applications on the basis that each new proposal raises issues of national significance with respect to meeting relevant targets and avoiding overcapacity.
- Make meeting the new standards a pre-requisite for new permitted capacity – in the form of new pre-operational conditions – and prohibit new grid connections for incinerators that cannot demonstrate CHP/CCS viability and that they are meeting a clearly defined need.
- Improve health and environmental requirements for permits – drawing on the suggestions contained within UKWIN’s October 2024 ‘Letter to Defra re: EA regulation of incineration’ available at: https://ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/UKWIN-Letter-to-Defra-regarding-EA-regulation-of-incineration-21-October-2024.pdf
- Address under-reporting of incinerator CO2 emissions – drawing on UKWIN’s August 2024 ‘Issues with UK company climate reporting on waste’ Briefing available at: https://ukwin.org.uk/files/pdf/UKWIN-Climate-Reporting-Briefing-August-2024.pdf and the ‘Improving climate emissions accounting to accelerate the circular economy transition’ Insights Paper published by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation on 17th January 2025, available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/ghg-emissions-accounting
- Require incinerator operators to be much more transparent about the composition of what they are burning and how much of that material could have been recycled or composted had it been collected separately.
- Direct the Circular Economy Taskforce to focus on developing the additional measures, such as a linear economy tax on all waste sent for incineration, needed to achieve the residual waste reduction target.