Waste: Incineration

Lord Krebs Excerpts
Tuesday 22nd October 2024

(6 days, 10 hours ago)

Lords Chamber
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock Portrait Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
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As I just mentioned, we are looking to do a review right across the piece on this, so anaerobic waste will certainly be part of that.

Lord Krebs Portrait Lord Krebs (CB)
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My Lords, it is all very well to incinerate waste, but does the Minister agree that a real priority should be to reduce the amount of waste that we produce as a country? The real way to deal with this problem is just to produce less waste.

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Portrait Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
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It is a really important point that the noble Lord makes. If we are moving to a more circular economy, as this Government want, we have to see less residual waste being generated —in fact, less waste as a whole. There is a statutory target to effectively halve residual waste by 2042 from 2019 levels, but there still will be an estimated 17.6 million tonnes of residual waste to manage in 2042. Therefore, we have to look at the bigger picture. How do we actually reduce waste overall?