Incinerators

(asked on 16th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the use of incineration as a method of waste disposal.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 25th June 2021

In December 2018, the Government published its Resources and Waste Strategy which outlines how we will work towards our ambitions of doubling resource productivity and producing zero avoidable waste by 2050. Introducing the Collection and Packaging Reforms are a key part of the policy measures required to meet the targets set in the Strategy, by helping to recycle more material and increasing the quality of the material being collected for recycling. Due to the combined impacts of consistent recycling collections, Extended Producers Responsibility for packaging and a Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, we estimate that we will meet our commitment of a municipal waste recycling rate of 65% by 2035.

In addition, in October 2020 as part of the Circular Economy Package, we legislated through the Environmental (England and Wales) Permitting Regulations 2016 to include a permit condition for landfill and incineration operators, meaning they cannot accept separately collected paper, metal, glass or plastic for landfill or incineration unless it has gone through some form of treatment process first, and post treatment this is deemed to be the best environmental outcome. This is in addition to existing permit measures that already prevent the acceptance of recyclable material.

The above measures will reduce the levels of residual waste needing to be treated through incineration (including with energy recovery) or landfilled.

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