‘Greenwashing’ incinerator firms are burying evidence that burning household waste for energy can be more polluting than coal-fired power plants, openDemocracy can reveal.
Waste companies promote incinerators as generators of ‘renewable’ or ‘low-carbon’ energy but evidence from their own monitors shows that the UK’s 57 incinerators emitted more than seven million tonnes of fossil-based carbon dioxide last year, largely from burning plastic.
More than half of incinerated plastic is either “readily recyclable” or “potentially recyclable”, according to analysis of waste.
