Plans to construct MMV Medworth incinerator near Wisbech are approved by Government

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• Danny wrote:

  23/02/2024 23:08

  What's worse waste incinerator or a covid vaccine? Yep you guessed it the covid vaccine.

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• Danny wrote:

  23/02/2024 23:08

  Moan about a chimney stack ?? But millions of people including the moaning locals stood up and took their spike protein cancer causing , heart destroying "covid vaccine" !!! The irony eh!

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• Twoflowers wrote:

  20/02/2024 17:35

  Most plastics are either too contaminated to recycle or become so after a few recycling loops. They end up being incinerated, releasing a cocktail of toxic chemicals - as well as CO2. Modern systems have advanced but experts warn complacency is wrong.
  
  One of the scariest but less noticed consequences of the energy crunch, last autumn, was an emergency measure considered by the German government. It allowed waste incinerators to function without filters, due to a looming shortage of the necessary chemicals. This nightmare was averted, but the vulnerability of a waste-disposal system that many consider as the golden standard, became apparent.
  
  A staple on protest placards across Europe in the 1990s, environmental concerns around waste incineration have largely drifted away as modern systems eased pollution fears. A big part of the 30 million tonnes of plastic waste generated every year in Europe is incinerated, and most nations burn more plastics now than a decade ago. This is set to rise as landfilling is abandoned and dozens of new plants are planned in Poland and Czech Republic.
  
  Energy and heat production is seen as a concrete benefit for local communities, although the amounts are relatively small (2.5 per cent of Europe's energy comes from incinerators). When incinerated, plastics are worse climate-killers than coal (2.9 tonnes of CO2 per tonne versus 2.7 tonnes of C02 per tonne of coal).
  
  And experts warn that other ecological concerns remain. "What I know is that you have to keep a very close eye on the operators of waste incineration plants," says Gnter Dehoust, senior researcher at the ko-Institut in Germany, home to one-fifth of Europe's 500 or so waste incinerators.
  
  Investigate Europe found three gaping, EU-sized loopholes that can allow incinerator pollution to remain hidden. The German government was actively involved in creating at least one of these loopholes.
  
  'False perception of safety':
  The first centres on how incinerator pollution is measured: mostly in stable conditions, rarely during startups and shutdowns, even though it is widely documented that these are the instances where most pollution can be emitted. When the EU-wide guidelines for waste incineration were last revised, in 2019, something remarkable happened.
  
  "In our working group, we fought for dioxin and furan emissions to be measured continuously across Europe," says a source present in the discussions.
  
  "The French and Belgian governments also supported this. The German Federal Environment Agency ultimately blocked this." Dioxins and furans are probable carcinogens emitted mainly when plastics containing chlorine, like PVC, are incinerated. When supplied with the right chemicals, modern filters capture most dioxins, a great improvement from past performance. Marcus Gleis, head of the German delegation, says that relevant data was shared late by French representatives. "There was no time to examine it," he says
  "The industry is trying to measure during shutdowns," says Abel Arkenbout, chief toxicologist at the Netherlands-based ToxicoWatch Foundation. "But when conditions are not normal, instruments are not capable of measuring. It is irresponsible to present people with a false perception of safety when this is based on imperfect measurements and measurement methods, which do not function properly at key moments of incomplete combustion processes."
  
  Dr Ella Stengler, managing director of the European umbrella organisation for incinerator plants, CEWEP, says pollution is adequately measured. "We are very proud of the environmental performance of Waste to Energy [WtE] plants in Europe".
  
  Monitoring hazards:
  Secondly, only a few chlorinated pollutants are measured. PFAS (toxic compounds containing fluorine, also known as 'forever chemicals' because they don't break down) are not measured, despite every waste incinerator in Europe being listed among presumed PFAS contamination sites. "Many of the products we use in our everyday life contain PFAS and, when these products become waste, there are not many treatment routes available that would avoid spreading these substances." Stengler adds. "There is no certified measuring method for PFAS yet."
  
  And thirdly, regulations do not mandate monitoring the effects of incinerator pollution on living organisms around incinerators, or products like milk and eggs. Tests are performed only to detect the release of a limited range of chemicals in the environment. This could widely underestimate the real effects of toxic cocktails accumulating in cells over time.
  By biomonitoring eggs of backyard chickens, mosses and pine needles around incinerators in several European countries, Arkenbout detected serious pollution and eggs with excessive dioxins. "When dioxins are found in the surroundings of a WtE plant there is no correlation with the plant's emissions." says Stengler, pointing to an industry report detailing many other dioxin sources.
  
  Not all of Arkenbout's work is peer-reviewed. He dismisses the criticism by inviting more people to focus on these issues: "I think that we should not be the only ones, there must be more people, more governments looking at pollution around incinerators."
  
  Activists fight for access:
  CEWEP's Stengler says the industry is committed to transparency. "The operators are legally required to communicate data to their competent authority for compliance assessment. In turn, competent authorities are legally required to make the relevant data available to the public, it is therefore openly accessible" Yet activists have faced numerous legal battles all over Europe trying to access such data.
  
  An example comes from Volos, a port city at the foot of the mythical Mount Pelion, in central Greece. A lush hill separates the charming city from a hundred-year old cement factory, now run by Lafarge/Holcim using 185,000 tonnes of waste as fuel every year. (This process of fueling in the production process with waste is called co-incineration).
  
  Authorities have downplayed pollution issues for years, even though Volos has four times more strokes, especially among women, and 2.5 times more liver cancer cases than the national average. Research has shown sharp increases in hospital admissions at the exact times when particle pollution was high.
  
  "They had been trying to portray all of us as crazy," says cardiologist Matthaios Dramitinos, former director of Volos city hospital. There are several other sources of pollution in the city - car exhausts, fireplaces, other factories - and the exact contribution of the factory to the city's health woes is a hotly contested topic.
  
  After three large protests, one of which later led to the death of an activist (several others are facing court cases on civil disobedience grounds), the company agreed to publish pollution data online. But it does not include information on mercury or other heavy metals, despite mercury being a top pollution concern in cement factories. When it comes to dioxins, byproducts of incinerating plastic, the company openly shares the averages of continuous dioxin measurements on a daily basis. However, the plant has secured permission to switch to burning natural gas, rather than plastic waste, when, once a year, a certified firm takes dioxin readings.
  
  "The use of alternative fuels is clearly a safe environmental option and technically best practice, changing the landscape in the sector, significantly accelerating Europe's path towards climate neutrality," a Lafarge/Holcim spokesperson said.
  
  Stelios Limnios, a retired engineer and activist, says data must be compiled independently. "The provincial authorities have promised to do their own measurements since 2016," he says. "They are intentionally delaying, because the problem will become obvious. The regional administration's environment office declined to explain, referring questions to the head of the local administration, Dorothea Kolyndrini, who was unavailable.
  
  "We were supposed to oversee the functioning of the plant, via a local committee of control," Limnios adds. "The committee was never formed, and in 2019, in one of the last acts of the outgoing Syriza administration, the agreement for its establishment was quietly scrapped."
  
  Shadow waste economy:
  
  Oversight is needed in order to control the types of waste burned. But in France a local oversight committee was not told when, in January 2023, a municipal waste plant in Nice owned by Veolia incinerated radioactive waste. The firm said it was an accident, but the risk of hazardous waste ending up in regular incinerators is always there.
  
  Europol points out there is a large shadow economy trading in illegal waste. The problem has grown since 2018. That was when China, until then the dumping ground of the entire planet, banned the import of most problematic types of waste. When combined with lax emissions monitoring, incineration in an established facility is an attractive way to get rid of troublesome waste at a fraction of the cost of proper treatment. It is also profitable for the plants burning the waste. When Romanian prosecutor Teodor Nita asked a politician why there is no serious crackdown on waste smugglers, the answer left him speechless. "We can't do this because it will anger the cement manufacturers and they have a strong lobby," Nita recalled according to a Deutsche Welle investigation.
  
  But incineration itself also produces problematic waste. For every tonne of incinerated waste, around 300kg of bottom ash, laden with toxic substances, is produced. "In Germany it is allowed to use bottom ash from incinerators in road construction, under the asphalt. It makes my stomach ache" says Peter Gebhardt, one of Germany's foremost incineration experts. "Rainwater can seep in and toxic pollutants can leach to the environment" he says. Gebhardt's fear was confirmed by a Dutch report detailing pollution when bottom ash comes in contact with water.
  Industry claims that incineration is part of the circular economy and points out that very few plastics can actually be recycled. They argue it is the best available way to shrink the plastics mountain, while also reclaiming materials such as metals embedded in different kinds of waste - all while producing limited amounts of heat and electricity. Whatever it is, a circle or a straight line, it leaves a distinct, toxic signature. One that many people would rather not look for, out of fear that the alternatives are worse. - Burning questions remain over Europe's waste incinerators [Eurydice Bersi (Reporters United) Nico Schmidt][Investigate Europe]

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• Twoflowers wrote:

  20/02/2024 17:04

  Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) incinerators have a long history in the United States as a waste disposal system and an equally long history of resistance among communities where they are sited. The current state of MSW incineration seems to be in decline due to a volatile revenue model, aging and costly operation and maintenance costs, and increasing attention to issues of zero waste, environmental justice and climate change. Seventy-three MSW incinerators remain in operation in the U.S., not including those currently designated for closure.The industry saw at least 31 MSW incinerators close since 2000 due to issues such as insufficient revenue or the inability to afford required upgrades.This report examines three major economic vulnerabilities in the MSW incinerator industry. First, construction and maintenance costs are significant and relatively more capital intensive compared to other forms of waste disposal. Second, the current pool of MSW incinerators have reached or are close to reaching their life-expectancy and now require another round of capital investment, often at the expense and risk of local taxpayers. Third, the industry's revenue streams are volatile, dependent on competitive tipping fees and access to the renewable energy markets. Additionally, the report reveals the relationship between MSW incinerators and environmental justice communities as well as the air pollution and potential health risks related to the incineration industry. One of the distinct characteristics of garbage incinerators in the United States is that they are often sited in communities of color and low-income communities, also referred to as environmental justice (EJ) communities. 58 incinerators, or 79 percent of all MSW incinerators in the U.S. are located in environmental justice communities.3 The incineration industry represents an affront to environmental justice as they contribute to the cumulative and disproportionate pollution placed on communities of color and low-income communities.
  
  Municipal solid waste incinerators rely primarily on revenue streams from tipping fees and secondarily on energy sales (i.e. steam and electricity). As an example, Covanta Corporation, which controls a large share of MSW incinerators in the country, gets approximately 71 percent of its revenues from tipping fees and 18 percent from electricity sales. These two revenue streams are volatile and can undermine the financial stability of the industry. There is close competition for tipping fees between landfills and incinerators, which means that in places where landfill tipping fees decline or where volumes of waste decrease, an incinerator's primary revenue source can be jeopardized. Many municipalities are also removing long term "put or pay" clauses from contracts so that they are not required to deliver a set amount of waste to incinerators over time with a threat of financial penalties. Similarly, renewable energy subsidies can change over time, depending on the regulatory and political environment in each state. This leads to an underlying business model at risk, "As our historic energy contracts have expired and our service fee contracts have transitioned to tip fee contracts, our exposure to market energy prices has increased." (Covanta Annual Report, 2018) Another factor that contributes to this industry's potential decline is the average age of incinerators in the U.S., which is 31 years. The life expectancy of an incinerator is 30 years and upgrading decades-old facilities requires another large capital investment, often paid for or subsidized by local taxpayers. Municipalities that finance these upgrades or that are required to deliver large volumes of waste often end up burdening taxpayers, sometimes with ruinous outcomes. Cities like Baltimore, Maryland;8 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania;9 and Detroit, Michigan,10 all faced debt payments to and lawsuits from the incinerator industry that threatened their cities' fiscal stability. The increasing fixed costs of maintaining and operating incinerators together with competition for tipping fees can mean that the industry relies on energy sales to stay profitable. But burning trash is one of the most expensive forms of energy generation in the U.S., costing $8.33/MWh compared to $4.25/MWh for pulverized coal and $2.04/MWh for nuclear, the second and third most expensive forms of energy generation.11 Despite these costs and the fact that MSW incinerators produced a negligible 0.4 percent of total U.S. electricity generation (2015), two-thirds of all the incinerators in the U.S. today have access to renewable energy subsidies.12 These energy subsidies are coming under increased scrutiny as environmental advocates question the classification of waste burning, particularly non-biogenic waste, as renewable energy. The introduction of new carbon pricing policies in states like New York may mean that incinerators, which emit significant amounts of CO2, will face new financial challenges. One of the primary reasons that communities oppose new and existing incinerators is their contribution to air pollution and related health risks. MSW incinerators are relatively large emitters of air pollutants with some studies showing that they emit several pollutants at a rate exceeding that of fossil fuel power plants.13 Incinerators also have associated diesel sanitation trucks that deliver waste and emit air pollution in host communities. Stack emissions from incinerators include a variety of pollutants harmful to health such as particulate matter, dioxins, lead, and mercury. Globally, waste disposal, primarily from incineration, contributes to ~8 percent of the total anthropogenic mercury emissions.14 The Dirty Dozen lists illustrate the incinerators, among the 73 in the country, that emit the largest amounts of air pollutants for PM2.5, NOx, Lead, and Mercury. Approximately 1.6 million people live within a three-mile radius of these facilities (See Appendix E).15 There are 4.4 million people that live within a three mile radius of all 73 incinerators in the U.S. Ten of the twelve incinerators that emit the greatest total amount of lead emissions (annually), are in environmental justice communities. Three of the incinerators that emit the largest total amounts of lead (annually) of all the incinerators in the U.S. are located in Baltimore, Maryland, and in Camden and Newark, New Jersey.
  
  The incinerator industry is in trouble. These aging facilities are too expensive to maintain, too risky to finance, and too costly to upgrade. Incinerators in the U.S. operate under volatile economic and regulatory conditions that threaten their major sources of revenue, tipping fees and energy sales. The current state of the U.S. incineration industry and its economic and environmental impacts serves as a warning to regions around the world considering incineration as an approach to solid waste. These facilities can create financial burdens while generating health-harming air pollution for local communities. Finally, these plants represent an environmental injustice because they burden communities of color and low-income communities where they are located. Incinerators are coming under increasing pressure in the United States and around the world to be replaced with more just and sustainable alternatives to waste management...U.S. Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators: An Industry in Decline May 2019

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• Wayne Cook 4 wrote:

  20/02/2024 16:49

  I'm so proud of MVV to have been grated this decision to get this incinerator build and this just exposes the councils failures in letting down the public on there commitments to the environment & recycling they should be ashamed of themselves but enough about that I'm so happy this a awesome day and I look forward to seeing MVV very soon.

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