Energy from waste (EfW) involves collecting household and industrial waste and incinerating it, using the resultant heat energy to drive an electrical generator. EfW is growing in the UK, but is it sustainable? And is it the best way to handle waste in environmental and economic terms?
The advantages of EfW seem obvious, no one likes to see pictures of overflowing landfill sites in England, or BBC footage like this of UK waste in far-flung corners of Asia where it is sent “away” to be dumped, leading to environmental destruction and even mortality in local populations. Maybe we even feel cleaner when we think about incinerating our waste. Haven’t we as humans found the most elegant way to kill two birds with one stone; doesn’t incinerating the waste save the cost of transit and storage? And it provides virtuous and bountiful electricity as an added bonus right? Well, maybe, but it isn’t without its critics.
Organisations such as Cradle to Cradle argue against this linear route from production to destruction, and suggest that we view waste as something other than an inconvenience. Like EfW, it sees waste as a resource, but believes that being so quick to burn our finite resources is what got us into this mess in the first place (see: fossil fuels 1750-2021). Perhaps we should strive towards a circular economy, where the physical ingredients of our waste today become the raw materials of tomorrow. Rethinking the whole life-cycle from production to destruction would mean that waste doesn’t have to burned or buried, it can be retained and recycled infinitely. Furthermore, precious and rare minerals for new products wouldn’t have to be extracted and processed, lessening the environmental impact of the raw materials sector.
The more you think about waste and energy in these terms, the more EfW seems like a form of damage limitation. The only reason the fuel for this process exists is because of the short-sighted, disposable nature of our “consumer” economy. What could be better than burning our rubbish? Having no rubbish to burn at all. Money spent on EfW plants could be diverted to genuinely sustainable low-carbon energy sources such as offshore wind and solar. The number of EfW plants is still rising in the UK so there is no time to lose.
Overall, incinerating waste may solve a problem from the past, but it also creates a problem in the future. We shouldn’t be finding new ways to do the same old thing, but looking beyond the current paradigm of cradle-to-crematorium to a cleaner, less wasteful, and more circular economy.
Future Energy Press 