At the beginning of April, John Grogan MP proposed a Westminster Hall debate on the regulation of incineration of waste - or energy from waste (EfW) as it is referred to more commonly. He put forward three proposals: introduce a moratorium on EfW; enforce the waste hierarchy properly; and seriously consider an incineration tax. On the first point, Grogan claimed that 'we have quite enough incinerators to deal with residual waste at the moment'. The UK is, in fact, experiencing a significant under-capacity of EfW, which is why we landfill approximately 12Mt of household and commercial waste, and send around 3.5Mt of residual waste for treatment overseas. There is a question about how much capacity we will need going forward. At the end of 2017, ESA commissioned Tolvik Consulting to synthesise different estimates and it found that, even if we meet 65 per cent recycling, there is still a risk of under-capacity - and we will still be heavily reliant on exports. So introducing a moratorium on EfW would risk a residual waste-treatment crisis that would result in having to open new landfills.
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