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Merthyr incinerator scrapped

news release

Responding to news today (Monday 24 October 2011) that US Utility giant Covanta has withdrawn its plans to build a huge incinerator in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, Friends of the Earth’s planning campaigner Mike Birkin said: “This is fantastic news – a big, dirty cloud has been lifted from over the people of Merthyr and Rhymney Valley.

“This expensive incinerator would have sent vast quantities of valuable material up in flames, belched out climate-changing emissions and undermined recycling – which could create ten times as many badly-needed jobs.

“This shows that when communities stand together they can stop unwanted developments – even when they’re up against big business PR machines and a ‘fast-tracked’ planning system designed to muzzle local opposition.”

ENDS

1. Covanta says that because Welsh local authorities are not planning one single facility to deal with all residual (non-recyclable) waste, that made its incinerator plans unviable. Friends of the Earth says incineration is dirty, costly, and bad for the environment – incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than a gas-fired power station.

2. The proposed incinerator at Brig y Cwm, Merthyr Tydfil, would have cost £400 million and burned 750,000 tonnes of rubbish a year. Friends of the Earth says this is more residual waste than all of Wales would produce – so it would have been transported in from other parts of the UK, and/or included resources that could be recycled. The green campaigning charity says it would also have been bad for jobs – recycling creates 10 times more than incineration. See our six minute video presenting the case against the Covanta incinerator.

3.  Friends of the Earth has been campaigning against Covanta’s planned incinerator since January this year, when it became the first application to be considered by the new Infrastructure Planning Commission. Friends of the Earth said Covanta failed to consult local people, as required under the Planning Act 2008.

4. Friends of the Earth seeks changes to the National Policy Statements so that they do not drive forward incinerators under the pretence that they are “low carbon”, and so that they allow local communities equal access and the right to put questions directly to promoters of major schemes.

5.  Research by Friends of the Earth in 2009 showed the UK was throwing away over £650 million every year by dumping and incinerating waste that, if recycled, could save 19 million tonnes of greenhouse gases every year – equivalent to taking around six million cars off the roads.

6. Research by Friends of the Earth shows well over 1000 jobs could be generated from high recycling in the Heads of the Valleys area of Wales alone.

For press information please contact the Friends of the Earth media team on 020 7566 1649.

Published by Friends of the Earth Trust

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