We’re burning more of our waste

There is more waste than ever before in the UK and there’s a number of reasons why more of it is ending up in our incinerators instead of in landfill. For starters, the cost to dispose of waste in landfill is rising. Dumping your rubbish costs money and, not surprisingly, companies are looking for other options. Incineration has become a popular one as its cheaper than having to pay landfill tax and much easier than winning planning permission to place your rubbish elsewhere. And on top of this, there are schemes out there that aim to get rid of waste for free if you’re willing to have it burned up.The report looks at a wide variety of waste disposal methods. In this article we’re going to look at household waste (the type of thing you put in your blue bin). I’ll attempt to explain what incineration is, why it’s on the rise, and comment on some of the issues with it.Numbers from a new report by ComReg show that the amount of waste we’re burning in Ireland is going up, and it’s going up rather sharply. Only last year, we produced 2 million tonnes more waste than we did in 2017. This figure is only likely to increase as time goes on.The incineration of household waste has been on the rise for some time now. In 2018, we burnt a record amount of our rubbish - and these figures show that further efforts are needed to prevent this trend from continuing.

We’re producing less waste to begin with

We are simply wasting less. According to Mary Creagh, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, we may have reached peak rubbish. Because remember when that was a thing? Weve had it since probably the early 2000s. Every important event in your life seemed to be followed by a huge pile of waste and probably more rubbish than you actually needed. But we kind of stopped doing that because well, it was getting kind of inconvenient – especially with actual plastic straws being banned all over the place. So much so that McDonalds has actually changed its packaging policy to be more sustainable after having a quiet but very stern word from the government.