Stop Wales Subsidising Incineration

A group of concerned environmentalists and scientists from FOE Cymru met with Jane Davidsons Phoney consumer group promoting incineration that is Waste Awareness Misinformation Wales yesterday.

• they pointed out in detail that the opinion poll had a strong pro-incineration slant.
• the previous opinion poll found that in one area of Wales, the public favoured MBT(Mech & Biol-Treatments) over incineration, but they excluded MBT from their poll.
• they pointed out the claims that significant energy could ge generated from waste are wrong - even Covanta's huge Merthyr proposal would generate a tiny 60MW compared with Aberthaw's 1450 MW.

The deputation established that WAW is wholly funded and steered by WAG and sees
its role as delivering WAG's plans - which are

 a) to delay the 70% recycling till 2025 even though many countries and regions are already achieving or approaching this level,  

b) to burn waste rather than produce biogas for domestic use, and
c) to subsidise incineration instead of allowing MBT at half the cost, with use of products
in land reclamation and enhancing forestry/coppicing.

The deputation outlined FoE Cymru's critique of WAG's change in waste policy from minimising incineration and landfill to the present one of promoting and subsiding incineration over landfill. This critique and the real 'zero waste' policy were commissioned from PIC consultants. They pointed out that such an alternative that maximises recyclables and  reclaims compostables through MBT (mechanical and bio-techniques) has been
adopted in Ireland, where an international, team showed it to be sound. In comparison, WAG's policy is unsound, using poor computer software to get very questionble pro-incinerator results. WAG's officials (Andy Rees & co) must know that as they have failed to defend their results against FOE's thorough and convincing critique.

Waste Awareness Misinformation Wales said that they are an arm of WAG and that their 'survey' (Wales would like to burn not bury waste) was at the behest of Andy Rees, Jasper Roberts and co of WAG. We told them that not only was the survey loaded but the results falsified since, in fact people in the focus groups they had expressed strong worries about pollution of the air from burning!
Why is the Welsh Assembly Government giving incineration and Prosiect Gwyrdd a subsidy of £9 million/yr which they propose to extend through out Wales.
In the meantime, WAG's waste £1 million/yr on the propaganda outfit Welsh Awareness Wales - WAW
Meanwhile the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA refuse to go for 'high recycling' pre-2020and are trying to lock us into expensive incinerator