Waste, Recycling & Incineration

A sea of waste

We are drowning under a sea of waste. Already, the boroughs belonging to West London Waste Authority produce 160,000 tonnes of domestic waste every year. This amount is increasing by some 3% each year. FOE believes that it is up to all of us, individuals, industry and the government, to reduce the amount of waste we produce.

Disposing of waste is already a big problem and it will get even bigger unless we do something about the volume of waste we produce. The EU has rightly introduced legislation to stop ever-increasing amounts of landfill, but that has left us the problem of how to dispose of our waste.

The best method of 'disposal' is to use the waste. If material can be sorted and re-used, that is ideal. But realistically, this will only ever be possible for a small proportion of items.

The next best solution is to recycle. By doing this, we recover the materials that went into the original products. This means that we avoid the problem of disposal, but also means that we save on the extraction or manufacture of materials that would otherwise be needed for manufacturing new products.

Incinerators produce pollution

The worst solution is to incinerate. This appears to get rid of the problem, but it doesn't. Incinerators produce air pollution and highly toxic ash. They also produce huge quantities of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, industry and some people in government see incineration as the solution to our waste problem. See our page on incineration and the threat from the proposed monster incinerator at Colnebrook.

Links to Related Pages

• Leaflet on waste & recycling (national FOE web site: link to 9 page A5 leaflet; 2 Mbyte PDF file)
• Incineration
• Monster Colnebrook incinerator coming our way?
• Other campaigns and issues

• Richmond & Twickenham FOE  waste issues generally
• Ealing FOE  waste issues generally
• Hillingdon FOE  recycling
• Kingston FOE  recycling
• Hammersmith & Fulham FOE  Incineration and waste issues generally

Revised Dec 04