No need to build more incinerators, says Environment Agency

The agency said that the country’s 130 incinerators “are enough” because the amount of waste produced has shrunk so much in recent years. Also, they said that incinerators are responsible for much air pollution, smoke and dust particles.

Over the past 50 years, as the amount of household waste increased, more and more incinerators were built – but the agency says this trend has now been reversed. The volume of household waste has dropped, thanks to people sorting and recycling glass, paper and plastic.

The agency says that politicians have not yet taken this change on board and that plans to build new incinerators should be shelved. France’s biggest incinerator, in Ivry, near Paris, is due to be razed and rebuilt in the coming months, and environmental associations such as Zero Waste France say that this is foolish.

They say that other plants in Île-de-France will be enough to meet demand since the volume of waste will continue to fall. They say that if the energy transition law is applied correctly, people will have to get used to sorting the organic waste, peelings and leftovers that represent a third of all household waste.

The association has called for the freezing of all incinerator projects. It says the €2bn earmarked for the Ivry project should be spent on the development of recycling, because it creates a lot of jobs. Some 600,000 people are already working in the collection and recycling sector, and the association says an additional 400,000 jobs could be created in 15 years.