Letters: Peterborough's incinerator 'the dirtiest form of power generation'

This in turn emits a massive 31,450 tonnes of CO2, mostly from the plastic content of the waste.

But Peterborough City Council has committed to being a net zero carbon organisation by 2030. It is difficult to envisage how this will be possible, especially with the massive amount of CO2 produced by its incinerator, which, of course, is adding to the increasing quantities of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

I suspect the council will attempt to defend itself by claiming that the incinerator (and its proposed PIRI project) is actually sustainable because it retrieves the latent energy within the (fossil fuel) plastic. This is true, but it’s highly inefficient. It takes seven times as much energy to make a new piece of plastic as that retrieved by burning. So ideally, the council should be supporting the construction of a facility capable of recycling all plastic.

It is also interesting to note that at the full council held on 28.07.07 the council’s head of environmental and public protection promised that if the proposals for an incinerator were approved, Peterborough’s recycling rate would achieve 65%+ by 2020. Since then, Peterborough’s recycling rate has reduced from 47% to 41%! This was predicted by many who opposed the incinerator. It has suppressed plans for additional recycling facilities in Peterborough.

It would appear that Peterborough has an enormous ‘white elephant’ with its ERF. If the council wishes to generate electricity, it ought to move away from burning waste to a gas driven plant which would generate far less greenhouse gases.

Richard Olive, Gunthorpe