Letter: Incineration is greener than recycling

Sir: Madeleine Cobbing's response on incineration (letter, 21 July), conveying the Greenpeace point of view, is simplistic. Recycling can certainly waste more energy than it saves. Furthermore, to recycle paper in the UK requires a consumption of scarce fossil fuel resources to effect its recovery. Whereas manufacturing paper or pulp products in Scandinavia uses forest residues and process wastes that are renewable sources of energy. Recycling can also deplete scarce fossil fuel reserves.

Waste paper and other packaging can be considered bio fuels and, by opposing incineration with energy recovery but supporting energy from landfill gas, Greenpeace is encouraging subsidisation of already cheap landfill and ensuring that most of the energy in waste is lost as a greenhouse gas.

Incineration with energy recovery is not a polluting technology compared with oil and coal burning. The 'intense public opposition' to incineration is mainly fostered by pressure groups.

Yours faithfully,

ANDREW PORTEOUS

Environmental Engineering

Faculty of Technology

The Open University

Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

30 July