The Zero Waste Network considers waste-to-energy incineration as an unacceptable option for waste management.
Incineration refers to the combustion of waste materials, resulting in ash residues and air emissions. Gasification, pyrolysis, and vitrification are variations of incineration, and waste-to-energy refers to an incinerator that incorporates technology to generate power from the heat produced during the combustion process.
Waste incinerators do not eliminate waste – in fact they generate it. Since physical matter cannot be destroyed, an incinerator actually transforms the original wasted materials (or resources) into several new forms of waste: air emissions, ash, and liquid discharge (resulting from cleaning processes within the incinerator). Incinerators reduce solid waste to approximately 10-15% of the original volume and 20-35% of the original weight, which exits the incinerator in the form of fly ash and bottom ash. These new forms are far more difficult to deal with than the original, raw wasted materials.
Incineration has many downsides, including significant negative impacts on human health (i.e. cancer), low employment, large capital investment with low return and an ongoing landfill requirement for the remaining waste left over from incineration. Mixed-waste incinerators are inefficient energy producers, capturing only about 20% of energy generated by the waste. Waste-to-energy proponents stress their energy production potential and consequent reduced use of fossil fuels without addressing a far more important issue: the huge loss of resources and energy already used to produce the material being burnt. In fact recycling plastic saves 3.7 to 5.2 times more energy, recycling paper saves 2.7 to 4.3 times more energy, and recycling metal saves 30 to 888 times more energy than is gained through incineration (Stats from A Wasted Opportunity).
Alone, among waste management options, incineration knowingly creates hazardous waste where none existed in the feedstock (municipal solid waste).
Rainbow Mountain Renewable Energy received resource consent in 2022 for a six-month trial of a waste pyrolysis plant at 216 SH38 Waimangu (just south of Whakarewarewa). In simple terms, pyrolysis is a process of applying heat to waste (in this case tyres and plastics) in the absence of oxygen. The materials decompose producing gas, oil, tar, char and wastewater. The company intends that these trials form the basis for a full consent application. We have written to the Regional Council, District Council and Impacted Iwi about this trial to raise our concerns about it. You can see the consent docs here and you can read our full letter here >>
Update October 2024
This trial is now completed, and has failed its air emissions testing. We have written to the Bay of Plenty Regional Council seeking confirmation that this trial is in breach of its conditions. You can read our full letter here. You can read the Bay of Plenty Regional Council response here>>
We also wrote to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) in June about the use of synthetic diesel from the pyrolysis process by Oji Fibre Solutions as is indicated in the consent application. MBIE has responsibility for diesel fuel standards. This syn-diesel has not been tested nor approved for use in New Zealand. Here is our letter outlining our concerns and a response from MBIE that we finally received in October.
Global Contracting Solutions Limited has applied to the Waipā District Council for a land use consent to build a waste-to-energy incinerator at 401 Racecourse Road in Te Awamutu, an area immediately adjacent to planned residential development and is subject to flooding.
This project has failed as the land purchase agreement lapsed in December 2024 – we are waiting to see if they continue with a fast track application somewhere else. Chinese environmental management firm Tianying Incorporated and New Zealand’s Renew Energy have established the joint venture called South Island Resource Recovery (SIRRL) to look for possible sites near Waimate in South Canterbury. (Source: RNZ)
UPDATE 7 November
Last week, Air NZ published a glowing media statement about their research into gasifying wood and other waste streams they say, “shows local production of sustainable aviation fuel could support fuel resilience and security.” The report, partly funded by MBIE, and carried out by the company that stands to profit from its development, unsurprisingly concluded that this was a magic fix for New Zealand’s aviation CO2 emissions but “New Zealand shouldn’t get left too far behind or we risk seeing the flow of capital go elsewhere or our valuable raw materials being swooped up by other markets for their own SAF.” The not-so-hidden-agenda here is a campaign for government support for development of the industry. Unfortunately, wood waste is difficult to collect and amass in quantities needed to sustain the industry which is why the real plan is to throw in any waste stream they can get their hands on: “A second phase of the study, exploring the potential for municipal solid waste (household and commercial waste) as a feedstock for the LanzaTech carbon recycling process, is expected to be completed over the next few months”
BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT
The Government is co-funding the two feasibility studies with Air New Zealand and is investing $765,000 to study failed waste-to-energy technology for so-called sustainable aviation fuel. Here is the government’s statement
Fulcrum BioEnergy, in partnership with Air BP, will deliver one study and will investigate the use of non-recyclables and other items that go into landfill as a feedstock. LanzaTech and LanzaJet, in partnership with Z Energy, will deliver the other study and will investigate the use of forestry residues as the feedstock and consider landfill waste as a supplementary feedstock.
Here is the ZWN media statement. The community of Gary, Indiana is fighting Fulcrum BioEnergy to stop the sighting of a waste-to-aviation fuel plant there. Meanwhile, the wonderful Dr Andrew Rollinson has prepared a short technical briefing, “The reality of waste-derived fuels: up in the air”
On 26 July, the Minister of Energy, Dr Megan Woods responded to our letter regarding the development of so-called “Sustainable Aviation Fuel”. She continues to repeat an incorrect definition of biofuels (one that includes waste), and claims the project is not similar to Feilding. Read her full response>>
In November 2023, Waste Dive reported that Fulcrum Bioenergy was in trouble with debt it wasn’t able to pay and its flagship Reno, NV project not operational. Meanwhile, Inside Climate News was much more straightforward in its reporting:
Fulcrum Bioenergy, Aiming to Produce ‘Net-Zero’ Jet Fuel From Plastic Waste, Hits Heavy Turbulence
The California company has defaulted on $289 million in Nevada bonds and put $500 million in financing for a facility in Indiana on hold. Meanwhile, U.S. senators don’t want tax credits financing plastics-to-jet-fuel schemes.
In March 2024, Technology company Licella, along with cardboard packaging and paper recycler Oji Fibre Solutions, on-farm plastic recycler Plasback, Silver Fern Farms, and Woolworths New Zealand, with money from the Ministry for the Environment’s Plastics Innovation Fund announced a joint feasibility study of an advanced chemical recycling facility. Licella is in partnership with the world’s largest petrochemical and petroleum companies, including Dow Chemical and Shell Oil.
We responded to this announcement by issuing a media statement and we have received some information under the OIA about this taxpayer-funded dodgy greenwashing investigation via FYI.org.nz. We will update the page here when we find out more.
Kaipara District Council’s recently instigated a feasibility study of a waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerator passed as a KDC notice of motion on 26 April 2023. It includes Far North District Council, Whangārei District Council, Te Uri o Hau, Northland Inc and Auckland Council as potential partners. Kaipara Mayor Jepson was the front man for a failed incinerator project in Meremere back in 2000. Now he is trying to sell the same toxic ideas to the Kaipara. Sustainable Kaipara, ZWN and Greenpeace all issued media statements.
On 18 July 2023, South Island Resource Recovery Ltd (aka “SIRRL” – the company involved in the Waimate incinerator) gave a closed-door presentation to Kaipara District Council, members of the Far North District Council and Whangarei District (including the mayors). We have sent a LGOIMA request to KDC about this meeting. Here’s what we got>> a copy the company’s Presentation >> the Councils’ Agenda and a photo image of the Northland Regional Council record of the meeting.
On 10 March 2024, Whangārei’s Northern Advocate newspaper featured a story, “$730m Kaipara waste-to-energy plant for Auckland’s rubbish moves closer” in which Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson, who is a former incinerator spokesman, claimed that “all the parts are coming together.” He wants fast track approval for the largest incinerator proposal in the country to burn 730,000 tonnes of waste. He claims it could be up and running by 2028.
A follow up article of 4 April, “Government will need to make Kaipara waste to energy plant decisions: Mayor” shows that the Mayor lied when he said he had the support of the Mayors of Northland.
A 17 April article in the Local Matters (Mahurangi) newspaper says, “Kaipara Mayor Craig Jepson believes a waste-to-energy plant in Kaipara would be “an excellent candidate” for the coalition government’s fast-tracking initiative, and has pledged to use every opportunity to promote it.” This is despite there being no support from any other council for his plans.
On 15 May, Radio NZ reported that “Doctors warn: Human health risks from proposed $730m Kaipara waste to energy plant” saying, “A group of Canterbury doctors opposed to waste-to-energy plants being built in New Zealand is warning of major potential human health risks if one goes ahead in Kaipara, Northland.”
Then on 22 May, the Northern Advocate wrote: “Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown bins talk of city’s rubbish fuelling Kaipara plant” noting that, “An Auckland Council Official Information Act (OIA) request response to Reed confirmed Brown had discussed the proposed plant with Jepson. But it said Auckland Council had not entered into any negotiations with the Kaipara District Council or the plant’s proponents, neither was there any timeline for sending Auckland’s rubbish to Kaipara.”
On 29 May, the Kaipara District Council announced formally that it was dumping the idea of a feasibility study on the establishment of a plant to incinerate rubbish and generate electricity in the district. At council’s May 29 meeting, it was agreed that chief executive Jason Marris would provide members with a brief report confirming that council staff would not be reporting back to council on its viability. Local democracy reporter Susan Botting rounded up the news coverage with, “Kaipara waste-to-energy plant investigation ends with no report” She noted that the Mayor and Deputy Mayor’s push for an incinerator in the region has not diminished.
Bioplant Energy is an Australian company seeking to develop its first project in Australia or New Zealand. It has proposals and plans for three communities: Feilding (Manawatū), Gisborne (Tairawhiti), and Hokitikia. The Manawatū District Council is “in partnership” with the company, and plans are well advanced for a project in the Feilding area. The company touts pyrolysis as a Green Solution (and the missing piece to The Circular Economy). It proposes to produce char and diesel from biomass and ‘inert’ ash (10%) of weight from mixed residual waste and municipal solid waste. The syngas it produces self-maintains the process. These are the consultants driving the project. Any kind of Mixed Solid Waste pyrolysis produces heavy contaminated output, much more than a standard Waste-to-Energy. There is currently no facility in Europe which processes Mixed Solid Waste like that proposed for Manawatū. The last one was Burgau plant which is described in the link. It was shut down in 2015.
READ THE FULL UPDATE ON FEILDING>>>
Keep up to date with the latest with the Feilding Against Incineration Facebook page
Update June 2020
Renew Energy Limited (REL) withdraws application to store waste bales at a site in Belfast Road, Christchurch. Removal of the bales must take place by 30 September 2020.The court set the following conditions:
Environment Canterbury will continue to monitor the Spencerville site and the method of removal to ensure no adverse effects are generated or remain.The application for consent to store up to 40,000 bales at a Belfast site is on hold and we are awaiting advice from REL whether they wish to proceed with the application or withdraw it. Regardless, the bales from Spencerville will not be going there.We hope this provides some comfort to affected communities on two fronts – one, that the bales will soon be removed from Spencerville, and two, they will not be moved to Belfast.
Update: March 2020
Renew Energy seeks to store 4000 bales of waste at a site in Belfast Road, Christchurch in anticipation of building a waste incinerator. Local residents have turned out en mass to resist.
Update: February 2020
“Westland mayor Bruce Smith said he believed the company was no longer considering Hokitika as a potential site for the waste-to-energy plant, and was looking elsewhere.”
Background to the project
This pyrolysis project was rounded defeated by the community in 2018. This info is included for some background reading on the proposal and community response
In the past, incinerators were highly polluting facilities that pumped huge volumes of toxic pollutants into our skies. It’s true that today’s incinerators are much cleaner, but they’re still not perfect. Toxins that come out of incinerators include dioxins, mercury and cadmium that can cause cancer, nerve damage and birth defects. Anyone who lives downwind from an incinerator is in danger of breathing in these dangerous chemicals. Toxins also fall on the land to be eaten by livestock or washed into our rivers, harbours and coastal waters where they can enter our food chain.
While these toxins are dangerous, most of the gas coming from an incinerator is carbon dioxide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that each tonne of waste burnt produces up to 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. As I’m sure you know, we’re looking for ways to urgently reduce our climate change emissions. Waste-to-energy incinerators work in direct competition with this goal.
Leaving aside air pollution, incinerators destroy valuable, non-renewable resources. Governments, businesses and communities everywhere are looking for ways to encourage people to reduce, reuse, repair, refurbish and recycle the things we use so we can conserve resources. Incineration works directly against these efforts.
Incinerator companies regularly talk about the many uses for incinerator bottom ash (IBA), including in building, roading and construction. However, researchers have raised serious questions about IBA leaching heavy metals into the environment. Numerous studies have shown that heavy metals can be released from IBA and be washed into the surrounding environment (see footnotes 5,17-19 in linked study). This poses a particular threat because heavy metals are highly toxic even at low concentrations.
The fly ash from incineration would require a special waste landfill due to the concentrations of heavy metals. Its safe disposal usually involves additional waste miles and the need for specialist toxic waste landfill elsewhere.
While incineration companies are happy to point out that the waste they burn would be sent to landfill, they don’t mention that household waste is not a very good fuel. The World Energy Council found that, kilogram for kilogram, waste produces less than half the energy of coal and less than one-third the energy of natural gas while producing many times the amount of pollution. Here in Aotearoa, we currently produce 80% of our electricity from renewable sources, and we have a plan to increase that to 100% by 2035. Waste-to-energy incinerators compete with our renewable energy goals and undermine our commitment to a low emissions economy.
A key selling point used by incinerator companies is that they create jobs. The EU social enterprise reuse, repair and recycling group, RREUSE, recently looked into that and found that for every job an incinerator creates, recycling centres create 36 jobs, and reuse activities create 296 jobs. Waste and recycling services are set to become the fastest growing sector as our country moves towards a circular economy. Incineration is not part of this shift.
As a collective of organisations committed to the principle of zero waste, we recognise incineration as one the most destructive waste management methods. While we accept that waste is a problem, we know that incinerators aren’t the answer. Waste-to-energy incineration is a non-renewable source of energy that destroys our finite natural resources. We believe we can address our waste issues in a more constructive way that preserves resources, prevents pollution and creates jobs.
Waste-to-Energy: Sending zero waste up in flames: The Rubbish Trip does not support waste-to-energy ‘solutions’ for mixed household waste. We take this position while also advocating for a move away from landfills. How is that possible? Because we’re spending every iota of energy we have on advocating for a zero waste approach to waste. The zero waste approach to waste is pretty much the circular economy concept.
Environmentalists call for Government to reject incinerator proposals: The Zero Waste Network group’s launched a campaign petitioning Environment Minister David Parker to decline incinerator applications.
Proponents of waste-to-energy incineration point to Europe as an example of supposedly successful W2E. But after 20 years of choosing incineration, Europe is now moving away rapidly from incineration for a range of reasons, particularly carbon emissions.
READ MORE:
EU climate ambitions spell trouble for electricity from burning waste: Waste to Energy significantly impacts the greenhouse gas budgets of Germany and the EU.
Denmark aims for climate-neutral waste sector by 2030 – “We are launching a very green transition of the waste sector. For 15 years we have failed to solve the waste incineration dilemma,” said the climate minister, Dan Jørgensen.
“It’s time to stop importing plastic waste from abroad to fill empty incinerators and burn it to the detriment of the climate. With this agreement, we are increasing recycling and reducing burning, making a significant difference to the climate.”
MPs call for halt to Britain’s incinerator expansion plans: Report concludes particles are health hazard as London councils set to vote on Edmonton incinerator (Dec 2021)
A New Plant in Indiana Uses a Process Called ‘Pyrolysis’ to Recycle Plastic Waste. Critics Say It’s Really Just Incineration: After two years, Brightmark Energy has yet to get the factory up and running. Environmentalists say pyrolysis requires too much energy, emits greenhouse gases and pollutants, and turns plastic waste into new, dirty fossil fuels.
Aotearoa NZ has a long history of dumping toxic waste, including dioxins directly onto land – often without documentation and exposing communities to signifincant contamination. This isn’t specific to incineration but highlights one of the critical issues around incinerators – who pays for the clean up when these facilities close? Meanwhile in Europe, corporates are pushing to set extremely high limits for cancer-causing dioxins allowed in waste
Expert warns New Plymouth chemical plant needs testing for dioxin contamination Radio NZ
Tiwai Point: Toxic waste clean-up cost doubles to $687m Radio NZ
Study shows heavy metal concentrations higher near Covanta incinerator (4 June 2022): A new study of pollutants in moss near the Covanta Marion garbage incinerator shows elevated levels of heavy metals from samples taken closest to the facility, located north of Salem in Brooks, Oregon.
Monitoring dioxins and PCBs in eggs as sensitive indicators for environmental pollution and global contaminated sites and recommendations for reducing and controlling releases and exposure: Journal article: This review compiles information on PCDD/F- and PCB-contaminated eggs from 20 years of global egg monitoring around emission sources in four continents conducted by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and Arnika as well as a compilation of data from scientific literature. IPEN monitored 127 pooled egg samples including samples from 113 chicken flocks at potential PCDD/F- and PCB-contaminated sites around priority sources listed in the Stockholm Convention (e.g. waste incinerators, metal industries, cement plants, and open burning). 99 (88%) of pooled egg samples were above the EU maximum limits for PCDD/Fs (2.5 pg PCDD/F-TEQ/g fat) or the sum of PCDD/Fs and dioxin-like PCBs (5 pg PCDD/F-PCB-TEQ/g fat).
