Incinerator Busters come in all shapes and sizes from all corners of the UK. They are united in the knowledge that burning rubbish is not the way to deal with household waste. They are the people taking on councils and MPs, demanding an end to all rubbish burning and a revolution in the way we deal with waste.
The cornerstone of their work is Getting to Zero Waste: A Citizen's Resource Recovery Strategy, a document produced in consultation with internationally renowned waste experts. It proves that county and district councils can meet recycling and landfill diversion targets without incineration. The citizen's strategy mirrors the appearance and general content of the waste strategies that each local authority must complete. The main difference, of course, is that the citizen's strategy, like the Greenpeace report How to comply with the Landfill Directive without incineration, shows how to meet targets without incineration.
Getting to Zero Waste means exactly what you think: if we put our minds to it we could become a waste free society. It won't happen overnight, but the steps needed to reduce the amount of rubbish we create by at least 75% are quite straightforward. We just need to get started.
Greenpeace wants every local authority in the UK to reject incineration and adopt a strategy to treat the majority of our waste as the resource it is: compostable kitchen and garden waste, recyclable paper, glass and metal, reusable textiles and household items. We want local authorities to be imaginative and innovative, taking us on a path towards zero waste - or very close.
Incineration is a dirty, polluting technology and it has no place in the 21st century. (For a fuller explanation of the problems associated with incineration, click here for the PDF document'Money to Burn'.)
Incinerator Busters campaign for local authorities to provide:
- Doorstep collection of our kitchen waste and our garden waste
- Doorstep collection of 'dry' recyclable materials paper, card, textiles, glass, plastic and metal.
We want the left-over waste to undergo one of the readily available mechanical-biological treatments to make it safer and reduce its volume. With all these steps fully implemented, the existing demand for landfill can be reduced by up to 80%. The small amount of remaining and relatively inert material can be sent to landfill.
We want leadership from central Government in funding innovative resource recovery schemes and in strongly promoting recycling and markets for recycled products.
And we're going to get it. Join the campaign. Become an Incinerator Buster.
