Reduce, reuse, recycle: that is the mantra for how we should deal with our waste, writes Pauline Wynter.

There is no mention of burning. But an increasing proportion of waste is being burnt in so-called energy from waste (EfW) plants, or incinerators to you and me. There is one of these in Exeter and anything you put in your black bin is carted off there.

The waste is burned at high temperatures and heats water to make steam. The steam drives turbines that generate electricity, which is fed into the National Grid.

Using our rubbish to generate electricity, rather than dumping it in landfill, sounds like a good idea. Food waste and other biodegradable rubbish in landfills produces lots of methane, which is a greenhouse gas. However, burning plastic waste produces carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas, as most plastic is made from fossil fuel. Plastic in landfill doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases. You could call burying plastic a form of carbon capture. It’s not recommended as a way to deal with plastic waste but it‘s more climate friendly than burning it. Moreover, the methane produced by biodegradable waste in landfills is now captured to be fed into the gas grid.

Over its lifetime, an energy from waste plant will produce more greenhouse gases than sending the same amount of waste to landfill. So the 48 EfW plants in operation across the UK are not producing green or renewable energy. Once the last coal power station in Britain is closed, EfW plants will be the dirtiest form of electricity generation. They are also more carbon intensive than gas power plants.

A further concern is that the growing demand for waste to burn will reduce incentives to improve recycling rates. Government statistics show the English regions with the highest incineration rates have the lowest recycling rates.

London has the worst record, recycling just 30% of its waste and burning 63%. The South West is at the other end of the scale, recycling 49% and burning 34%. Our local council sets a particularly good example by collecting 56% of its waste for recycling.

Overall though, councils in England send a higher proportion of their waste to be burned (46%) than to be recycled (43%). Much of what they burn could be recycled. Even the promotional video on the Recycle Devon website says as much. One employee of the Exeter EfW plant featured in the video says: “It’s frustrating when we see materials coming in that could have been reused or recycled. It seems such a waste of resources to burn things which could be made into something new.” A report by the Channel 4 programme Dispatches showed that more than half (around 60%) of the waste sent to incinerators could be recycled.

The same programme also found that waste collected for recycling is sent for incineration by some councils. Freedom of information requests revealed that Southend-on-Sea borough council, for example, sent nearly half (45%) of its recycling to be burned. On average, Dispatches found, 11% of waste collected for recycling is sent for incineration.

Councils often have long-term contracts with the waste companies that operate EfW plants, committing them to supplying a certain amount of waste to be burned. This encourages the production of waste and reduces the incentive to invest in recycling or composting.

Despite the drawbacks of incineration, more EfW plants are planned, with a further 16 currently being built. The Committee on Climate Change says if the plants are built without the facility to capture and store carbon emissions they are likely to “significantly increase” emissions from the waste industry. “Fossil emissions from energy from waste plants are growing rapidly and will continue to do so in the near term,” the CCC says.

The more plants there are, the greater the demand for waste to burn. What’s needed, says the CCC, is “a step-change towards a circular economy”. This means a move away from landfill and incineration (and the associated greenhouse gas emissions), and towards reducing our waste and collecting what remains for re-use and recycling.

Pauline Wynter is a member of Action on Climate in Teignbridge