26 April 2006

Stop to incinerators

Incinerators or thermovaluers, are financed in Italy with public money as they are put on the same footing as renewable energy.
Without public finding the incinerators could not exist. Do they merit this investment? The reply that I feel is appropriate is completely negative. The construction of incinerators is fruit of 2 things: poor information provision and mistaken social behaviour.

The poor information provision leads people to think that incinerators are a solution at the forefront of technology, that they are necessary and that in any case they represent the lesser evil.
The incinerators are not an innovative solution. The opposite is true. The first ones were constructed 40 years ago and those countries that used them initially no longer build them and use them less and less. Furthermore it has been demonstrated that the ash produced becomes toxic waste.

The mistaken social behaviour comes about at the level of the producer and the consumer. Waste products are often created at the beginning by useless packaging: boxes, plastic, paper etc. These are just things to get rid of.
Auto-regulation of the producing companies, “helped” by taxes on production of parts that are superfluous to the product, like, for example the box for a tube of toothpaste. This would greatly reduce the phenomenon.
An incentive to reuse the containers with a price reduction for consumers is a measure that could further limit the production of rubbish. For example glass bottles could be reused.
The differentiated collection of waste should be in operation in the whole country. At the moment it isn’t. This makes it possible to recycle most of the waste and it is a great opportunity both for the environment and for industry.

This is why Italia dei Valori will oppose the construction of any new incinerators. It is also asking for the abolition of their financing as of today. It is proposing legislation that will favour a reduction of waste at the origin and the support of companies working in the waste re-cycling sector.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Society