Keep Aotearoa Incinerator Free!

Incinerators release highly toxic dioxins, heavy metals, and PFAS, among other pollutants. These are some of the most toxic substances known to science, and can cause things like cancer, damage to the nervous system and organs, birth defects and infertility! Would you want to be breathing, drinking and eating this stuff? 

Incinerators do not stop the need for landfills. The ash, which can be as much as a third of the total amount of rubbish that went in, has to be landfilled and handled as hazardous waste. Along with that, some stuff simply can't be burnt ever because of its toxicity, or because the material simply isn’t burnable. 

The hype around incinerators suggests they will provide lots of jobs and economic benefits to the communities they are built in. But, for every job an incinerator provides, activities that actually stop the waste before it’s created - like recycling, composting, reuse and repair - provide hundreds more jobs and local economic activity. 

Even the most sophisticated modern incinerators release harmful substances out of their chimneys and into the ash and wastewater, leaving a toxic legacy for those spaces and ecosystems for generations to come. The toxic ash has to go somewhere - mostly to a specialised landfill, where the pollutants can leach out.

In 2024 the BBC found that incineration is just as bad for the climate as coal power, and five times more polluting than the average unit of UK energy.

New Zealand reports have also found that incinerators will spew out far more carbon than landfills, especially as more organic waste gets composted instead of landfilled to meet New Zealand’s methane reduction targets. 

Incinerators need 20 to 30 years of burning as much rubbish as they possibly can to justify the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to build and run them. Imagine if all that money was invested in smart zero waste projects instead? What a waste! 

 

Would you want a dirty incinerator in your community?

For a future where the earth's resources are valued, where people have opportunities to do meaningful zero waste work, and where we know our air, water, soils and food is safe…

Let's Keep Aotearoa Incinerator Free!

Europe’s incinerators are not what they’re cracked up to be, and are fast becoming yesterday’s technology. These days Europe is retreating from burning rubbish because it is harming their climate and waste reduction, reuse and recycling goals. For example, Denmark has invested heavily in incinerators but now generates more waste per capita than any other country in Europe. They recently announced a plan to close down 30% of the country's incinerators in order to get their greenhouse gas emissions and waste generation under control. Wales and Scotland have also banned any new incinerators being built, and England is considering it too. And the EU no longer considers incinerators eligible for climate-friendly investment.

What about technologies with fancy names like pyrolysis and gasification? 

Despite all the hype, these technologies have a horrendous track record of failure across Europe and elsewhere. They might be OK for clean, organic materials like forestry slash, but add anything else and they create toxins as bad or worse than incinerators. 

While companies like to sell these technologies as ‘waste to energy’, they not only produce dirty, non-renewable energy, but they are extremely inefficient. A study from 2023 found that European incinerators are only able to capture a small proportion of the energy they burn - roughly 25% at best, compared to around 35% for coal power, and 55% for natural gas.

Absolutely! Zero waste is not just about the literal goal of achieving ‘zero’; it's as much a practical toolkit and guidebook to drastically reducing waste across our communities starting with preventing the creation of waste in the first place. It is well-established, with an extensive evidence-base and a huge range of real life options already being implemented in communities all over the world right now. Check out the mahi of groups like Para Kore, Zero Waste Aotearoa, Zero Waste Europe, and GAIA for some inspiration!