Labour's Minister for the South West thinks mass incineration is green!!

Ben Bradshaw MP, Labour’s Minister for the South West expresses a very bizarre view when he says ‘By scuppering the Avonmouth plant Bristol Lib Dems and Tories have destroyed any green credibility they may have laid claim to.’ (‘They’ve destroyed any green credibility’, Open Lines, Bristol Evening Post, March 7). He calls it a ‘waste to energy plant’ when in fact what was planned was a mass incinerator designed to be fed with and burn many thousands of tonnes of waste, pumping out huge amounts of climate changing carbon emissions for several decades!

Mr Bradshaw refers to this plant as part of a strategy to meet ‘climate change and other green targets’ buts fails to mention that mass incineration is near the bottom of the list of green waste management priorities and that organisations like the Green Party, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the Labour Environment Campaign and others were very strongly opposed (details) !

Just where is the evidence that this plant is green in any real and proper sense? Its notable that Mr Bradshaw says nothing in his letter about how this plant would contribute to that which is truly green, the creation of a low waste society, through waste reduction, reuse and recycling. He refers to the formerly proposed plant as ‘modern’ and ‘clean’ – in fact incineration is the thinking of the last century not the 21st and a technology than is massively outclassed by other options now available.