The environment minister estimated that the cost to existing UK incineration plants of complying with the new directive will be between 15 and 30 million per year.
Dioxins
The Directive, which came into force in England and Wales on December 28, 2002, says that new incinerators must immediately comply with a new limit on dioxin emissions of 0.1ng per cubic metre. This limit is ten times stricter than the previous level of 1ng per cubic metre, set in 1996, which forced 30 plants to close because they could not comply.
But this time, Mr Meacher said, the UK's 13 large municipal waste incinerators should not have any problems complying. “The majority of them meet the test limits of the Waste Incineration Directive already,” he said.
More likely to be affected are the 950 smaller incinerators in England and Wales, are classed as those burning less than one tonne per hour – often treating materials such as clinical waste. A spokesman for the Environment Agency today confirmed: “It is difficult to answer how many of the smaller incinerators will close, but certainly some will.”
Other sectors
Mr Meacher pointed out that incinerators now contributed less than 1% of dioxins in the UK atmosphere, whereas the iron and steel industry is the biggest contributor, producing 58%, and the non-ferrous metal sector the next largest, with 20%. The Integrated Pollution Prevention Control Directive will regulate emissions more tightly across all sectors between now and 2007, he said.
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