Plastic waste is increasingly being sent to incinerators for energy generation as the UK grapples with ways to dispose of household rubbish.
Some 3.1% of the UK’s energy now comes from plastic waste which produces the equivalent amount of greenhouse gas as coal when burned, a BBC investigation found on Tuesday.
This is as over half of the UK’s household waste is sent to an increasing number of incinerators, of which the number in England has jumped from 38 to 52 since 2019.
Freedom of information requests showed local authorities across the UK held at least £30 billion worth of waste contracts involving incinerators, the BBC added.
It comes after supermarkets faced allegations of ‘misleading’ over soft plastic recycling schemes earlier this month.
An investigation found that 70% of tracked plastic waste bundles, collected at the likes of Tesco PLC (LSE:TSCO) and J Sainsbury PLC (LSE:SBRY), were burned for energy and not recycled.
Many ended up overseas meanwhile, despite the schemes promising shoppers a way to return waste to stores which cannot be recycled elsewhere.
Separate figures from campaigners Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic found that 58% of the UK’s plastic waste ended up in incinerators.
Just 17% was said to be recycled, as 14% ended up being exported and 11% got buried in landfill.
University of Southampton environmental professor Ian Williams labelled the increasing use of incinerators to deal with plastic waste as an “insane situation”.
“The current practice of the burning of waste for energy and building more and more incinerators for this purpose is at odds with our desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.