Dorset Green Party opposes the development of a waste incineration plant on Portland.
We have the following three main reasons:
1) If the waste comes by road, which would be the case if all the waste came from Dorset, it would involve 80 heavy vehicle movements along the A354 a day between 9am and 5pm, or one every 6 minutes (8 X 60 / 80). In Rodwell and Wyke the A354 passes entirely through a residential area, a busy shopping centre (in Wyke) and past 3 schools and one nursery, to which these lorries would bring noise, pollution and danger.
2) While we appreciate that environmental regulations will apply, incineration of residual waste always involves local pollution issues, especially the emission of particulates that create health problems. It is impossible to be completely sure what is in the waste, and so what will come out of the chimneys. The proposed plant is close to a densely populated urban area over which the effluent will from time to time be blown.
3) Waste incinerators demand a continue supply of residual waste over their long lifetimes, usually around 30 years. This means that they create a negative incentive to better ways to deal with waste, that is they discourage less waste being created in the first place, more reuse and more recycling.
The Green Party’s Jenny Jones authored a report into waste and incineration in 2018, which you can read about or download.