https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/10/19/no-acceptable-alternative/

The biggest problem with what purports to be a “debate” about environmental issues is that it is long on whining but very, very short on workable solutions. Take, for example, the latest gripe-fest from an increasingly discredited BBC about the harms caused by incinerating waste. It doesn’t help that in this instance, the headline – Burning rubbish now UK’s dirtiest form of power – is misinformation of the worst kind… that is, wrong! Burning waste is not the dirtiest form of electricity generation in the UK, whether in terms of carbon dioxide or particulate matter. That honour goes to the Drax plant in Yorkshire, which appears to be on a mission to singlehandedly deforest North America, and which receives a massive £2,000,000 per day! “green” subsidy for doing so. But Drax gets a free pass because it has friends in high places.

With tedious predictability, the BBC article fails to offer an alternative, environmentally friendly means of disposing of the mountains of waste generated by our neoliberal consumerist economy. And there’s a reason for that. Recycling is usually touted as the best solution. But most of the waste we generate is the wrong kind of material, so that in practice, just 17 percent of our waste is recycled. The majority, 58 percent, is incinerated. The alternatives are to throw it in landfill (11%), or to ship it abroad (14%) for someone else to burn it, throw it in landfill, or dump it in the ocean. Notice though that there is no magic stardust to sprinkle on the waste to make it disappear.

Nor can the government legislate it away… although a series of failed regulations are the reason why burning waste has emerged as the least bad option. The introduction of a landfill tax initially resulted in the widespread practice of shipping waste to Asia in the pretence that it was being recycled (in practice, just a small fraction was recyclable, the rest was dumped or burned). However, in the past decade, Asian states have introduced far tighter controls on the materials they are prepared to import for recycling. The result here in the UK, is that we have a mountain of waste piling up with few options to dispose of it. Not least because we are running out of disused mines and quarries to repurpose as landfill sites. Although for the short-term, many councils are taking the tax-hit and using landfill anyway.

What we have tested to destruction – and in part what the landfill tax was meant to achieve – was the belief that by shifting the cost of waste onto consumers, the free market™ would magically force the global cartels to dispense with much of the packaging used for everything from frivolous luxury goods to essential foods. In a truly free market – free, that is, from monopolies and cartels – that idea might have some validity. But if we ever enjoyed something approaching a free market, it died half a century ago and was replaced with the supranational kleptocracy that currently rules us. So much so, that “consumer power” is largely a myth.

An alternative solution might be found if only the neoliberal order could be overthrown, and corporations forced (by democratic governments) to cease producing all unnecessary packaging. But for the moment, there is no way of changing the behaviour of the transnational corporations which rule over us and which overtly buy our wilfully-impotent governments. But, then again, those – like the BBC – who cry the loudest about the problem are too wedded to the status quo to accept the kind of change required if we are to ever find a solution… And so, there is little point whining about staving off the coming blackouts by generating electricity as a by-product of incinerating waste, because there is no acceptable alternative on the table.