LETTER: I have just read the incinerator article, Shropshire Star, January 7, and would like to make the following comments on some of the issues raised by SITA UK and Cyclerval.

The waste incinerator proposed at Granville is designed to burn refuse, it is of no consequence where it comes from as long as it is 65,000 tonnes per year for the next 25 years running 24/7 every year.

Some 20 per cent to 30 per cent of what is incinerated remains as solid waste, ash, of which approximately 30 per cent is toxic.

Please be clear that this is more than a proposed solution to a waste problem.

This is a profit making opportunity. Why else would a French private company really bother?

It will require a long term commitment to 65,000 tonnes of waste per year. 

How does this commitment encourage the solution to the waste problem through reduction, recovery and recycling?

I have read of waste incinerators being researched by an eminent professor of chemistry in the US and described as “chemical reactors”, which operate at temperatures to break down materials’ molecular structures and recombine them into new compounds, both benign and toxic. 

Refuse is variable in composition and the chemistry complex. 

So who do we believe? The research of “serial agitators” or the commercial industrialists, committed to company and shareholder profits?

I am very much against incinerators until they are properly researched and proven safe.

Chris Blakemore

Shifnal