Climate change and environmental experts today dismissed damaging claims that recycling could add to global warming.
Peter Jones, who advises Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, on waste and recycling, questioned whether the policy of shipping waste to China for recycling is worse for the environment than incinerating the material in Britain and harnessing the energy produced.
But Dr David Coley, climate change and global warming expert at Exeter University, said there was no evidence to support the comments. “They are completely vacuous, because he hasn’t got any evidence. He’s suggesting a major switch to incineration with energy generation. We’re not currently doing that on a large scale so he’s talking about radical change…without any evidence that it would be better.”
The Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) distanced itself from Mr Jones’s comments but said the Government supported generating energy from waste. A spokeswoman for Defra said: “Peter Jones is not employed as an adviser to Defra Ministers and has clarified that he was expressing a personal view.
The benefits of recycling are clear – it reduced carbon emissions by 11 million tonnes last year alone, the equivalent of taking 3.6million cars off the road," she said. "We do agree that there are potential benefits of using waste as an alternative source of power, and that’s why the Government is supporting local authorities and industry to do just that.”
Mr Jones sits on the London Waste Recycling Board and told The Daily Telegraph that kerbside recycling was “stupid” because of the mixture of materials that renders them unrecyclable.
But a Spokesperson for the London Waste and Recycling Board, said: “The Mayor is passionately committed to recycling and believes that it is absolutely vital for Londoners to embrace it.”
In a statement Mr Jones appeared to backtrack from the comments and denied that recycling was a waste of time or could be adding to global warming. |
