§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will take further measures to ensure that emissions from waste disposal incinerators are effectively monitored; and if she will make a statement. [36706]
§ Mr. MeacherEmission standards apply throughout the EU to all incineration facilities, applicable to both old and new facilities. Monitoring is carried out to ensure these emission standards are met and to identify breaches of these standards, which may lead to enforcement action.
We are currently transposing the new waste incineration directive, which will further tighten the emissions standards. The older generation of incinerators has now been replaced with newer, cleaner technology, and most municipal waste incinerators in this country already meet the tough standards that will be introduced with the new directive. Incinerator emissions of all air pollutants are now less than 1.5 per cent. of total UK emissions.
Additionally the Environment Agency has recently varied the authorisations for existing Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators to reduce the dioxin emission limit to 0.1 ng/m3 (ie no more than one part in 10 billion). This is ahead of the timetable required by the recently adopted waste incineration directive. At this stage we do not consider that further measures are required.