A burning issue
Published by MAC on 2006-07-17
A burning issue
17th July 2006
Over the past few years the cement industry, led by Lafarge, has claimed a virtue in "co-incineration" of all kinds of industrial, agricultural, medical and household wastes, to fuel cement kilns. The pretext has been that, by burning such detritus, cement manufacturers are reducing their contributions to adverse climate change - as well as ridding the world of useless materials.
Now the European Union has reclassified potentially highly dangerous and polluting municpal incinerators as "recovery plants." This has caused a wave of protest from environmental NGOs which claim that the new designation sets back dramatically initiatives to re-use or recycle "wastes" - including metallic ones.