Waste recovery: why waste energy?

Many new waste facilities will need to be built across Wales over the next few years.

These pages offer an explanation of why we need to use new waste treatment technologies to turn our food and non-recyclable waste into renewable energy.

We are all consumers. We all help to create a huge amount of waste. We buy, we use, and then we throw away over 90 percent of products within the first six months.*

Wales produces enough waste to fill the millennium stadium every 20 days. Our greatest challenge is to see this waste as a resource. Everything we throw away contains valuable materials and the potential to generate energy. Our waste, our energy, should not be wasted.

To recover this resource we need to change. We need to change the habits that create waste, and the technologies we use to treat waste.

You are already involved in this change. Every time you use your local recycling scheme you help to recover valuable materials like metal and paper. You make a real difference. Every item recycled recovers a little piece of our planet.

But how should we treat the waste that we can’t recycle?

This non-recyclable waste still has a value. It is a resource that we can use. Our rubbish only really becomes waste when we bury it in a hole in the ground. When we throw materials into landfill, we throw away valuable energy and resources when we should be using them.  If we use the right waste treatment technologies we can recover resources and generate energy, not waste.

*Welsh Assembly Government "Towards Zero Waste, One Wales: One Planet"