INCINERATION IS VERY EXPENSIVE
Incinerators are very expensive - a 2000 tonne per day facility built in Amsterdam in 1995 cost over $600 million, with over half the cost going into air-pollution control equipment (12)!
Our local media reported that the costs of building the two plants in Germany which our councillors visited was £60 million and £140 million (13). We don't know what the operating costs would be. In order to pay off such cost, most incinerators have to operate for at
least 25 years in order to pay off the "mortgage". And during that time, the amount of waste burned has to be maintained at a level which will provide the income required to pay off the mortgage (14).
The Galway incinerator will only employ between 15 and 50 people (15). Recycling would employ many times more, and the profits would stay in Ireland.
Studies show that more energy is recovered from recycling products than from burning them in "waste-to-energy" incinerators (16). The Connacht waste plan itself showed that the recycling option is £25 million cheaper than the other waste management combinations which included incineration.
German incinerators contribute 1/2 percent of the energy requirements of that country (17) . Only about 10% of the income to the plant comes from the energy generated. The other 90% comes from the tipping fees. Tipping fees in the US / Germany are between $100 and
$200/tonne (18). Incinerators are the only form of power plant which gets paid to accept the fuel it burns !
In Germany wind turbines are contributing three times the amount of energy from incinerators, and energy from wind is expected to increase dramatically in the future (19).
The consultant has said that incinerators need to be retrofitted every ten years. Where will the rubbish go then? Will we need a  second "spare" incinerator?