The Bromham incinerator is not green. Incineration is not a suitable way to dispose of household waste.

The order of preference in waste handling is waste minimisation, re-use, then recycling and composting followed by energy recovery. Incineration is less useful than other methods because it destroys finite resources and is polluting. Seventy-five per cent of waste can be recycled or composted.

The energy involved in mining, transporting and manufacturing items 'from cradle to grave' usually exceeds the amount released by burning it. Much energy is involved in the early stages of production. Thus sending a plastic bottle halfway up the country to recycle it appears wasteful, but people do not realise how much more energy has gone into oil extraction, transportation etc.

Industrialists favour incineration because they find dispatching waste to an incinerator no more difficult (or expensive) than landfill. Waste reduction, re-use and recycling require changes in behaviour.

Dioxins are known carcinogens no level is safe. Siting an incinerator in a market garden area, risking pollution of produce, is lunacy.

There is a real fear that, in the rush to meet EU and Government targets, incineration will seem the simple answer. It is easy to find private sector finance for an enterprise that guarantees profits for 25 years. The Regional Waste Strategy mistakenly suggests a need for 22 incinerators in the south west alone all unnecessary if we mend our ways.

Incineration will never be popular. Don't forget, today's 'state of the art technology' inevitably becomes the next decade's ageing neighbourhood polluter. No incinerator could mean that less polluting methods of dealing with difficult waste might be discovered. Nigel Carter may find an incinerator at Bromham more acceptable than a wind turbine (Gazette,. May 6), but I suspect very few would agree. Wind turbines produce no emissions, do not increase lorry movements and can be recycled at the end of their life.

If Mark Wilkinson really wants to help the environment, why doesn't he set up a wood scrapyard?

MRS C G CARVER

Housing, recycling and waste campaigner

Devizes & Marlborough Friends of the Earth