May I suggest that David Lewin looks at the waste that has to be sent to landfill when using an incinerator (Letters, February 28).

It is at least 25 per cent of the waste taken in. For East Sussex, which produced 400,000 tons of waste last year, this means 100,000 tons going to landfill.

Better methods are available that mean less than ten per cent of waste would be sent to landfill. Also, with alternative methods there is less lorry traffic - another problem I would like to see reduced.

The incinerator, if it is built at Newhaven, will mean 35 lorries coming in and out of the town along the A26 and the A27.

East Sussex County Council should look properly at the problem of waste disposal, and not blindly follow the EU directive of 2000. We should still think for ourselves.

  • Derrick Wilkins, Gilda Crescent, Polegate
    With reference to David Lewins' comments on an incineration plant (Letters, February 28), I do not know what scientific or technological competence he has to draw his conclusions, but I have to disagree with him.

You cannot judge anything by looking into a boiler furnace or at the emission from an exhaust stack.

It is much more complicated than that. For instance, how did Mr Lewins know there was no airborne fallout?

This is potentially a serious matter which cannot be decided by what you are told on a tour of an installation by self-interested producers of the equipment concerned.

  • Dennis Mayo, Wayland Avenue, Brighton