Oh dear. Having listened to Onyx (Veolia) badgering us about how safe incinerators are, we now have Sussex Waste Recycling trying to tell us the same old story using the same tired old reasoning.

The reason we, the public, are sceptical is because time and again we find, no matter what the "strict enviornmental controls" are, the companies operating the incinerators fail to keep to them.

They aren't monitored 24/7.

It took the European Court of justice to bring the French government to book in 2002 for failing to ensure its incinerators met the regulations including the nice shiny one in Rouen which Brighton and Hove City Council and East Sussex County Council have on the cover of their "Waste Local" plan.

Why are we not focused on recovering the materials which make up waste?

Why is the emphasis on setting fire to them?

How much carbon dioxide is going to go into the atmosphere with an incinerator?

Of what goes into an incinerator, 30 per cent comes out as ash.

Some of it hugely toxic fly-ash which will be exported out of Sussex to be disposed of.

Nevertheless, that's 70 per cent which doesn't come out... or does it? Well, given basic physics tells you matter can't be created or destroyed, it has to go somewhere and that somewhere is into the atmosphere. Kyoto agreements anybody?

Recycle and the possibilities are endless. Incinerate and it's gone to that great landfill in the sky.

-Rod Main, Newhaven