The UK is hurtling towards a hazardous waste crisis – but no-one seems willing to have an honest conversation about the route forward.

The country has a shortage of capacity for processing of hazardous waste, highlighted specifically by the absence of any large-scale hazardous waste to energy facility. There are two high capacity incinerators in the UK, both are fully utilised and neither has energy recovery.

Industrial businesses and manufacturers are, therefore, faced with two uncomfortable choices: pay to have the waste shipped overseas to a waste to energy facility in Europe, at a cost of around £1,000 per tonne, or go further down the waste hierarchy to use a UK facility classed as Disposal not Recovery, which can also cost up to £10,000 per tonne for the most problematic materials.

This shocking situation led to 64,000 tonnes of hazardous waste being shipped to continental Europe on boats in 2023. That’s the equivalent of about 420 adult blue whales. There the waste is incinerated to create energy or put through a recovery process.

High temperature incineration is the only option for many hazardous wastes, such as complex materials like firefighting waters containing PFAS, but the EA recently stopped UK incinerators accepting this material for a period of many months. This lack of clear guidance means PFAS wastes are being stored in vast quantities on sites up and down the land – and that brings its own environmental risk and significant expense.

Lengthy delays in environmental permitting and lack of consistency across local authorities responsible for planning decisions means that waste management, and particularly hazardous waste management, always seems to be somebody else’s problem.

And all of this is happening – largely behind the oblivious public’s backs – while businesses preach sustainability credentials and goals.

How does this situation support a dynamic industrial sector in the UK? How can we expect to attract manufacturing growth in this country without a robust industrial waste management system?

Waste management is an essential consideration for any new venture. What international manufacturer would choose to set up in the UK if their waste can’t be easily – and sustainably - dealt with?

Then there is the very real threat that facilities across Europe may one day refuse to continue to take our hazardous waste. We have seen in recent months with Trump’s tariffs how fragile international relations can be. What would happen if these countries no longer wanted our exports? I honestly don’t know.

It is true that there are small, often specialist, hazardous waste incinerators elsewhere in the UK. Typically these incinerate clinical waste and some even recover energy in the process. But, while useful for certain sectors, they are not set up to take the high volume and wide range of materials being created. They simply do not have the right feed systems or configurations to take most complex materials.

As a country, we are going to continue creating high calorific hazardous waste including solvents, paints, resins, adhesives and oils – that is a given. Energy recovery is absolutely the right option for these materials.

There is no hazardous waste magic fairy. In my opinion, the Government needs to get involved and bring some clarity over what the future plans are. The Government has already admitted the planning system is broken – and this is another example of that.

The Conservatives promised to prevent new waste incinerators from being built as part of their 2024 manifesto – and that was widely supported – but there was no small print to confirm whether this included hazardous waste facilities. The hazardous waste market is much smaller than the general waste sector. All the focus is on the general waste incinerators, along with the corresponding regulations and guidelines. There is no appetite to address the problem.

There is a general negative view from the population of incineration facilities because the perception is they inhibit recycling. Perception is more powerful than truth. Hazardous waste is completely different to general waste since there is no other way to dispose of it other than incineration. To oppose hazardous waste incinerators is the worst sort of nimbyism. As a country, we are essentially saying we don’t want to deal with it in this country so we’ll ship it somewhere else. That is not the actions of a responsible country.

When these new energy-recovering hazardous waste facilities are allowed to be built – as they eventually must be – they will be better and cleaner than ever before.

Many thousands of tonnes of carbon will be saved every year by dealing with the waste close to where it is produced, rather than transporting it many miles.

And that’s not to mention the energy the facility would produce for local industry, or the jobs it would create.

The words ‘hazardous’ ‘waste’ and ‘incineration’ are all perceived negatively, but they are all an essential part of a robust and integrated waste management system.

It’s time for honest and mature conversations on the way forward. It’s time for hazardous waste disposal to be considered part of the country’s critical infrastructure to support industry and manufacturing.

Jen Cartmell is the Managing Director of CSG.