BURNING waste, that is incineration, has a bad name, and rightly so if it's still like the old Bradford plant in Hammerton Street that was closed in 1974. That spewed smoke and particulates all over West Yorkshire.

It's possible to argue that matters have improved considerably since then, with the development of modern energy from waste plants that burn the waste in a controlled way and are particularly careful about what comes out of the chimney.

Some of these plants just burn the waste more carefully and so avoid having to put it in distant holes in the ground, while others use the heat to produce electricity, as in Huddersfield, and the incinerator in Sheffield is used to provide heating for buildings in the city centre.

Leeds has just agreed to develop two new energy from waste plants, one at Cross Green that will power over 20,000 houses by burning domestic waste, and a large one at Stourton, south of the city centre, providing enough electricity for 50,000 houses from industrial and commercial waste.

Also this autumn construction will start at Marley, in the Aire Valley, with the building of an energy from waste plant, providing electricity for most of Keighley, and facilities to handle plastic, and crumble tyres.

While much of this is new to us in the UK it's been the norm in parts of Europe for decades, with Denmark setting the pace though it's not so positive when carbon emissions are considered.

Danes have the reputation of living in a country that takes environmental issues seriously, but closer inspection does suggest that it's not all cycling and wind turbines – it's had one of the lowest waste recycling and re-use rates in Europe, and it's all because of incineration.

It's now very clear that incineration isn't the best way of reducing the carbon dioxide output from waste, as once built the expensive incinerators need feeding, for decades. This even involves countries like Denmark and Sweden importing waste from overseas. Indeed some is collected from Bristol and Leeds.

However recent signs suggest that the Danes are moving towards more recycling, and the separate collection of green and food waste to provide gas and electricity from anaerobic digesters, as well as good quality soil conditioner for the land.

It's likely, though, that the dominant concern with all these expensive incinerators is the cost, and not the carbon reduction, as most are private companies. They don't encourage us to produce less waste, and we could end up with the new plants in Leeds and Bradford importing waste from further afield, by CO2 producing road transport, because we have improved our recycling rate and so have less local rubbish.