I hover over the fence on this one, I'm rarely automatically against new technologies and different ways of doing things, and shy away from NIMBYism... but burning plastics/waste/etc to inefficiently generate electricity seems counter-intuitive to me. Also more likely to convert a relatively inert waste problem into an actively dangerous waste problem. (One assumes mitigations are designed in of course...) In general the evidence seems to be building against this approach.

It's also a lot of money that could be put into wind and solar instead... and these flat fenlands are good for both. I wonder if the same people would be against those projects too. There should be more on-shore wind power around here IMO.

I too vacillate on this one. I try not to be utopian about waste streams - they're always going to be there. And in the absence of a massive reduction in waste we need to do something with it. But burying it is not the answer, economically or ecologically (they leak and need decades of maintenance once capped). In theory reducing the volume and volatility through burning, with sufficient filtering, is a good solution. In practice it probably won't mesh with capitalism very well

yeah, thus my fence-ism. I have no real certainty of feeling either way aside from the fact that plastics specifically should be recycled as best as possible rather than burnt. But without plastics I'm not sure these incinerators can be even close to capitalistially "economical" in terms of turning a non-subsidy profit. Both the best fuels are better off recycled for the most part: cardboard/paper and plastics*. If you incinerate only what's left over I suspect it'll be a net consumer of energy.

* Lots of of problems with plastics recycling of course. OTOH plastics are one thing that would likely be inert if buried?