ACTIVISTS fighting to prevent a waste incinerator being built at Ernesettle are urging residents to find out the facts for themselves.

A series of roadshows in Plymouth and Saltash will start on Monday after the South West Devon Waste Partnership announces its final shortlist of possible contractors to build a £100million energy from waste (EfW) plant.

The shortlist is expected to be announced in The Herald tomorrow.

"We are all responsible for producing waste and a solution needs to be found to dispose of it in the most environmentally friendly way, but we have to question if that solution should be incineration," the group STIFLE (Stop The Incinerator Fouling Land at Ernesettle) said.

Ernesettle is one of three possible sites for the EfW plant. Three companies have come up with five possible solutions, and these will be narrowed down today.

STIFLE says that building an EfW plant at Ernesettle would blight the Tamar, the region's most iconic river.

They say Ernesettle is unsuitable because it is a greenfield site, former council-owned sports fields, next to the Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a Special Area of Conservation, SSSI and County Wildlife Protection Site.

The nearest houses are only 200 metres away, with schools and nursing homes near by.

Trucking in rubbish from Plymouth, Torbay and South Devon would add to already severe traffic problems in part of the city's "green corridor"

Geraldine Land of STIFLE said: "There are local authorities in the UK that are aiming to implement a zero waste policy.

"Governments, councils and industry should be working together to find ways to turn waste into a profitable resource or designing it out of the system altogether.

"The Scottish Parliament is aiming to have no more than 25 per cent of waste sent to incineration by 2025. This compares with the waste partnership plan to still be burning 50 per cent of residual waste even as late as 2039."

Mrs Lane called on the councils in the partnership to provide recycling "islands" in the city centre, increase garden waste collection, and collect food waste separately.

"Plymouth boasts that recycling rates are 30 per cent, while South Oxfordshire this summer achieved a rate of 70 per cent," she said.

THE waste roadshow will be open to all on: November 9, 5pm-8pm, Ernesettle Community School, Biggin Hill, Ernesettle, Plymouth; November 11, 4pm -8pm, City College Plymouth, Kings Road, Devonport, Plymouth; November 12, 5pm-8pm, Ashtorre Rock, Waterside, Old Ferry Road, Saltash; November 13, 4pm-8pm, The Watermark, Leonards Road, Ivybridge; and November 14, 10am-2pm, Plymouth Guildhall.

Read the arguments at: www.ernesettle.org.uk and

www.plymouth.gov.uk/swdwp.html