• According to the British Environment Agency, the firework display that lasted 15 minutes during the millennium celebrations in London emitted the same amount of dioxins as those that will be released by the city's incinerator in 100 years (Briefing note from the APSWG (Associate Parliamentary Sustainable. Waste Group) by Neil Carrigan and Prof. Chris Coggins).

• On 1 December 1996, Arrasate, with Xabier Zubizarreta as mayor, had to close the municipal facility because it was unable to adapt to the demands made by the European Union for incinerators with a capacity of more than forty thousand tonnes. It had no gas scrubbing systems and no waste-to-energy installations. According to a sociological study conducted that year, almost everyone in Arrasate was satisfied with the way the municipal incinerator operated.

• The incinerator in Bermeo suffered a similar fate. Its smaller capacity -eight thousand tonnes- delayed its closure until more than a dozen years after the Arrasate plant.

• The Aulesti plant was the third to close.

• A report by Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety notes that the fireplaces and tiled stoves in private homes alone discharge approximately twenty times more dioxins into the atmosphere than waste incineration plants (Source: Study "Is the incineration of waste a potential hazard?" September 2005).

Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety says that the contribution made by waste incineration plants to the total emissions of dioxins has been reduced to less than 1% of all emission sources (Study: "Is the incineration of waste a potential hazard? How to suppress the emission of dioxins”).

• A study by the Vienna University of Technology reports that the contribution waste incinerators make to national dioxin emissions in Europe is 0.07%. (“Comparison of Relevant Air Emissions from Selected Combustion Technologies". July 2005).