THOUSANDS OF tonnes of household, commercial and municipal waste from the Dublin area are being transported to Westmeath for incineration in a giant kiln at a cement plant.

The Lagan Cement plant in Kinnegad burned 35,000 tonnes of waste in 2009 and the company expects to burn 50,000 tonnes this year.

The waste is initially being processed by waste-collection firms at special plants where they use a recycling system called mechanical and biological treatment (MBT). This process separates materials that can be recycled and leaves behind a material that can be used as an alternative fuel for the cement kilns.

The alternative fuel is known as solid recovered fuel (SRF) and Lagan cement has a licence from the Environmental Protection Agency to burn up to 95,000 tonnes of alternative fuels, which includes SRF and meat and bone meal.

News that the Westmeath plant is incinerating thousands of tonnes of waste is certain to raise eyebrows as the controversy over the construction of the Poolbeg incinerator escalates.

Fine Gael's environment spokesman Phil Hogan said: "It seems strange that waste material is being incinerated in Kinnegad while Minister Gormley has gone to enormous lengths to indicate his political position in respect of the waste-to-energy plant at Poolbeg.

"It strikes of a double standard being adopted by the minister and he should make a clear statement about his knowledge of this activity."

Lagan Cement is not doing anything wrong or illegal by burning the SRF. The company pointed out to the Sunday Tribune that burning the alternative fuel is in line with "an ongoing commitment to replace fossil fuels with alternative fuels".

A company spokesman said: "The use of waste- derived fuels is common practice across the EU and has allowed the cement industry to reduce its overall CO2 emissions and its dependence on fossil fuels."

The Sunday Tribune understands that a number of the larger waste collection operators such as Greenstar and Thorntons Recycling have supplied waste material to the Kinnegad plant.

While no one from Thorntons was available for comment, a spokesman for Greenstar said his company has only just started to use the MBT system and added: "We have not gone into full supply. We have just got our line up and running, which the minister, John Gormley, came to see in operation. We are producing material and we sent some of it through to Lagan cement for testing and we are running our own tests in the labs. Using domestic waste is a fossil fuel substitute and we would see the market in Ireland has the potential to grow from 400,000 to 700,000 tonnes."

A spokesman for Environment minister John Gormley said: "This is exactly what the minister has been advocating. After the MBT process, you incinerate the residual material. Instead of building plants that can only take municipal waste, you have co-incineration, which is a model used in other countries.

"Why would you build an incinerator at a cost of €435m to take waste that, if it is treated properly, has a better outcome for the environment?"

The Irish Cement plant at Platin near Drogheda is set to commence burning waste in the same way as the Lagan plant before the end of the year.

Gormley's recently published Draft Waste Policy outlined that the government supports the incineration of SRFs as they "can be used to displace fossil fuels, thereby reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and supporting Ireland's contributions to the global efforts to address the very significant and pressing challenge of climate change."