The technology behind a waste-to-energy plant proposed for Manawatū is touted as ‘‘environmentally safe’’ by experts, but opponents remain ideologically opposed to the venture.

At the third day of the proposal’s public hearing on Thursday, environmental and air quality experts said the plant would almost have no impact on the air and land in the area.

But opponents said it was incompatible with New Zealand’s vision to transit to a zero-waste circular economy.

Bioplant Manawatu NZ Ltd claimed the plant, intended to operate on Kawakawa Rd in Feilding, would be capable of processing up to 40 tonnes of dry waste, producing up to 14,000 litres of diesel, 1.9 MWh of electricity and 2.5 tonnes of biochar, on a daily basis.

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The company’s chairman Kieran Pollard said the plant would enable the region to stop adding so much rubbish to the landfill and instead turn waste into valuable energy.

“The plant will be a game-changer as New Zealand deals with a growing waste issue,” he said.

Scientist and adviser to the company’s partner Global Green International Investments Dr Erfan Ibrahim said pyrolysis, by the absence of oxygen, avoided the production of a lot of hazardous materials, so the chemistry “is working for you”.

“[It is] a very chemistry-friendly, environmentally safe way of breaking down organic compounds, as opposed to incineration which is a free-for-all and produces all kinds of complex, volatile organic compounds.”

Scientists and opponents expressed concerns, even protesting outside the Local Government New Zealand Conference in Palmerston North, against building the plant.

During his presentation at the hearing, energy engineer Andrew Neil Rollinson called production of diesel from at the pyrolysis plant ‘’a highly experimental’’.

“Indeed, experts are still debating whether it is even possible to make diesel specification fuel from pyrolysis products.

Massey University associate professor Trisia Farrelly said some of the company’s claims that it would remove all endocrine disrupting chemicals did not make sense as it had simultaneously stated the plant would not be able to remove all dioxins.

“Dioxins are persistent organic pollutants or ‘forever chemicals’ – the most hazardous of all endocrine disrupting chemicals.

“Opponents of similar technology have described the process as building landfills in the sky.”

Farrelly said municipal solid waste pyrolysis was incompatible with, and undermined, a zero-waste approach, threatening Aotearoa’s potential to transition to a toxic-free, just, and zero waste circular economy.

Waipā resident Dale-Maree Morgan, who travelled to Palmerston North to demonstrate, said the proposal was in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi.

“This is an old, colonial European technology that has been shut down in Europe after polluting the continent. We are burning our planet with such technology.

“I am here to support in solidarity with other communities like Feilding [Manawatū] and Waimate, where similar waste-to-energy plants have been proposed.

A waste-to-energy plant was proposed in Waipā about a year ago.