Oxford East MP Andrew Smith has joined a Friends of the Earth campaign against the building of an incinerator outside Oxford.

Mr Smith, MP for Oxford East, joined a photo-petition being collected by Oxford Friends of the Earth at the peace festival in South Park at the weekend.

The photo-petition, which features photographs of people holding a cardboard speech bubble with the words 'No to incineration, Yes to recycling', was presented to county councillors in an email yesterday, asking them to look at the website at www.oxon-incineration.com Mr Smith has joined Oxford's Lord Mayor Bob Price in the campaign against an incinerator being built in the area.

County council leaders say an incinerator would only be built if it was safe and able to produce electricity, and have refused to rule out the idea.

Oxford Friends of the Earth is calling for high recycling rates - 50 per cent by 2010 and 75 per cent by 2015 - and the use of local and small-scale mechanical biological treatment instead of incineration.

Andrew Smith MP said: "I back Friends of the Earth's campaign. We need to treat our rubbish as a resource, rather than sending it up in smoke in an incinerator.

"Municipal composting would be much more environment friendly than incineration. I am writing to Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw to encourage the use of alternatives to incin- eration."

Andrew Wood, spokesman for Oxford FoE, said: "We welcome Andrew Smith's support, and he has stuck his neck out by speaking against Government proposals for more incineration.

"The photo-petitioners join more than 1,700 others objections."

Dr Evan Harris, Oxford West and Abingdon MP, said he did not want to pre-empt the council's working group which was examining various options.

He added: "I want to support the most environmentally-friendly option. I would not be in favour of an old-fashioned incinerator, but what should not be ruled out is modern techniques of extracting energy from waste."

Last month, the Oxford branch of the Green Party published a report showing that the amount of electricity which could be generated by incinerating domestic waste would only amount to 1.5 per cent of the county's current energy use.

The figure was contested by Labour county councillor Terry Joslin, a member of the council's environment scrutiny review panel.

In 2009, any part of the country that does not meet Government targets for preventing waste going to landfill will be fined, and the council could be paying £150 a tonne - which could mean a fine of £4.35m in 2009.