Incineration can lead to a huge waste of important and finite natural resources which literally go up in smoke or end up as part of the resultant ash. Unless important resources such as all metals, plastics, and glass are removed before incineration this process can result in loss of resources which causes negative knock on environmental effects in the form of increased mining to replace those lost resources, and increased energy use to process and produce new resources. Increased mining leads to further land pollution and degradation of the land environments which are being mined. Increased energy use means increased fossil fuel use and therefore further increases in greenhouse gas emissions.