Zero Waste to Landfill: How Incinerators Get Promoted

- by Car­o­line Eader

The incin­er­a­tor indus­try pro­motes a false belief that the only choic­es we have in han­dling our waste is to either burn it for ener­gy or to bury it in a land­fill. The exis­tence of what is known as a “waste-to-ener­gy” (WTE) facil­i­ty does not elim­i­nate the need for a land­fill. First, 10% to 15% of the waste stream can­not be incin­er­at­ed and sec­ond­ly, after burn­ing there is a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ash (10% to 15% by vol­ume, or about 30% by weight) which is still sent to a landfill. 

The indus­try notion that trash incin­er­a­tion does­n’t com­pete with com­post­ing or recy­cling is mis­lead­ing. Indus­try would have peo­ple believe only mate­r­i­al which can’t be recy­cled is processed, but the truth is incin­er­a­tor con­tracts do not exclude recy­clable mate­r­i­al from being incin­er­at­ed. When I´ve asked indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives why they do not remove the recov­er­able mate­r­i­al, they say, “It’s not my job.”

If you read Cov­an­ta and Whee­labra­tor incin­er­a­tor con­tracts, you’ll find that their job is to get BTUs from munic­i­pal sol­id waste (includ­ing plas­tic and paper) for ener­gy recovery. 

Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Mary­land, with its recy­cling rate of 54% through its “inte­grat­ed” recy­cling, com­post­ing, and use of a 20-year-old “waste-to-ener­gy” facil­i­ty illus­trates this point per­fect­ly: Max­i­mal diver­sion rates are not met. There is a cheap­er, more effec­tive, more ben­e­fi­cial path­way for man­ag­ing society´s dis­cards: zero waste. Zero waste prac­tices such as recy­cling, reuse and com­post­ing gen­er­ate more than 10 times the num­ber of jobs than both incin­er­a­tors or land­fills and reduce vast amounts of pol­lu­tion. Cities with zero waste goals such as San Fran­cis­co (77%) and San Diego (68%) are achiev­ing much high­er diver­sion rates. Across the U.S. and Cana­da, more com­mu­ni­ties are adopt­ing zero waste res­o­lu­tions and imple­ment­ing zero waste plans, and diver­sion rates are start­ing to rise.

San Fran­cis­co’s waste study analy­sis found that 90% of its waste stream is recy­clable or com­postable. This clear­ly shows that a com­mu­ni­ty imple­ment­ing a diver­sion goal of 75% would have sub­stan­tial­ly less to land­fill than a com­mu­ni­ty with an incinerator.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the U.S. Ener­gy Depart­ment has found that waste incin­er­a­tion is the most expen­sive way to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, and elec­tric­i­ty from burn­ing garbage makes more car­bon diox­ide and mer­cury pol­lu­tion per kilo­watt hour than elec­tric­i­ty from coal.

Cov­an­ta has brand­ed its trash incin­er­a­tors WTE facil­i­ties to secure tax­pay­er sub­si­dies when in real­i­ty these facil­i­ties are high­ly inef­fi­cient and cost­ly. Through its con­tract with the North­east Mary­land Waste Dis­pos­al Author­i­ty, which owns the Mont­gomery Coun­ty trash incin­er­a­tor, Cov­an­ta makes more than $20 mil­lion per year in oper­at­ing fees and also receives a por­tion of the rev­enues earned from the elec­tric­i­ty pro­duced. Mont­gomery Coun­ty res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers should not find this sur­pris­ing since they sub­si­dize this facil­i­ty by $20 mil­lion to $40 mil­lion per year through prop­er­ty tax fees.

The eco­nom­i­cal­ly sound choice for any com­mu­ni­ty should be to have max­i­mized resource recov­ery (uti­liz­ing zero-waste prac­tices) focused on land­fill diver­sion and to decrease green­house gas emis­sions. This would sub­stan­tial­ly reduce the need for new land­fills, while pro­mot­ing long-term sus­tain­able envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits. It would save ener­gy and mon­ey, cre­ate jobs and elim­i­nate thou­sands of tons of green­house gas­es being gen­er­at­ed by our country´s land­fills and trash incinerators.