Trash Incinerator Ash — Nearly 30 tons for every 100 tons burned

For every 100 tons burned in an incin­er­a­tor, about 30 tons of tox­ic ash are produced.

This is evi­denced by the data from var­i­ous incin­er­a­tors. Below is data from trash incin­er­a­tors in Penn­syl­va­nia, Mary­land, and Vir­ginia, where state waste dis­pos­al data­bas­es pro­vide the ton­nages burned and tons of ash dis­posed. Penn­syl­va­nia now pro­vides this raw data online.

Note: A sixth incin­er­a­tor in Penn­syl­va­nia was left out of the analy­sis above because some of the ash went to an ash recy­cling scheme for years, and due to impos­si­bly low ash num­bers, more may have been dis­posed of out-of-state, which goes untracked by Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s report­ing sys­tem. The num­bers above may be slight­ly low, as Cov­an­ta now has an ash “recy­cling” plant in Bucks Coun­ty, Penn­syl­va­nia where some ash goes, escap­ing reporting.

There is also a cer­tain por­tion of the munic­i­pal sol­id waste stream that can­not be burned in an incin­er­a­tor and which is bypassed and sent direct­ly to land­fills, so these num­bers are also con­ser­v­a­tive in the sense that they do not cov­er this bypassed waste.