The Future of Trash: Burn it?!

What Are Our Options?

So, let's admit it. We have a trash problem.

So what does the future hold? Let's look at just a few options...

• Landfills

• Waste-to-Energy Incineration

• Zero-waste through a combination of reducing, reusing, recycling, composting, etc.

Hopefully it's obvious that zero-waste would be the ideal. I absolutely think it's possible but definitely not around the corner. Let's look closer at what I see as the temporary band-aid solutions.


Waste-to-Energy Incineration

When I started learning about waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration recently, I was immediately skeptical. I thought about a woman I saw in a lovely, small town in Costa Rica selling street food - she was feeding plastic bags into her BBQ grill. Needless to say, I did not try her food.

Hi, I'm a black vulture. (Town of Cahuita, Costa Rica)

However, modern WTE incineration has come a long way since the backyard burner. While the U.S. sends less than 20% of its trash to incineration, many other countries favor this method. Why? They've improved the technology and found more efficient ways to harness the energy while reducing pollution.

Modern Waste-to-Energy Incineration Facts

Knowing that the main by-products of incineration are ash, flue gas, and heat, consider:


• Modern incinerators recover ash which can be securely disposed of or used to produce things like roads and parking lots --> (Abbott et al., 2003). 

• Flying ash and flue gas (which carry the scary pollutants) are caught in special filters and scrubbers.

• Modern incinerators release such low levels of dioxin (one of the scariest combustion by-products) that they are actually well below US FDA standards of what is considered a safe amount (Porteous, 2005). 

One form of the evil, bioaccumulating dioxin.

• The level of dioxin that can be found in foods is actually more dangerous than what is produced by modern incinerators (Shuhmacher & Domingo, 2006).

• Denmark, being one of the leaders in modern incinerator technology, produces incinerator emissions that are ten times cleaner than the European pollution standards - less polluting than a backyard BBQ pit! (Riber et al., 2008).

Copenhagen: considered one of the world's greenest cities.

 •  And finally, heat from incineration is used to run turbines and generate electricity. This aesthetically creative incineration plant provides heat for Vienna:

Now you know what this picture was about in the Day Seven post!

WTE Incineration vs. Landfills/Other

• Landfills contribute a startling amount to greenhouse gas emissions. One of the world's largest landfills, found in Southern California, releases approximately 31,000 cubic feet of gas (half of which is methane) every minute (Humes, 2012). 

• While landfills are required by the Clean Air Act to collect some of this gas for energy, leaks and other inefficiencies result in 60-85% of the methane from landfill waste being released into the atmosphere rather than being collected for electricity (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• Only about 25% of landfills in the U.S. are actually set up for landfill gas collection in the first place (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• While incineration does produce carbon dioxide emissions, this pales in comparison to landfill production of methane - as methane is 21 to 23 times stronger than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming effects (Humes, 2012; Kaplan et al., 2009).

• WTE incineration generates approximately ten times more energy than landfills do for the same input of waste (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• WTE incineration produces lower levels of carbon dioxide, sulfur oxide, and nitrogen oxide than landfills and coal power plants - and less sulfur dioxide than oil powered plants (Kaplan et al., 2009).

• While many people argue that WTE incineration takes away from recycling or composting (which are certainly better methods), studies have found that landfill-using communities recycle less and countries with WTE incineration actually recycle at higher rates than the U.S. (Achillas et al., 2011; Humes, 2012).


The Future

All the articles I read pretty much agree that while WTE incineration is not perfect, landfills are much much worse. And unfortunately, probably one of the biggest impediments for WTE incineration is the initial cost - taking many millions of dollars to build a new facility.

As a side note, I did just learn about a waste-to-energy facility in Marion County, Oregon that gives tours so I might have to check it out! The energy it produces is sold to Portland General Electric, which has the number one renewable power program in the country.

Another of the world's greenest cities: Portland, OR. Hey Copenhagen, where's your snowy mountain backdrop?

Meanwhile, I'll continue to do the best I can to produce as little waste as possible. Whether we eventually all have high tech incinerators or not, reducing waste is still, to me, the ultimate goal.


References

Abbott, J., Coleman, P., Howlett, L., & Wheeler, P. (2005). Environmental and health risks associated with the use of processed incinerator bottom ash in road construction. AEA Technology Environment, Oxfordshire, England.

Achillas, C., Vlachokostas, C.,  Moussiopoulos, N., Banias, G., Kafetzopoulos, G., & Karagiannidis, A. (2011). Social acceptance for the development of a waste-to-energy plant in an urban area. Resources Conservation and Recycling, 55 (9-10), 857-863.

Humes, E. (2012). Garbology: Our dirty love affair with trash. New York: Avery, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Kaplan, P.O., Decarolis, J., & Thorneloe, S. (2009). Is it better to burn or bury waste for clean electricity generation? Environmental Science and Technology, 43 (6), 1711-1717.

Porteous, A. (2005). Why energy from waste incineration is an essential component of environmentally responsible waste management, 1st UK Conference on Biodegradable and Residual Waste Management, Harrogate, England. Waste Management, 25 (4), 451-459.

Riber, C., Hander, G.S., & Christensen, T.H. (2008). Environmental assessment of waste incineration in a life-cycle-perspective. Waste Management and Research, 26 (1), 96-103.

Schuhmacher, M. & Domingo, J.L. (2006). Long-term study of environmental levels of dioxins and furans in the vicinity of a municipal solid waste incinerator. Environment International, 32 (3), 397-404.