Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology - GAIA

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6 Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology
Introduction Dealing with waste is a challenge common to all human societies. Nature makes no waste: in healthy ecosystems, one species’ waste becomes food for the next, in an endless cycle. Modern societies interrupt this cycle in three ways. First, technology has created a wide range of substances that do not exist in nature. Human discards are thus increasingly comprised of plastics, metals, and natural materials laced with hazardous substances (for example, bleached and inked paper), which, in many cases, are difficult or impossible for natural ecosystems to break down. Second, industrial societies use and dispose of much more material per person than their predecessors, and than their counterparts in the less industrialized world. Third, rapid population growth increases the number of people and the total amount of waste generated. As a result, the global ecosystem is overwhelmed, both quantitatively and qualitatively, with what we discard. Ultimately, human societies rely on the natural environment for all their material needs, including food, clothing, shelter, breathable air, drinkable water, and raw materials for manufacturing and construction. At the same time, all human discards go to the environment. When humans were few and of limited technological capability, we could afford to ignore the relationship between these two processes. Now that we dominate the global ecosystem, that is no longer the case. At the same time that we are confronted with rapid destruction and growing scarcity of natural resources — deforestation, declining fisheries, contaminated groundwater, and so on — we are producing ever-larger quantities of waste that is more hazardous than ever. And our waste disposal practices are increasingly imperiling our resource base. The conventional wisdom of the waste management industry is that there are only two things to do with waste: burn it or bury it. As the volume, toxicity and persistence of waste have increased, the systems built to deal with it — incinerators and landfills — have become ever more complicated. Modern sanitary landfills may look a little like traditional open dumps, but they are much more complex and expensive, with such features as triple liners, leachate collection systems, multiple, self-contained cells, daily cover, and a permanent cap upon closure. Similarly, modern incinerators are extremely complicated systems, and are among the most expensive of public works. In the end, spending vast sums on landfills and incinerators has created more problems than it has solved. Luckily, there are better alternatives than landfills and incinerators, even the so-called state of the art burners. As shown by the complementary paradigms of Clean Production and Zero Waste, waste is tangible evidence of economic inefficiency and lost resources. These approaches, at the front and back ends of the materials cycle, work in tandem to replace wasteful, linear systems of production and disposal with cyclical manufacturing processes and product reuse and recycling. Products are redesigned with an eye to elimination of substances that pose disposal hazards or impede recycling. Such an approach reduces the quantity and toxicity of both manufacturing inputs and consumer wastes. By combining a Clean Production approach with Zero Waste systems, communities can eliminate (or “reduce”), re-use, or recycle the vast majority of their municipal waste. 1 These two approaches work in tandem to transform the Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology 7
Page 1 and 2: Waste Incineration: A Dying Technol
Page 3 and 4: “In this century of progress, wit
Page 5 and 6: Table of Contents Executive Summary
Page 7 and 8: Executive Summary Incinerators are
Page 9 and 10: Organics contaminate the recyclable
Page 11: In Japan, the most incinerator-inte
Page 15 and 16: Section 1: THE PROBLEMS OF INCINERA
Page 17 and 18: Health Effects of Dioxins The healt
Page 19 and 20: dioxin. In one rat study, a single
Page 21 and 22: “Dioxins have never killed anyone
Page 23 and 24: Other Toxic Metals Incinerators typ
Page 25 and 26: PROBLEMS OF CONTROLLING AIR EMISSIO
Page 27 and 28: “In monitoring for compliance or
Page 29 and 30: At the same time, high furnace temp
Page 31 and 32: Incinerator Ash Re-use: the Example
Page 33 and 34: The most technologically advanced i
Page 35 and 36: plant, pay for plant upgrades, pay
Page 37 and 38: perform an important service by ret
Page 39 and 40: In many cases, incineration also co
Page 41 and 42: The movement that sprang up to comb
Page 43 and 44: Lack of robustness of technology. I
Page 45 and 46: Section 2: ALTERNATIVES TO INCINERA
Page 47 and 48: wastes that result from production
Page 49 and 50: Waste of materials: Landfills remov
Page 51 and 52: The success of this system — for
Page 53 and 54: Waste Composition in Selected Count
Page 55 and 56: EPR programs are intended to elimin
Page 57 and 58: Getting to Zero: Steps Towards a Ze
Page 59 and 60: municipal waste, as long as it is k
Page 61 and 62: Tackling the Medwaste Monster Altho
Page 63 and 64:
The four principles of Clean Produc
Page 65 and 66:
Waste Not a Drop When Namibian Brew
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Effective hazardous waste treatment
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Non-combustion technologies are sta
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plants dried up, large engineering
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Davidson County, North Carolina is
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Waste Incineration: A Dying Technol
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in the closure of some existing pla
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een effective in preventing the con
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the marine environment are likely t
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The International Joint Commission
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incinerators. As feasible alternati
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For individuals and activists, ther
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geographic term. Cf. Southern. PBTs
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fluorenone dibenzothiophene pentach
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Massachusetts, 1991: state enacted
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Dellinger, B., Taylor, P., Tiery, D
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Huang, H., and Beukens, A., “On t
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Agency, 2000. Seifman, David, “Mi
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ENDNOTES 1. Composting, which recyc
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132. ECOTEC, 2000. 133. Hogg, 2002.
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Resource Organizations: Global Anti
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Srishti / Toxics Link H-2 Jungpura
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