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Municipal waste incineration
A poor solution for the twenty first century
Paul Connett's
speech
on incineration and waste reduction
A presentation by
Dr. Paul Connett Professor of Chemistry
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY 13617.
At the 4th Annual International Management Conference
Waste-To-Energy
Nov. 24 & 25, 1998
Amsterdam.
About the author
Dr. Paul
Connett is a full and tenured professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University
in Canton, New York, where he has taught for 15 years. He obtained his
undergraduate degree in natural sciences from Cambridge University and
his Ph.D. in chemistry from Dartmouth College in the US. For the past 14
years he has researched waste management issues with a special emphasis
on the dangers posed by incineration and the safer and more sustainable
non-burn alternatives.
He has
attended numerous international symposia on dioxin, and with his colleague
Tom Webster has presented six papers at these symposia which have been
subsequently published in Chemosphere. He has given over 1500 public presentations
on these issues in 48 states in the US and 40 other countries. With his
wife Ellen he edits the newsletter Waste
Not, which is in its twelfth year of publication. With Roger Bailey,
Professor of Fine Arts at St. Lawrence University, he has produced over
40 videotapes on waste management, dioxin and other environmental issues.
Executive Summary
Far
from it being the universally proven technology claimed by its promoters,
the incineration of municipal trash with energy recovery has been an experiment
which after 20 years has left the citizens of industrialised countries
with a legacy of unacceptably high levels of dioxins and related compounds
in their food, their tissues, their babies and in wild life. The
author argues that as the industry has struggled to make incineration safe,
they have, like the nuclear power industry before them, priced themselves
out of the market. Moreover, as they have sought air pollution control
devices to capture the extremely toxic by-products of combustion, the resulting
residues have become more problematic and costly to handle, dispose and
contain. There are still remaining concerns about the safety of incinerators,
especially as they are built in developing economies, which do not have
the resources to build, operate or monitor them properly.
However, even
if these concerns are overcome, as we move into the twenty first century,
the role of trash incineration, with or without energy recovery, will become
less and less viable, both economically and environmentally. Our
future task will be dominated by a need to find sustainable ways of living
on the planet. Those who have been preoccupied with making incineration
safe have lavished their engineering ingenuity on the wrong question. Society's
task is not to perfect the destruction of our waste, but to find ways to
avoid making it. The argument that burning waste can be used to recover
energy makes for good sales promotion, but the reality is that if saving
energy is the goal, then more energy can be saved by society as a whole
by reusing and recycling objects and materials than can be recovered by
burning them. Municipal waste is a low-tech problem. It is made by mixing.
It is unmade by separation.
Both problem
and solution are at our fingertips, not on the drawing boards of Swiss
or Swedish engineers. In the longer term, after the citizen has played
his or her part by supporting source separation, reuse, recycling, composting
and toxic removal, industry has to pay more attention to the way objects
and materials are made and used. How an object is going to be reused or
recycled has to be built into the initial design decisions
To recognise
that it is overconsumption that is giving us both global warming and a
waste disposal crisis, is to recognise that trash is the most concrete
connection each individual has to the global crisis. More effort has to
be put into resisting the largely post-war American philosophy that "the
more one consumes the happier one becomes'", before it makes the planet
uninhabitable. A way has to be found to tame the voracious appetites of
the multinational corporations which plunder the world for short-term profit.
This cannot be done until we as individuals find a way to resist the skilful
advertising that traps us within a whole web of false needs. The antidote
to overconsumption is community building. The fierce local arguments that
ensue over the siting of both landfills and incinerators can be used to
force these issues onto the political agenda.
Incineration might make sense if we had another planet to go to,
but without that sci-fi escape, it must be resisted in favour of more down-to-earth
solutions that we can live with, both within our local communities and
on the planet as a whole. Both incineration and raw waste landfilling attempt
to bury the evidence of an unacceptable throwaway lifestyle. Every incinerator
built delays this fundamental discussion by at least 20 years.
Introduction
As I deliver
these comments I am very conscious of the fact that many of the people
sitting in this audience earn their living from the operation of incinerators.
They will probably find many of my views antithetical to their own. I applaud
the organisers of this conference for having the courage to allow me to
speak. Too often, decision-makers do not discover the downside to incineration
until the wrath of the public is unleashed. To paraphrase the words of
Shakespeare's character Mark Anthony, I come here not to praise the idea
of the incineration of municipal waste with energy recovery, but to bury
it. However, whether you agree with my position or not, I hope you agree
with Joseph Joubert, who said, " 'Tis better to debate a question without
settling it, than to settle a question without debating it". In my view,
incineration of municipal waste looks back to the nineteenth century, not
forward to the twenty first. Indeed, the first waste-to-energy plant was
operating in Hamburg, Germany in 1895.
I will argue
that even if the finest engineers were able to make incineration safe -
i.e. captured all of the toxic emissions and found a safe method of handling
and storing the ash - from an ethical point of view, they would not have
made the incineration of trash acceptable. It simply doesn't make ethical
sense to spend so much time, money and effort destroying materials we should
be sharing with the future. Thus, those who have set themselves the Herculean
task of perfecting the art and science of incineration, have poured a massive
amount of attention into the wrong end of the problem and produced a sophisticated
set of answers to the wrong question. As we prepare to enter the twenty
first century, society's task is not find a new place or a new machine
in which to put the trash, but to find ways of not making waste in the
first place.
When one
first hears about trash incineration it seems like a good idea. I certainly
thought so. It promised to rid our Northern NY county of 32 leaking landfills
and to produce energy as well. It seemed like a win-win situation. For
a municipal official beleaguered with the responsibility for a mountain
of trash coming at him or her on a daily basis it appears to offer a quick
fix solution, with little or no modification of the existing infrastructure
for picking up trash. For a politician with citizens yelling at him or
her because they don't want to live near a proposed landfill, or the expansion
of an old one, the modern waste-to-energy incinerator looks like a perfect
political escape plan.
It is only when
one spends time looking below the surface appeal of these facilities that
one realises the huge backward step they represent, environmentally, socially,
economically and from the point of view of moving towards a sustainable
society.
I will discuss the arguments against building more trash incinerators
under seven headings. They are:
1. Toxic emissions
1.1
Hydrogen chloride is formed.
1.2
Nitric oxide is generated.
1.3
Toxic metals are released.
1.3.1 Mercury, a highly problematic pollutant,
is difficult to control.
1.4
Dioxins, Furans and other by-products of combustion are formed.
1.4.1 Post combustion
formation of dioxin.
1.4.2 The fly ash dioxin problem.
1.4.3 No continuous
monitoring of dioxins possible.
1.4.4 Rising concern
about current dioxin levels.
1.4.5 Dioxin
emissions easily captured in food chains.
1.4.6 Ireland.
1.4.7 Advances
in one country do not always translate to success in others.
1.5
End-of-the-pipe control
1.6
Modifications to counteract one pollutant can lead to increases in others.
1.6.1. UK.
2. Ash disposal.
2.1
Fly ash hazard often obscured.
2.2 Ash represents a Catch-22 for the incineration industry.
3. Economic costs.
3.1.
Incinerators are formidably expensive.
3.2.
Very few jobs are created for this massive economic investment.
3.3
Most of the money invested in the incinerator leaves the community.
3.4
Loss of capital is acute in developing economies.
3.5
Taxpayers usually find out true costs when it is too late.
3.5.1 Flow control outlawed
in the US.
4. The waste of energy involved.
4.1.
Modern incinerators do produce saleable energy.
4.2 Reality versus Public relations.
4.2.1 Consider these simple points:
4.3
Recycling saves more energy than incineration yields.
4.4
A larger vision is needed.
5. Public opposition.
5.1.
In the US incineration is the most unpopular technology since nuclear power.
5.2
US development at a standstill.
5.3
Opposition in other countries.
5.3.1 Germany.
5.3.2 France.
5.3.3 Bangladesh.
5.4
The dangers of ignoring public opinion.
5.5
Look at more than one option.
5.6
Even a true believer should not lead with incineration.
5.7
The non-burn alternatives are more popular.
6. A few words on the alternatives.
6.1
Landfills.
6.2
The importance of composting.
6.3
Integrated waste management.
6.4
Five principles.
7. Sustainability.
7.1
Cheap fossil fuels conceal our non-sustainability.
7.2
Incineration is a wasted opportunity.
7.3
Forces behind overconsumption.
7.4
Fighting the dominant paradigm.
7.5
Community building.
1. Toxic emissions
Introduction.
Let me acknowledge out the outset that the incineration industry has
made huge strides in reducing the emissions of toxic substances since the
70's, 80's, and even the early '90s. However, this improvement has not
been uniform. For example, it is only recently that France has been forced
to take the dioxin problem seriously. The industry's task has been very
complicated, their solutions inevitably incomplete and most importantly,
not likely to be reproduced in countries where their regulatory apparatus
is less competent, or their budget is inadequate to pay for the massive
costs involved. Most chemists blink when they see
more than three chemicals in a test tube. The task set by a modern incinerator
is to burn all the substances society produces in one huge machine,
as well as tapping the energy liberated to generate heat and/or electricity
efficiently. In this extremely complicated process, a number of things
occur.
1.1 Hydrogen chloride is formed.
Most of the chlorine in the waste stream is converted into hydrogen
chloride; a strong acid gas which at high temperatures will attack most
metals it meets. Most of the hydrogen chloride can be removed with alkaline
scrubbing devices before the flue gases leave the stack, but not necessarily
before this acid gas has damaged some of the materials from which the incinerator
is built. Furnace linings, ductwork and boiler tubes need frequent and
costly attention.
1.2 Nitric oxide is generated.
At the high temperatures of combustion the nitrogen and oxygen in the
air combine to form nitric oxide (NO). Because this gas is neutral, it
cannot be removed by scrubbers using alkaline chemicals, such as lime.
Systems involving the injection of ammonia or urea can convert some of
the nitric oxide back into nitrogen, but these high-energy reagents are
expensive (they are normally used as fertilisers) and the removal of the
nitric oxide is only about 60% effective. Any nitric oxide that is not
removed is later converted by sunlight into nitrogen dioxide (NO2) which
contributes to photochemical smog and acid rain.
1.3 Toxic metals are released.
At the temperatures of combustion many of the toxic metals such as
lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and chromium are liberated from otherwise
fairly stable matrices like plastics. Furthermore, they are liberated in
the form of tiny particles or gases, which, if they escape from the stack,
vastly increase the potential surface area of contact between themselves
and the environment. They also penetrate deep into human lungs, where they
are rapidly exchanged with the bloodstream.
The traditional
method of removing metals from emissions is via particulate control devices
such as electrostatic precipitators or baghouses (fabric filters). The
former, while being very robust, are less efficient at removing the tiniest
particles of concern. The latter are more efficient but suffer from breakage
and blockage and need careful maintenance.
1.3.1 Mercury, a highly problematic
pollutant, is difficult to control.
A particularly problematic metal has been mercury. At the temperature
of combustion it is a gas and evades the simple particulate control discussed
above. As a result trash incineration has been a major source of mercury
going into the environment. Many modern incinerators now employ activated
carbon to absorb the mercury. However, this is another expensive item,
and the public needs a way of knowing that the activated carbon is being
used continuously, because no trash incinerator,
that I am aware of, monitors toxic metal emissions on a continuous basis.
Mercury removal poses several further questions.
What is the
fate of the mercury captured on the activated carbon or the fly ash residues?
Is the spent charcoal sent for reactivation, if so where does the mercury
go? Is the spent charcoal burned in the incinerator, in which case where
does the mercury go, as it can't stay in the incinerator forever? How does
the presence of activated carbon effect the leaching and other characteristics
of ash disposed of in landfills? In hot climates will the mercury evaporate
from the ash?
1.4 Dioxins,
Furans and other by-products of combustion are formed.
Shortly after the infamous accident in Seveso,
Italy, (1976) which made the chemical 2,3,7,8-Tetra Chlorinated Dibenzo-para-Dioxin
(2,3,7,8-TCDD or the singular "dioxin"), into a household word, Kees Olie
and co-workers in the Netherlands identified this same substance in the
emissions from trash incinerators. They, and subsequent workers, also found
many other members of the dioxin family (there are 75 poly chlorinated
dibenzo para dioxins, or PCDDs) and members of the furan family (there
are 135 poly chlorinated dibenzo furans, or PCDFs) in these emissions.
The major response to this discovery from consultants
representing the incinerator industry was to claim that as long as the
incinerator furnace was operated at a high temperature all the dioxins
and furans would be destroyed, however these claims were subsequently found
to be based on fraudulent manipulation of the data.
1.4.1 Post
combustion formation of dioxin.
In 1985, the reason why high temperatures alone could not solve the
dioxin problem was revealed at the International Symposium on Dioxin held
in Bayreuth, Germany. Two groups showed that dioxins could be reformed
after the flue gases left the combustion chamber. It
is now well established that if the flue gases from an incinerator are
passed through air pollution control devices operating at temperatures
in the range 200-400 degrees Celsius, more than a hundred fold increase
in dioxin and furan formation can take place. A strategy that would
essentially minimise post combustion formation of dioxin would require
the quenching of the flue gases immediately after they emerge from the
combustion chamber. However, this strategy conflicts with the aim of generating
electricity, because this requires the flue gases to go through boilers
to generate steam to drive turbines, thus delaying the moment when flue
gas quenching occurs.
1.4.2 The fly ash dioxin
problem.
Without the immediate quenching system, the fly ash collected in the
scrubbing devices will be contaminated with dioxins and furans.
While some commentators
have argued that modern incinerators are net destroyers of dioxins and
furans this argument does not hold if more appropriate dioxin levels
in the incoming waste are assumed and if the dioxins in the fly ash and
the bottom ash are included. A hundred times more
dioxin may leave the facility on the fly ash, than from the air emissions.
However, until recently, regulatory agencies, particularly the US EPA,
have turned a blind eye to the dioxins and furans left on the fly ash,
even though in some cases the combined ash (a combination of bottom ash
and fly ash) is being used as daily cover in some US landfills. In stark
contrast, in Japan, as a result of growing concern about the dioxin problem
there, the government announced in 1997 that they were limiting the total
dioxin emissions (i.e. air emissions plus fly ash plus bottom ash) to 5
micrograms of dioxin International Toxic Equivalents (I-TEQ) per metric
ton of trash burned. According to presentations made at Dioxin '97 in Indianapolis,
this will almost certainly require the fly ash from Japanese incinerators
to be vitrified, which will still further escalate the costs of incineration.
1.4.3
No continuous monitoring of dioxins possible.
Even when the most stringent precautions are
taken to minimise dioxin air emissions it is still very difficult to convince
the public that the emissions are low because there is no equipment available
in the world capable of monitoring dioxins and furans on a continuous basis.
Instead, we have to rely on measurements made on a spot-check basis, with
advance notice given to the operator that they are going to be monitored
on a particular day. It is very rare for this to occur more than once a
year. Indeed, until recently, very few incinerators in the US had been
measured more than once in their whole operating lifetime.
Thus, even
with the best designed incinerators, the public is still hostage to how
well they are operated, maintained and monitored over their lifetime
of 20 years or more. The potential problems are well illustrated by the
Indianapolis incinerator. This modern facility went on line in late 1988.
Through tenacious sleuthing by a local environmental group, it emerged
that this facility violated its permit limits over 6000 times, including
by-passing its air pollution control devices 18 times, in the first two
years of operation. In addition, the incinerator had 27 boiler tube failures
within one year.
No one knows
what the dioxin emissions were like when these events took place. In short,
in most countries neither the regulatory authorities nor the industry has
been able to put the monitoring of dioxin from these facilities onto a
truly scientific foundation. The matter threatens to get worse as these
incinerators get built in Southern and former Eastern European countries,
where current regulatory control abilities are already low and where they
have no facilities to monitor dioxin even on a spot-check basis.
1.4.4 Rising
concern about current dioxin levels.
Dioxin emissions have to be put against the backdrop of an increasing
public concern about background dioxin levels in the environment, in our
food and in our tissues.
Of particular
concern, is the fact that the highest doses of these potent endocrine-disrupting
chemicals are reaching us from our food and being delivered to the unborn
foetus. While industry spokespersons frequently argue that dioxin emissions
are extremely low (especially when compared to conventional pollutants),
the counter argument is to note that dioxins interfere
with several hormonal systems, in which the hormones function in human
tissues at part per trillion levels. A critical finding occurred
in 1992, when Dutch scientists discovered that even at background exposures
dioxin was capable of interfering with the thyroid metabolism of babies
at one week of age.
1.4.5
Dioxin emissions easily captured in food chains.
Any dioxin released from an incinerator, be it in large quantities
from badly operated facilities, or smaller quantities from better run ones,
is readily captured by grazing animals and fish. In 1986, Tom Webster and
I calculated that one litre of milk would deliver as much dioxins as a
human would get breathing the air next to the cow for eight months.
More recent
calculations indicate that in one day a grazing cow puts as much dioxin
into its body (from dioxin which has deposited on the grass), as a human
being would get if he or she breathed the air next to the cow for fourteen
years. This is not just an academic affair. In 1989, 16 dairy farmers downwind
of a huge incinerator in Rotterdam, were told not to sell their milk, because
it contained three times higher dioxin levels than anywhere else in the
Netherlands.
This situation
continued until 1995 by which time the incinerator had been retrofitted.
Nor was this concern put to rest in 1995. In January of this year (1998)
three incinerators were shut down in the Lisle area of France, because
local milk produced downwind of these facilities had been contaminated
with dioxin to levels three times higher than the permitted sale level
(5 parts per trillion TEQ in the milk fat).
1.4.6 Ireland.
Ireland provides an indicator of how large the legacy of dioxin pollution
from incinerators has been. A little publicised report from Ireland indicates
just how extensive the contamination of the European milk supply from dioxin
has been. Dr. Christopher Rappe analysed 32 cows' milk samples from different
parts of Ireland.
The reported levels ranged from 0.12 to 0.51 ppt. (parts per trillion)
of dioxin I-TEQs in the milk fat, with an average of 0.23 ppt. These levels
are much lower than the levels reported in Switzerland, Germany, Holland,
France and the UK. In my view it is significant that Ireland has no trash
incinerators.
1.4.7 Advances
in one country do not always translate to success in others.
Again and again, optimistic reports about how well one particular country,
or one particular incinerator, has done with limiting dioxin emissions,
has been used to promote the building of incinerators in other countries,
where the operators are neither as conscientious nor the regulators as
competent.
For example,
long after Swedish consultants and scientists had told the world that Sweden
had solved the dioxin emission problem (about 1986), incinerators were
built and operated in the US which had extremely high dioxin emissions.
For example
a 2000 ton per day trash incinerator built in Norfolk, Virginia in 1988,
was found in 1994, to be putting out more dioxin (approximately 2000 grams
of toxic equivalents per year) than the combined emissions from all of
the traffic, incinerators, industry and all other sources in Sweden, Germany
and the Netherlands added together.
1.5 End-of-the-pipe control
The attention being paid to end-of-the-pipe dioxin control on incinerators
will not solve the dioxin contamination of the environment. Whether one
accepts the need for trash incineration or not, one has to applaud the
efforts and success of those who have reduced dioxin emissions from these
facilities. However, this effort cannot solve the dioxin problem generated
by municipal waste. As long as chlorinated plastics like poly vinyl chloride
(PVC) and poly vinylidine dichloride (PVDC) are present in the waste stream,
dioxins and furans are going to be generated in every back yard burner,
landfill fire, roadside burning and accidental fires in homes, businesses
and industry.
The reduction
of dioxin emissions in northern incinerators should not make us complacent
about the potential dioxin contamination from the building of inferior
quality incinerators in southern countries and the continued contamination
from the casual and accidental burning of trash in both north and south.
In my view, the dioxin problem can only be solved by phasing out the use
of chlorinated plastics and the industrial use of chlorine.
1.6 Modifications
to counteract one pollutant can lead to increases in others.
The incineration industry has had to develop
on the fly. New scientific and environmental findings trigger new
pollution control devices and expensive retrofits. Incinerators are built
and financed with the expectation that they will operate at least 20 years.
However, incinerators operating today look very different from those built
20 years ago. We can anticipate that those operating 20 years from now
will look very different from today's.
The trouble with making changes on the fly, is
that a solution to one pollutant problem, may make other pollutant problems
worse.
For example,
the demand for higher furnace temperatures and better combustion to combat
the dioxin problem, led to higher nitric oxide formation, the greater liberation
of toxic metals, and reduced mercury control (less soot available for mercury
absorption). Both the desire to capture energy via water boilers and the
use of electrostatic precipitators for particulate control, increased the
post combustion formation of dioxin. The use of lime and baghouse scrubbing
combinations has led to a more toxic fly ash product. The public has had
to live through this ongoing experiment for many years, and continues to
do so.
For example,
in 1993, the citizens of Columbus, Ohio, who were
aroused by anecdotal reports of an increase in rare neurological symptoms
and other illnesses, including cancer, in the vicinity of a 2000 ton per
day incinerator, discovered that measurements made at the facility
in 1992, but not reported to the public, indicated that nearly 1000 grams
of dioxin TEQs were being emitted from the facility annually. This was
more than the total dioxin generated in the whole of Germany at that time.
The citizens received two further shocks. First, scientists from the US
EPA reported at Dioxin '93, that the total quantity of dioxin emitted from
all the US trash incinerators combined (about 130 at that time) was between
60 and 200 grams of dioxin TEQs (24), which was less than the single Columbus
incinerator by itself. Second, the Ohio Health department
reported that a 1000 grams of dioxin (about one half of a Seveso accident)
falling annually on their heads and surrounding areas posed no health problems.
1.6.1.UK.
In the UK, officials have had to admit that their
trash incinerators operating in the '70s, '80s and even into the early
'90s, could not meet new European dioxin standards without major retrofits,
and that these "old" incinerators had been responsible for putting most
of the dioxin into the UK environment, including cows' milk. We have already
noted that both the range and the average dioxin level in cows' milk in
the UK (i.e. background levels) is much higher than the truer "background"
levels in Ireland. Instead of issuing a massive apology for permitting
this pollution of the food supply, the UK is currently proposing to build
more incinerators as part of their "alternative" energy program.
2. Ash Disposal
Introduction.
There are two kinds of ash generated by an incinerator: the bottom
ash which falls through the grate system in the furnace (about 90% of the
ash), and the fly ash, which is the very fine material which is collected
in the boilers, the heat exchangers and the air pollution control devices.
As
far as toxic metals are concerned, it is a chemical truism to state that
the better the air pollution control the more toxic the fly ash becomes
2.1 Fly ash hazard often
obscured.
In some jurisdictions like Ontario, Canada and Germany, the fly ash
is assumed to be a highly toxic material and is automatically sent to hazardous
waste containment facilities. In Japan, current regulations will probably
force the vitrification of the fly ash. However, in other jurisdictions
the toxicity of the fly ash (particularly) is obscured by three things:
a) the mixing of the fly ash with the bottom ash before testing and disposal,
b) not testing for the absolute levels of toxics like metals and dioxins
in the ash, but rather only looking at what dissolves out of the ash during
a leachate test and c) the interference of the lime present in the ash
with some of these leaching tests. All three of these
machinations particularly pertain in the US. Because of this situation,
in my view, neither workers nor members of the public have been fully warned
of the dangers of being directly exposed to this ash.
Further, in
some jurisdictions the ash is being handled and disposed of in a cavalier
fashion, which while it may save the operators money, is highly unsatisfactory
from an environmental point of view. For example, in the Netherlands, as
of 1994, 35% of the fly ash was going into asphalt. In the US combined
ash has gone directly to municipal landfills and mixed with trash containing
organic material. In many instances it is used for landfill cover. Elsewhere,
the fly ash has been used to make concrete, with no warning on the product
label that it contains toxic metals or dioxins.
2.2
Ash represents a Catch-22 for the incineration industry.
If handled properly, ash makes incineration prohibitively
expensive, for all but the wealthiest communities. If handled improperly,
it poses both short and long term health and environmental dangers.
3. Economic costs
3.1. Incinerators
are formidably expensive.
At the time the small incinerator proposal (200 tons per day) was defeated
in our county in Northern NY (St. Lawrence County), in 1990, the capital
costs had risen to $34 million. The investment firm Moodys had estimated
that the tipping fee (the cost to consumers of delivering one ton of trash
to the facility) would be a staggering $180 per ton. Such tipping fees
have essentially eliminated facilities in the US much smaller than 750
tons per day. In 1983, a 1500 ton per day facility built in North Andover,
with only a three field electrostatic precipitator for air pollution control,
cost about $190 million.
The current
tipping fee is $95 per ton, but could rise as high as $200 per ton in order
to pay for new air pollution control. A 1000 ton per day facility which
went on line in 1994 in Syracuse, NY, and fitted with state-of- the-art
air pollution control, cost $178 million. A 2000 ton per day facility,
which went on line near Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1995, cost a massive
$600 million with half the investment going into air pollution control.
Tipping fees reported from some German incinerators are staggering.
3.2. Very few jobs are created for this massive economic investment.
Most of the money spent on these incinerators is going into complicated
equipment. Apart from the number of jobs created in the building of the
plant, very few permanent jobs are forthcoming. A large incinerator may
employ about 100 workers. On the other hand, if the community puts its
efforts into source separation, reuse and repair, recycling and composting,
a very large number of jobs are created, both in the actual handling of
the waste and in the secondary industries which utilise the recovered material.
3.3
Most of the money invested in the incinerator leaves the community.
The huge engineering firms that build incinerators are seldom located
in the host community and thus most of the money invested leaves the community
(and the country if the company is foreign based). On the other hand, money
invested in the low tech alternatives stays in the community creating local
jobs and stimulating other forms of community development.
3.4
Loss of capital is acute in developing economies.
Developing economies, can ill afford to lose capital and local job
opportunities. In 1997, authorities in the Philippines were considering
three large trash incinerators for the Manila area (and as many as 7 others
outside Manila). The Danish company Volund is offering to build a 1300
ton per day facility at the old, and infamous, Smoky Mountain dump, to
burn excavated plastics from the old landfill there.
The American
company, Ogden Martin is being considered to build a 2000 ton per day facility
at the Carmona landfill, just outside Manila, and the Swiss Swedish conglomerate
Asea Brown and Boveri (ABB) is part of a proposal to build a 4500 ton per
day facility (which would be the largest in the world) at the San Mateo
landfill.
It is extremely
frustrating to witness the potential squandering of huge amounts of taxpayers'
money on these capital intensive facilities, while the largely voluntary
and local efforts to develop recycling and composting programs in the Barangays
(small political jurisdictions within the city) wither for lack of financial
and governmental support. These truths are often concealed from taxpayers,
because the incinerator projects are frequently promoted as being "privately
financed". This coupled with the PR hype of "waste-to-energy" tricks many
into believing that the public will not be paying for these facilities,
when in fact, apart from a relatively minor return from energy sales (discussed
below) the bulk of the repayment on the investment (plus profits) has to
come from the tipping fee which comes out of the public exchequer.
3.5
Taxpayers usually find out true costs when it is too late.
In order to pay back the massive investment involved in building an
incinerator, the builder usually has to secure contracts which commit communities
to deliver their trash to the facility for an extended period of time.
The latter have to sign a so-called "put-or-pay" agreement.
These commit
the communities to deliver a prescribed amount of trash to the incinerator
each month or year, at a fixed rate, and should they fail to do so they
have to pay the scheduled amount anyway.
3.5.1 Flow control
outlawed in the US.
In the US, the Supreme Court threw a monkey wrench into this system
when it ruled that these kind of "flow control" measures as applied to
waste haulers were unconstitutional, claiming that they interfered with
"inter-state commerce". In short, waste haulers are now allowed to take
the waste where they choose. This means that in many states, trash haulers
are taking the waste to distant landfills where the tipping fee is much
cheaper.
For example,
in 1998, the spot market price for getting rid of trash in Massachusetts
is about $45 a ton, which means that facilities like the North Andover
incinerator, charging $95 a ton tipping fee, are in serious financial trouble.
In New Jersey, political leaders are in a turmoil trying to work out how
to finance the remaining $1.6 billion debt on the five incinerators that
have been built there (at one point NJ wanted to build 22 incinerators!)
(29). Again, each incinerator is not receiving the amount of waste (and
hence income) anticipated.
The current
debate is over who should pay off these debts: the county operating the
incinerator, the counties using the incinerator or the state as a whole.
4. Incineration is
a waste of energy
4.1.
Modern incinerators do produce saleable energy.
The modern trash incinerator can be used to generate hot water, steam
and/or electricity. Trash in industrialised countries contains enough paper
and plastic for it to burn without the need of any (or much) auxiliary
fuel. As few communities recover energy from the waste dumped into landfills,
this energy recovery represents a net energy gain to the local community.
Long term contracts
for the sale of steam to local companies, or state facilities, like prisons,
can sometimes be secured or the sale of electricity to power utilities
can be negotiated. In some cases state or national governments require
the utilities to purchase the energy from incinerators. In the UK, the
government even offers subsidies to trash incineration under its Non-Fossil
Fuel Obligation (NFFO) incentive scheme to promote alternatives to fossil
fuels for power generation.
4.2 Reality versus Public
relations.
While, the claim that the modern trash incinerator is a "waste-to-energy"
facility makes for good public relations, the reality is that they produce
very little energy and energy production certainly doesn't justify the
huge costs involved in building them. For example, the 1500 ton per day
facility built in North Andover (Massachusetts) at a cost of $190 million,
receives trash from about half a million people, but only provides enough
electricity to power 28,000 homes.
All of Japan's
193 waste-to-energy incinerators combined produce less energy than one
nuclear power station and if the United States burned all its municipal
waste it would contribute less than 1% of the country's energy needs.
4.2.1 Consider these
simple points:
1) A trash incinerator is the only kind of power
station which gets paid to accept the fuel it burns.
2) The costs of generating electricity increases significantly, as
the fuel gets dirtier and trash is the dirtiest fuel burned in any "power
station". Enormous amounts of money have to go into air pollution control
and ash disposal, if these are done properly.
3) A trash incinerator has to run for several years before there is
a net production of energy. Large quantities of energy have to go into
building; operating, maintaining and dismantling it after its life is over.
4) The economics of paying for the building and running of an incinerator
revolve around the tipping fee paid by communities to use the facility.
The income from electricity sales is a minor contributor. For example a
facility I visited in Poggibonzi, Italy, in 1998, was receiving 10 times
more money from tipping fees than they were obtaining from the sale of
electricity.
4.3
Recycling saves more energy than incineration yields.
The most telling argument against the waste-to-energy promotion comes
from two studies performed in the US which show that if the currently marketable
recyclable material, which is typically burned in a modern trash incinerator,
was recycled instead, some 3-5 times as much energy would be saved compared
to that produced from it being burned. The reason for this big difference
is that incineration can only recover the some of the calorific value contained
in the trash. It cannot recover any of the energy invested in the extraction,
processing, fabrication and chemical synthesis involved in the manufacture
of the objects and materials in the waste stream. Reuse and recycling can.
4.4 A larger vision is needed.
From a national or global perspective, an incinerator is a "waste-of-energy"
facility not a "waste-to-energy" facility. Unfortunately, this is often
lost on the local decision-maker, who sees a net local production of energy
compared to land filling.
A larger vision
is needed to see the loss of energy that incineration represents. Simply
put, every time a local community burns something the larger community
has to replace it with all the huge energy costs of primary processing
and fabrication. It is only reuse; recycling and composting that allows
us to partially reduce the energy (and pollution) costs of primary processing
and fabrication.
5. Public Opposition
5.1.
In the US incineration is the most unpopular technology since nuclear power.
Since 1985, in the US, over 300 trash incinerators,
have been defeated or put on hold.
In 1985, California had plans for 35 incinerators, only 3 were built,
the rest were cancelled. In 1985, New Jersey had plans for 22 trash incinerators,
only 5 have been built. A sixth planned for Mercer County was finally defeated
after many years of struggle, in November 1996. Since 1994, more incinerators
have been closed down than those that have gone on line.
5.2 US development at a
standstill.
As of this writing (October 1998) there is not
one active proposal to build a trash incinerator of any significant size
(i.e. above 40 tons per day) in the US. The last proposal considered
was one by Foster Wheeler in the town of Pennsville, NJ. Not only did the
County Commissioners reject this proposal, but Foster Wheeler has announced
since this defeat and a humiliating debacle with the fluidised bed incinerator
which it built in Robbins, Illinois, that it is getting out of the Waste-
to-energy incineration business in the US (35).
Several other large engineering firms have pulled out of the incinerator
business in the US, including Combustion Engineering, Blount, Dravo, Westinghouse,
General Electric and Ebasco.
This leaves
only three major players: Ogden Martin, Wheelabrator and American Refuel.
Two of these are owned by major waste companies (WMI and BFI) which can
cover their loss on the incinerator front with developments in other areas
of their waste business.
5.3 Opposition in other
countries.
It isn't just the US where incineration has proved so unpopular. There
has been strong opposition to new incinerator proposals in Australia, Belgium,
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland,
Spain, the UK and many other countries, both in the North and in
the South. There is not enough time to go into much detail here, but three
countries provide particularly interesting examples.
5.3.1 Germany.
Germany is considered by many to build, operate and regulate their
incinerators better than any other country, and yet the opposition to the
building of new incinerators there since the late '80s has been intense.
For example, a citizens' coalition called "Das Bessere Mullkoncept"(the
Better Garbage Concept) in 1990, was able to get a referendum on the ballot
in Bavaria which would have virtually eliminated trash incineration as
a waste option. At that time the Bavarian government was planning 17 new
incinerators.
The coalition
was able to get over one million people to go to their town halls, in a
12 day period, to sign a lengthy petition in support of getting this referendum
on the ballot. Even though the referendum was narrowly defeated, this was
an amazing achievement and an indication of the massive unpopularity of
incineration in this state.
5.3.2 France.
Many of us in the environmental movement had given up on France as
far as challenging incineration was concerned. Any country that can go
half way around the globe and explode atomic bombs in someone else's backyard
is hardly amenable to environmental or ethical arguments.
However, in the last few years a grass roots movement against incineration
has emerged in France which is second to none. The National Coalition Against
the Importation, Exportation and Incineration of Waste, has over 100 communities
as members, has already stopped several incinerators, and has generated
more press coverage on dioxin and the contamination of the food chain than
any other country in the world.
5.3.3 Bangladesh.
When citizens in Khulna (a port in the Bay of Bengal) heard about a
proposal by an American company to build a power station in their town,
they were excited. When however, the Bangladesh Environmental Law Association
investigated the matter, they found that the actual proposal was a huge
trash incineration plant which would burn trash shipped in from New York
City. They were far from impressed and organised, successfully, to stop
the project. So, even in countries, which are economically depressed, citizens
are capable of seeing through the "waste-to-energy" promotion hype, if
there is some individual or group prepared to do some homework.
5.4 The dangers
of ignoring public opinion.
Too often decision-makers make the decision to build an incinerator
before they have consulted with the public in a meaningful way. They usually
rely on large consulting companies to review their options. Because such
companies draw much of their expertise from an engineering background,
they have a natural tendency towards the high-tech solution and give little
credence to solutions in which organisation and education must play a dominant
role. PR firms are used to devise strategies which
attempt to negate the public's "irritating" opposition. However,
treating the public in this way usually proves disastrous. What is billed,
as a "quick-fix" solution isn't quick, if the public organises to oppose
it?
5.5 Look at more than
one option.
Even if decision-makers believe that incineration will be a part of
their waste solution, they would be advised to put serious attention and
equal funding (with a careful choice of consultants) into an alternative
plan that doesn't include incineration. This way they can avoid the trap
of coming to the public with a proposal which essentially says, "accept
our incinerator or opt for chaos".
5.6
Even a true believer should not lead with incineration.
Politically it does not make sense to lead with the most problematic,
most expensive and most contentious alternative to landfilling. It makes
more sense to lead with those alternatives which are least contentious,
namely reuse, recycling and composting. Only when these have been maximised,
should incinerators or other destructive technologies be considered.
5.7 The
non-burn alternatives are more popular.
In sharp contrast to incineration, recycling and composting are far
more popular with the general public. In the US, more people recycle than
vote! Despite pessimistic predictions by waste experts in the mid- '80s,
the American people have emphatically embraced recycling. Currently, there
are nearly 9000 curbside recycling programs, and over 3000 yard waste composting
programs in operation in the US (37).
Seattle, a city
of one million people is close to a 50% diversion from landfill. The state
of NJ, as a whole, has achieved a 45% diversion rate, with some individual
communities exceeding 60%. Communities in the Quinte region of Ontario,
Canada have achieved over 70% diversion from landfill. Small communities
near Milan, Italy have also achieved diversion rates of over 70%, and two
communities near Padua are at 80% and above.
6. A few words about alternatives
This presentation is already far too long for me to spend much time
discussing the details of non-burn alternatives. There are, however, a
few points that can be made which throw more light on the incineration
debate.
6.1 Landfills.
It is clear that no solution to waste will get rid of landfills, at
least for the foreseeable future. The question then becomes what kind of
landfill can your community live with. A raw waste landfill? A landfill
that receives the ash, bulky waste and other material by-passed from the
incinerator? A residue landfill after an intensive source separation, reduction,
reuse, recycling, toxic removal and composting program? Put like that,
most people would probably opt for third option, assuming that they had
confidence in the quality of the program.
But we can make such a landfill even better, if we insist that it be
preceded by a screening facility to ensure that only non-toxic and non-biodegradable
material is buried.
Unfortunately,
such a "front end" approach seems to be out of step with most regulatory
authorities which endorse a "back end" approach. Their approach consists
of lining systems, leachate collection, leachate treatment, daily cover,
final cover and capping as the way of protecting the environment from dumping
things into a hole in the ground. Because of the economy of scale, this
approach of "controlling what comes out" tends to drive the building of
regional mega- landfills. These excite intense opposition from host communities,
and usually have to be pushed through undemocratically. The alternative
approach of "controlling what goes in", means that we can return to small,
more politically acceptable, community controlled landfills.
6.2 The importance of composting.
While most people often describe the alternative to landfilling and
incineration as "recycling", in my view, the most important component of
the alternative strategy, after the critical first step of source separation
(discussed below), is "composting". This is because the material which
causes most of the problems in landfills is organic (biodegradable) waste.
This otherwise relatively benign material once it gets into a landfill
creates methane, which contributes to global warming, doors, and an acid
leachate, which in turn can move toxins into the surface or ground water.
Composting, at a far lower environmental and economic cost than incineration,
can keep this organic material out of landfills.
6.3 Integrated waste management.
Undoubtedly, one of the responses to this presentation from incinerator
advocates will be, "We agree with you about the necessity to maximise reduction,
reuse and recycling (they often forget to include composting on this list),
but you are still going to have some stuff left over, doesn't it make sense
to burn this material and recover its energy content rather than to dump
it in a landfill?" This argument goes by the name "integrated waste management".
It sounds good, but it seldom yields what it promises.
Once a community
embarks on building an incinerator, it soaks up all the available cash;
little is left over for a really aggressive recycling and composting program.
Moreover, once the incinerator is built it will need all the waste it can
get (which in the US often includes non-municipal waste) in order to pay
off the massive loans needed to build it. In essence, once built you have
to maximise the use of an incinerator. It is inflexible: other new options
will be resisted.
On the other
hand, if one backs up the reuse, recycling and composting program with
an expensive landfill (or the temporary export of waste to a distant landfill)
one can minimise its use without penalty. Ideally, decision makers should
strive to design a program where increased waste reduction, reuse, recycling
and composting, visibly saves the community money from avoided landfill
tipping fees. In this way one will have "integrated" the environmental
solution with the economic solution.
6.4 Five principles.
Left to highly paid consulting firms, municipal waste can become an
extremely complicated business. Certainly, incineration
done properly is a very complicated process. However, if we look
at the "waste" in our homes it is a relatively simple material. In essence,
its most of the material we paid good money for yesterday and we don't
want today. Waste is made by mixing all this material together. It can
be unmade with source separation. This is the vital first step in solving
the waste crisis.
With source
separation we can get reusable objects, materials that can be recycled
back to industry, materials that can be composted (preferably in our backyards),
some household toxins and an educated household. With manufacturers, and
especially the packaging industry, producing ever more complicated mixtures
of materials, some objects once separated still pose problems. However,
rather than allowing these poorly designed materials drive the building
of expensive incinerators, these "left over" materials should drive research
into better industrial design. In my view, the five principles, or imperatives,
we need to apply in order to solve the waste crisis in an environmentally
sound and economically cost effective manner, are:
1. Keep the solution simple.
2. Keep the solution local.
3. Integrate the solution with the local economy.
4. Integrate the solution with local community development.
5. Make sure the solution is sustainable.
7. Sustainability
7.1 Cheap fossil
fuels conceal our non-sustainability.
I argue that the fragile biosphere of our planet is threatened because
the industrialised nations have imposed, at an ever-increasing pace, a
linear system of handling materials, onto a biological system which handles
materials in a circular fashion. Our linear approach is not sustainable
on a finite planet. However, its non-sustainability has been hidden from
us for over 200 years by an apparent "abundant" supply of fossil fuel.
The end result is the conversion of material resources to waste, at an
ever-increasing rate.
Even world famous
economists have rationalised a system which lives off capital rather than
income. The use of incineration fails to challenge this linear system.
7.2 Incineration is
a wasted opportunity.
Every time we burn something in an incinerator, or dump it in a landfill,
we have to replace it. This means going back to all the high energy inputs,
resource depletion and pollution of primary processing. It is precisely
the enormous growth in primary processing that is giving us global warming.
In other words,
it is overconsumption that is giving us both the local trash crises and
the global crisis. It is only by reusing, recycling and reducing consumption
that we can do anything about either. The trash bag or can is the most
concrete connection each individual has with the global crisis.
7.3 Forces behind overconsumption.
At the national level the fires of overconsumption are further stoked
by economies which measure their success in the global economy by their
annual growth of their GNP and not the welfare of their citizens or the
quality of the environment which they plunder. By and large, the individual
has been seduced with an elaborate web of false needs woven by a very sophisticated
advertising industry, harboured by an equally alluring and distracting
host medium called television.
7.4 Fighting the dominant
paradigm.
As long as the prevailing western (largely post- war American) philosophy
- the more we consume the happier we will become - threatens to rule the
world, as a species we are doomed. Our salvation rests on those who can
show that they have become happier while consuming far less. As Gandhi
so elegantly put it, "the world has enough for every one's need but not
enough for every one's greed."
7.5 Community building.
We need to find the strength to put human relations and community building
at the centre of our lives, instead of the TV set. Educating our citizens
to reduce, reuse, recycle and compost is not a total solution but it is
a fine beginning. On the other hand, every trash incinerator built delays
this discussion and squanders the opportunity to move our communities and
our species in the right direction to fight overconsumption and the global
warming it spawns.
8. Conclusion
In the above presentation I have presented the arguments which support
my conclusion that incineration is not an appropriate waste management
solution in the twenty first century. Fortunately,
the public's fears about the pollutants released and those captured in
the residues, as well as incineration's enormous economic costs, when made
visible, have dramatically slowed down the building of these facilities
in both northern and southern countries alike. If one avoids the
beguiling but inaccurate label "waste-to-energy" one can see that these
facilities do not belong in a future in which sustainability will become
the key issue for survival. In my view, when you build an incinerator in
your community you are advertising to the world that you were not clever
enough, either politically or technically, to recover your discarded resources
in a manner which is responsible to your local community or future generations.