=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #167
—February 5, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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AS IF THE FUTURE MATTERED….
WASTE MANAGEMENT AS IF THE FUTURE MATTERED, by chemist Paul
Connett, in 45 pages summarizes all the advantages of trash
incineration, and all the reasons why trash incineration makes
little or no sense for most communities. Because Connett stresses
readily available alternatives to incineration, everyone
concerned about trash will find this pamphlet useful.
The big advantage of trash incineration is that it requires no
change in the habits of consumers, waste haulers, or
manufacturers. A hole in the ground (the traditional landfill) is
replaced by a hole in the face of a huge machine (the
incinerator) and our throw-away society can get on with business
as usual. Another advantage is that trash incinerators are the
biggest boost to the construction trades since the heyday of
nuclear power; all those multi-billion dollar incinerators
represent high-paying (if short-lived) construction jobs; they
also represent a boon to investment bankers, bonding agents, and
their respective lawyers, all of whom skim a percentage from each
dollar passing through the construction pipeline. Incineration
also generates steam and electricity that can partially offset
the enormous costs of building the machines. And, lastly,
incineration substantially reduces the need for landfill space.
The disadvantages of trash incinerators form a much longer list:
a) Incinerators are extremely expensive (a billion dollars or
more for a 4,000-ton-per-day plant), all of which the public
ultimately pays, whether through private fees or tax monies. b)
Operation of an incinerator creates very few jobs. c) The need
for landfills is not reduced by 90% as incinerator advocates
often claim; the actual reduction is about 40%. This means that
an incinerator will extend the life of today’s landfills by a
factor of 2.5, not a factor of 10. d) The energy recovery from
incinerators is relatively small, compared to the energy saved
when material is recycled. In fact, incinerators require so much
fuel to burn the garbage that another 1973-style oil embargo
would shut them all down. e) It is not easy to burn trash, and
incinerators often need many costly repairs that aren’t
anticipated in the initial project budget. f) Incinerators are
inflexible. Once built, they must be fueled with garbage for 20
years, making the community’s trash unavailable for recycling;
about 80% of the waste stream can be recycled OR incinerated but
not both. g) Incineration wastes resources that could otherwise
be reused or recycled; in the case of plastics, this represents
the waste of a nonrenewable resource (oil). h) Incineration
destroys discarded materials, which must then be replaced,
leading to greater industrial activity with well-known negative
side effects on the earth’s deteriorating environment (greenhouse
effect, acid rain, massive chemical contamination of air, water,
soil, and food, and so on). i) Incineration is not a long-term
solution, but merely puts off the day when we can initiate real
long-term solutions; everyone with a shred of sense now
recognizes that we cannot continue to operate a throwaway society
on a finite planet–and incineration is just a way of denying
that fact for a few short years. j) Toxics will make their way
into incinerators for exactly the same reasons that toxics make
their way into landfills, so a solid waste incinerator will in
fact be a hazardous waste incinerator, and there is no realistic
way to prevent this from happening continuously. k) Air emissions
(hydrochloric acid, toxic heavy metals, and hundreds of toxic
organic compounds inevitably created as byproducts of combustion)
add enormous quantities of pollutants to the atmosphere, and most
incinerators (more than 75%) are slated for areas that already
fail to meet health-based air quality standards, and where cancer
rates are already the highest in the nation. l) The ash from
incinerators is toxic, laced with the heavy metals lead, cadmium,
chromium, and arsenic, among others. Dr. Connett says, “Toxic ash
is the Achilles heel of the incineration industry…. It doesn’t
make either economic or environmental sense to convert three tons
of trash into one ton of toxic ash.” It’s a Catch-22: the better
the air pollution control system, the more toxic the ash becomes.
In many locales, cynical bureaucrats want to solve this problem
by changing the name of the ash to “special waste,” but as Dr.
Connett points out, “This is based on convenience, not on
science. As much as our regulators would like to believe
otherwise, there is only one kind of lead atom, and that lead
atom is toxic to humans. There is not a separate lead atom
labelled ‘special’!” m) It is as difficult to site an incinerator
as a landfill; in fact, building an incinerator requires the use
of a hazardous waste landfill for the ash, and hazardous waste
landfills are the hardest of all facilities to site.
The siting of an incinerator is almost always accompanied by a
“risk assessment” in which a consultant, or a government
bureaucrat, tries to show mathematically that only a few people
will be killed each year by the incinerator’s pollution. However,
Dr. Connett and Tom Webster from the Center for the Biology of
Natural Systems, have shown[1] that typical risk assessments for
incinerators 1) Usually don’t consider “upset” conditions, which
occur frequently though irregularly in an incinerator, but
instead assume that the incinerator will operate smoothly and
flawlessly for 20 years; 2) Don’t consider all pollutants; 3)
Don’t consider multiplier effects (synergism) from exposure to
many pollutants at once; 4) Don’t consider existing health
conditions in the affected populations; 5) Usually don’t consider
exposures through the food chain and usually underestimate food
chain exposures when they are considered; 6) Don’t consider
effects on agriculture and related but distant effects from
exported food; 7) Don’t consider the cumulative impacts of all
proposed incinerators (or other proposed sources of air
pollution) in an area, state, or region; 8) Don’t consider risks
from ash handling and disposal. Such risk assessments are
whitewash, not serious attempts to anticipate pollution
consequences.
So landfills are out and incinerators are bad business. What are
the alternatives? The real answer to our trash problems is a
combination of social innovation and technology. We need a new
institution–the “materials recovery facility” (MRF). Each
community (or rural county) could have one of its own. Each MRF
would have: a) a re-use and repair section; b) a waste exchange
for household toxics; c) a composting section; d) a separation,
upgrading and marketing section for mixed recyclables; e) a more
mechanized section for screening of mixed residues prior to
landfilling; f) a section to handle commercial waste; and g) a
section to handle landscaping and building debris.
Connett says, “While no single community in the USA has yet
pulled all these modules together, there are working examples of
each module, and several combinations, operating successfully in
Europe and the USA today.” Many of these are illustrated in a
videotape available for $30 with the pamphlet.
Does it work? After two years of a mandatory recycling program
North Stonington, Connecticut, recorded a 65% reduction by volume
in its need for landfilling. After four months of recycling,
Rodman, NY, achieved a 71% reduction by volume in its landfill
requirements. As we have noted earlier (see RHWN #108), East
Hampton, NY, achieved a massive 84% reduction by weight during a
pilot study. The town of Neunkirchen, Austria, achieved 65% and
67% reductions by weight during 1986 and 1987.
Will people recycle? In Hamburg, NY, they have a 98%
participation rate in their recycling program because they simply
refuse to pick up trash that is not separated. In Rockford, IL, a
“trashman” in gaudy costume and polka-dotted truck inspects the
trash of one household each week; if he finds zero recyclables,
he awards the household $1000. If no one wins one week, next
week’s winner gets $2000.
Looking for one single source of information on solutions to the
garbage crisis? This pamphlet is it.
Get: WASTE MANAGEMENT AS IF THE FUTURE MATTERED; single copies,
$3; bulk orders of 10 or more, $2 each. From: Work on Waste USA,
82 Judson St., Canton, NY 13617; phone (315) 379-9200.
Accompanying videotape: $30. You will also want to subscribe to
their must-read weekly bulletin, WASTE NOT, edited
by Ellen
Connett. $35 per year. Order all from Work on Waste.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
===============
[1] Paul Connett and Tom Webster, “Municipal Waste Incineration
and Risk Analyses: The Need to Ask Larger Questions.” Canton, NY:
Work on Waste [82 Judson St., Canton, NY 13617], July, 1988.
$2.50 per copy from Work on Waste.
Descriptor terms: incineration; alternative treatment
technologies; reuse; recycling; waste not; paul connett; ellen
connett; tom webster; studies; dioxin; air pollution;
landfilling; msw; risk assessment;