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Incineration vs Recycling and Composting.
Some people have asked, what is wrong with incineration – especially if you use it to generate electricity ? Does it not save on burning coal and other fossil fuels, and therefore combat climate change ?
True, but only partially so because an energy from waste incinerator (EfW) is less efficient in extracting the energy from its fuel than a conventional power station. Also municipal solid waste (MSW) has a high water content and so the EfW incinerator often has to add a fossil fuel (oil) to its MSW fuel otherwise it does not burn properly.
There are other issues too. If we recycle paper and plastic (the main combustible waste materials) we save having to cut down new trees and pump new oil out of the ground, thus securing a repeated and better use of these resources.
Also, the energy used to convert waste paper and plastic back into a raw material is about half the energy required to develop a tree or oil into a raw material in the first place.
So, recycling saves resources and saves energy compared to incineration. A similar reality applies to non-combustible waste materials such as metals and glass.
Another problem is the scale of pollution created by incineration compared to recycling. Burning wastes (converting materials into gases and ash) creates a range of relatively noxious gases (sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen chloride, carbon monoxide) which if breathed in continuously (by people living downwind) damage health. These gases are also acidic and thus tend to damage the environment.
When burning waste materials, trace metals are emitted into the air (lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, zinc) and these are poisonous in their own right, and particularly so when attached to soot particles. Burning creates very fine soot particles which are not captured by the filters currently required by law, and these very fine particles are a major cause of heart and lung diseases.
Added to these problems is the need to dispose of the toxically contaminated ash after incineration. Recycling greatly minimises all these problems.
Finally, around one-fifth of all household waste is kitchen waste, and this makes an excellent compost if mixed with garden waste. Incineration simply turns this material into gases and contaminated ash.
So, if you want to be kind to people and the planet, recycle and compost rather than incinerate.
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