dagblog - Comments for "To Burn or Recycle, a Stupid Question"

That's fly ash from burning

quinn esq — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:29:44 +0000

That's fly ash from burning coal - not from burning garbage. I donno whether it's safe or not, but it's different stuff.

There are US incinerators and

Zerotrashtalk — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 19:20:25 +0000

In reply to To Burn or Recycle, a Stupid Question

There are US incinerators and then there are European incinerators. The Europeans don't work on the cheap and install very expensive scrubbers for pollutants on the smoke stack. Using the lowest bidder here in the USA and cutting costs to maximize profits where-ever they can usually means a higher percentage of heavy metals and pollutants entering the atmosphere and area around the incinerator. If the companies promoting incineration to power could demonstrate that the scrubbers are very high performance and provide transparency on pollutant levels exiting the stack in real time, maybe they would get more support here at home.

An incinerator in Munich Germany captured more than 98.9% of all pollutants exiting the process when I was there. What they did with the ash I am uncertain but it is well documented that the incinerator in Detroit is not of that caliber and is causing harm. The city of Windsor, Canada did a study on the pollution crossing the river to it 6 miles away from the incinerator and found it toxic.

If quality and performance were the first priorities over cost I'm sure we would all breath easier. I prefer zero waste to incineration as the smarter option but if we are considering incineration it can't be done on the cheap and be a healthy alternative.

I know absolutely nothing

Steve — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:55:25 +0000

In reply to Oh shit. Something I know

I know absolutely nothing about this topic. Except I had always heard something slightly different than the apoplexy above regarding fly ash being used in home construction:

"Fly ash use in concrete qualiﬁes for credit under the U.S. Green Building Council’s popular LEED™ rating system for sustainable construction. The environmental beneﬁts of ﬂy ash use are frequently cited by numerous government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

http://www.thehealthyhome.net/archives.php?tale=11

But perhaps this is just one of many Sonoma mob front-architects.

No need to apologize. I

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:45:55 +0000

In reply to Sorry for that, G. But I

No need to apologize. I appreciate the correction from the expert, though I would prefer that the expert not be Canadian. So how did the countries and communities hitting 60% and up accomplish it?

Sorry for that, G. But I

quinn esq — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 05:16:16 +0000

In reply to I believe that you are

Sorry for that, G. But I spent most of 7 years in that field.

Anaerobic digesters work, in large numbers, already. So that helps. It's not magic, just organic stuff breaking down, then you capture the methane.

Zero Waste is actually not as impossible as people at first think. There are now whole countries recycling/composting 60%, 70% and up - and lots of individual communities well above that. The key to getting the remaining %'s is to look at the design of products, to make them so they CAN be recycled or composted etc.

See, if you don't set the bar that high, the incineration industry comes in - and this is what I had to live through from 1995-2002 - and says, "at most 15% of all waste can be recycled, so we need 25 year contracts for the remaining 85%." Then, after years of fighting, they raise the theoretical maximum to... 25%. And so on. {Meanwhile, the entire UK has gone from 5% when I started to 37% today.}

As for the mob and recycling, some of my buddies were the early innovators in the field, and they have great stories of recycling in places like New Jersey. Yeah.... mob.... just a little.

But mostly, fusion power from banana peels and beer cans.

I'm down with that.

I believe that you are

Michael Wolraich — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 19:18:21 +0000

In reply to And anyway, wouldn't "Zero

I believe that you are allowed to use energy to achieve Zero Waste.

What I want to know is when we get to have waste-fueled fusion reactors in our flying, time-traveling Delorian's. That would be cool.

And anyway, wouldn't "Zero

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:22:08 +0000

In reply to OK, I'll bow to the better

And anyway, wouldn't "Zero Waste" be against the laws of thermodynamics?

OK, I'll bow to the better

Michael Wolraich — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 17:54:25 +0000

In reply to Oh shit. Something I know

OK, I'll bow to the better educated. (I knew that I would get burned on this one because I didn't have time to research.) My argument was predicated on the claim that the incinerators are clean. If not, then f*ck 'em. How close are the anaerobic digesters to feasibility? It sounds like some kind of Star Wars desert monster.

But as for Zero Waste, forget it. That should never be an argument for not pursuing a possible solution--ever. Insofar as recycling works, great. But it's no holy panacea to be guarded like some sacred ritual.

PS Speaking of mafia connections, recycling operations aren't exactly run by the Pope. But maybe that's a poor analogy these days.

Oh shit. Something I know

quinn esq — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:35:20 +0000

In reply to To Burn or Recycle, a Stupid Question

Oh shit. Something I know about. A lot about. Apologies & warnings:

Absolutely, 100%, no.

1st off, VERY big money is involved in this, and this is an industry with deep mob ties. No joke. In France, major companies do things like firebomb each others trucks. etc. Combine this with the expected cash to flow from a 400,000 tonne burner, operating for 25 years at $100/tonne. What you see is a money-printing machine. What you also see is a bottom-feeding industry (waste management) in which the officers and regulators and administrators can be bought off. So, for starters, much ugliness in the "who."

2nd, this line has ALWAYS been the call of the incinerator companies. "Look at Europe. And look at these fabulous new generations of filters." Yeah. Now look for ONE operating to these kinds of standards in the English-speaking world. You won't - and can't- find them. Not one. Lemme give some inside dope on the Edmonton incinerator, running in North London. It's emissions were vanishing, non-existent, according to all the official numbers. Til some guys from Greenpeace miraculously got in, scaled the stack, took over the plant. At the top of the stack, they found 4" of thick black goo, which ran all the way down inside. Tested afterward, it showed enormous levels of dioxins/furans - 1700 TEQ. Edmonton also put hidden cameras on employees, who showed deadly fly ash being shovelled by hand... And, in the nicest touch, the ash being used in building blocks for home construction.

Oh yeah, the mob thing? Edmonton got caught sneaking NUCLEAR waste in from Eastern European sites, where they were then "burning" it - i.e. spreading it over the city, where it couldn't be traced, but didn't need to face costly disposal.

I was also heavily involved in Newcastle's incinerator disaster at a place called Byker, where dioxin-laden fly ash was used to form foot paths on the allotment gardens of the poor. Where it got ingested, taken in with the food, and especially with the hens that run loose on the allotments. So we basically had dioxin-bomb eggs being eaten by poor children. Let me say this. Right now, Newcastle England (a major city) has dozens (yes, dozens) of locations with higher dioxin levels than are found anywhere in Vietnam, from all their Agent Orange sprayings. They used "leading edge incineration technology from Sweden."

The list of financial disasters is as long as my arm. They absolutely DO work against recycling/composting (ask yourself, precisely what it is that they BURN? They want paper/board first - the #1 recyclable - then plastics. you really want to set one of these up to burn plastic? Diapers?) Their operation as energy-producing entities is itself problematic, as they are "must run" and thus produce real inflexibilities in grid-systems like Denmark's.

Ok. Stopping now. Oh. You can aim for Zero Waste, but then instead of burning the residual, just throw it in an anaerobic digester. That'll give you much of the energy back, and not risk the air pollution.

Sorry for this. But I've watched these articles come out from time to time for almost 30 years now, and each time, it's the same stuff.

Excellent point. And doesn't

Doctor Cleveland — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 01:01:52 +0000

In reply to To Burn or Recycle, a Stupid Question

Excellent point. And doesn't New York have ridiculous piles of garbage in the harbor? That's a great place for an incinerator/generator combo.