Re: [GreenYes] Solid waste news from Scandinavia

[Muna Lakhani <muna@iafrica.com>]

Reindl, John wrote:
> Sweden has an active waste to energy recovery program
> which is expanding.

>  Instead, the group notes that over half the material
> can be recycled and believes that incineration with energy recovery has less
> of an environmental impact than landfills. A report several years ago for
> the Norwegian EPA found that the major environmental impact of landfills was
> the release of methane gas and the subsequent global climate change. 

Both of the above are frightening - all our research shows that
incineration is worse than landfill by far, given that dioxins and
furans are produced, and accumulate in living organisms, with dioxins
the size of a pea being able to "give" cancer to over 100 000 people...

the heat (CO2) from incineration is also problematic, and we should not
forget that methane as produced from biomass, is GHG neutral, so the
incinerator is far worse for climate change..

also: if you look at the energy balance, the energy one would get would
be far, far less than either the energy used in making that waste, or
the energy we would save by recycling...

what do others think about incineration?

best wishes
Muna


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