# (Industrial)Trash incineration...What's your $.02 on the subject???



## keyman512us (Sep 8, 2007)

Hey all...
With the ever increasing cost of disposing of trash, and landfills closing it seems every other day....what are your thoughts on Incineration???

Anyone have any "horror stories" about these plants in their community???

Anyone all for it???

Here in Mass there is currently a moratorium on any new proposed plants. However 'local interest' might make an effort at having that moratorium lifted.

Any input on the subject would greatly be appreciated...

What's your $.02 on the subject???


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## webbie (Sep 8, 2007)

Some of it seems to be "which devil do we choose?"

Ideally, we'd do more work on the manufacturing and consumption end to reduce the amount of this "stuff" that cannot be properly reused or recycled. But I guess the other alternative is burying it, which to me seems like the wrong thing to do for the long run. 

It's just one more place where we have to spend more $$$, time and attention. The cost for goods should include the cost for getting rid of it.

So I guess the real question is - which would we rather pollute - our air or our groundwater and land? A terrible decision.


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## senorFrog (Sep 9, 2007)

Webmaster said:
			
		

> The cost for goods should include the cost for getting rid of it.



I feel that way every time I see a new strip mall or big box store going up.  There are so many vacant or in disrepair.  A real eyesore and a blight on the community.  Before they build it, they should have to set aside a plan and funds to return it to previous state or green space.


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## Jags (Sep 11, 2007)

I don't know why this hasn't grabbed hold yet.  Its pretty well a proven technology AND affordable AND produces more energy than used AND produces a usable by product, with no know bad side affects.

http://www.greengeek.ca/2007/02/23/plasma-process-converts-garbage-into-clean-energy/

EDIT: I guess that depending on what is feed into the machine, it is possible that one of the by products could contain heavy metal stuff.  Guess what, it would be going into the land fill anyhow.  Now its just encapsulated in glass.


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## TMonter (Sep 11, 2007)

Plasma Gasification is pretty neat technology, but it's not been operated on a large scale yet and you need the land and the garbage to support such an operation. You also can't just chuck any garbage in a system like that but need specially designed fuel handling and preparation.

In all but a few places the technology doesn't pay back enough to warrant its use over a properly designed landfill.


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## smirnov3 (Sep 11, 2007)

Some waste (such as food / farm waste, and plastics) can be turned back into oil.

That's how detroit is planning to meet the requirement that cars be recyclable in the future. Currently, cars are made from steel. 

easy to recycle. 

But to make cars lighter & more fuel efficient, the manufaturers will need to switch to using more plastics & composites, but those parts can not be recycled in a conventional fashion, so it becomes more difficult to meet the recycling requirement (which are currently being phased in)


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## Eric Johnson (Sep 12, 2007)

Up in the Adirondack Park, where I work, all towns used to have dumps, where trash would be burned and landfilled. The state decided that it didn't want to burn trash in the Park anymore, so now all our garbage is loaded onto semi trucks and trucked a couple hundred miles down to a landfill in Pennsylvania. Does that make any sense?

As a side effect, all the bears that used to hang out at the dump came down into town where they could ransack dumpsters and garbage cans. The net effect was trash strewn all over town on trash day, and people's garages and back porches would actually be broken into by hungry bruins looking for food.

Bottom line for me: It's our trash and we should figure out how to deal with it--not ship it off to some other state and forget about it.


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## Gibbonboy (Sep 12, 2007)

Eric Johnson said:
			
		

> so now all our garbage is loaded onto semi trucks and trucked a couple hundred miles down to a landfill in Pennsylvania.



Yeah, our local Senator needs a couple million more dollars.  So, it's _your_ trash that stinks when I drive by that place! There used to be a valley there, now it's a 500 foot mountain, right along the Turnpike. Nice welcome to our area!

They tried to build a trash incinerator near us a while back. The local response was overwhelming and universally against it. Main objections were that trash from all over NY/NJ/PA would be brought in, and that the technology, while feasible in theory, never worked right in actual practice. We interviewed people from other areas that have incinerators, and found that they never actually burned completely, mostly due to the moisture content in the trash. And incomplete burning produces Dioxin and other nasties, especially plastics, which is a large part of modern solid waste. If they actually burned at the temps. they say they do, and if the scrubbers worked and were maintained properly, yes, it would probably be OK to incinerate trash. But local trash, burnt locally, not imported from cities to somewhere they think the hicks won't mind a couple extra jobs. 

The main factor in all of this is the mind-blowing level of waste in this country. That has to be addressed first, before any other means can reduce our waste stream effectively. But Waste Management and other HUGE multi-national corporations have a vested interest in maintaining the current level of trash flow, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year. WM is one of the largest companies in the world. Why do you think organized crime got involved in the trash business? It wasn't because of the chicks!

Our town just cleaned up the dump a couple years ago. It was incredible to see how long stuff lasts, not even encapsulated in a "modern" landfill, just buried. Scary part was all the medical waste from our tiny hospital. Needles and such everywhere. Now we use the dump area for our municipal composting operation. Of course, all the trash they dug out of there was most likely put in a landfill somewhere else.


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## babalu87 (Sep 12, 2007)

Wife and two kids ( 2 and 5 ) 

Most weeks we have ONE 13 gallon bag of trash, rarely it is a full size 33 gallon bag.
If everyone could say that we wouldnt have near the problems we do with trash, dumps etc.


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## Eric Johnson (Sep 12, 2007)

All of our wet garbage and kitchen scraps go into the compost bins. So whatever Gibbonboy is smelling, it probably didn't originate with me. To echo bab's point, if everyone buried or composted their kitchen scraps, etc., there'd be a lot less methane for future generations to mine for energy.

What do I do in the winter? Well, when the snow gets too deep or I otherwise can't get to the compost bins, I put that stuff into five-gallon plastic containers with the lids on, and stack them out in the barn, where it freezes solid. When spring rolls around, I just layer it all into the compost bin with leaves and grass clippings (and maybe some wood ash) in between. It takes about a half hour and that's the end of it. No smell to speak of. Eventually it winds up on the garden. You could just as easily dig a small pit and bury it in the ground.


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## babalu87 (Sep 12, 2007)

LOL

I should take a picture of our compost pile in February, if it has been cold enough it is shaped just like Mount Fiji


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## Gibbonboy (Sep 12, 2007)

I have two of the "Earth Machine" composters, I throw scraps into them year 'round. Usually the one that I've been filling all winter is "done" by fall, just in time to use the compost on fall bulbs, and get it ready for the next winter. We produce 1 small kitchen bag per week, max. When I was single, I used to not even have normal trash pickup, I either composted, recycled, or burned everything. I am not "green" enough to use cloth diapers, however, and disposable diapers are like plutonium, they are nasty forever and can't be destroyed, except in a thermonuclear reaction. 

Now off to build my "humanure" toilets....


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## begreen (Sep 12, 2007)

Amen. We go to the dump with 4 standard garbage cans quarterly, or about a garbage can full every 3 weeks. We avoid a lot of overpackaged items, buying in bulk where we can and recycling is a part of our lives. It's amazing how much one can cut down on trash heading to the landfill with a little effort.


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## got wood? (Oct 8, 2007)

BeGreen said:
			
		

> Amen. We go to the dump with 4 standard garbage cans quarterly, or about a garbage can full every 3 weeks. We avoid a lot of overpackaged items, buying in bulk where we can and recycling is a part of our lives. It's amazing how much one can cut down on trash heading to the landfill with a little effort.



Amen to that...with a family of 5, I go to the dump once a week, sometimes every other...about one garbage can full of actual trash, two full of plastic and glass (non-redeemables) and many many boxes folded, paper, junk mail...my compost eats the yard and food scraps.  It's taken a while to get them in the habit of thinking before chuckin'...now they're all really quite good about it

when lookin at refuse:

1. can it compost?
2. is it paper/cardboard?
3. is it plastic?
4. is it glass?
5. is it metal?
6. is it oil?
7. is it a battery?

then...and only then...

it's TRASH!


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## DriftWood (Oct 29, 2007)

Michigan, Detroit's Future Without a Trash Incinerator:

http://www.ecocenter.org/Incinerators.shtml

http://www.marygrove.edu/ids/Detroit_Waste_Incinerator.asp

http://www.google.com/search?q=detr...us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex;=&startPage=1


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