Waste Not! Carroll

Incinerator is a waste of energy

Posted: Saturday, May 1, 2010 1:00 am

Carroll County TImes

By Don West | 

Recently I have heard both local and state officials assert that a successful recycling program is not only compatible with incineration of our municipal solid waste, it benefits from it.

Central to this argument are the higher recycling rates reported from jurisdictions that utilize so-called waste to energy incinerators, like Harford and Montgomery counties and Baltimore City. The fact that isn't well publicized, however, is that the incinerators' ash by-product must be disposed of by the jurisdictions in landfills and counts as a recycled product.

That's right, trash burned counts as recycling as long as you get some electricity generated in the process. Think how much better our recycling numbers would look if MDE could count that nasty coal ash from electrical power plants as a recycled product too. Coal, by definition, then could be used to generate renewable energy.

The reality of the recycling/incineration paradox is that the two strategies are competing for the same resources. Paper products and plastics make up over 50 percent of our total waste stream, and they are easy to recycle for profit now through single-stream recycling. Yet these same materials provide the highest caloric return of energy when combusted. Most of the remaining waste stream either can't be burned or yields extremely low heat.

When paper and plastics are really recycled into similar products again, anywhere between three to five times more energy is recovered from the process as opposed to incineration. The savings is in not having to make new paper and plastics from scratch.

Once you look at the facts surrounding the proposed waste to energy incinerator with Frederick County, many in this community have concluded that it is a colossal waste of energy.

Don H. West

Westminster

The writer is co-founder of Waste Not! Carroll.