Incineration makes sense

... despite "propagandizing and scare-mongering"

Commentary from Larry Solway

  I simply don't believe the dithering and whining and propagandizing and scare-mongering over waste disposal. In Toronto there is joy among the anointed, gloom among the losers. I am delighted that the good guys won and the Adams Mine is not going to become a lethal sewer.
  But I just can't jump on the revival of the Three R bandwagon When someone is about to do a swan dive off a high place you don't preach, you fix it.. We need a quick fix. We need it right away. And the quick fix is incineration. But it could be long term.
  I simply do not understand my NDP colleagues who, along with all the other self-anointed environmentalists, march in lockstep to the drums of Greenpeace and fellow travellers. Had I been elected in last year's Provincial Election (I came in third) I would have been obliged by caucus discipline to join the crusade or shut up. We need much more public will and a lot more public money, to use more benign ways to deal with garbage. It is a given that landfill is not one of those ways.
  Mayor Mel Lastman visited Edmonton and pronounced their recycling and composting system no-go for big fat Toronto. Others declare that Guelph has the problem in check and that landfill may one day be a thing of the past like the spittoon. The politicians who lost the Adams Mine vote but won by a clever subterfuge (the old schtick of demanding terms that were unacceptable so you could throw your hands up and declare that "I tried...") are now parading before us a long list of public initiatives, principally composting for wet waste. The fee-for-garbage-bag thing is a non-starter - even in our right wing user-fee environment. For those who may have missed it,. The escape hatch for the pro-dump faction was a clause in the contract with Rail North that they indemnify the City of Toronto against any environmental claims that might arise from the Adams Mine dump. Rail North turned pale and killed the whole deal.
  Another irony: I ran into Joe Mihevc my city councillor who opposed the Adams Mine solution. (The other guy was for it ) Joe said that garbage was a "wedge" issue. Sadly, that advantage may be lost now that the dump deal is officially dead and we go back to trucking on down to Michigan. Is Joe right? A Toronto Star survey showed that only 51% opposed the Adams Mine dump. 24% were in favour. But 21% had no opinion.! (I don't know what happened to the other 4%.)
  Let's examine the so-called "earth-friendly" idea of composting. It is true that you can generate power with biomass energy., Methane burns. There is already a pilot project somewhere east of Toronto. But huge biomass piles of compost are not without their problems too. When Toronto decided to go for it a few years ago the problem inherent was the massive generation of methane - a greenhouse gas. Some environmentalists even suggest that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was exacerbated by the bowel gas (methane) from about 20 million New Zealand sheep. Factory-size herds of livestock everywhere are guilty as well. her
  We are awash in alternatives. CUPE and the Toronto Environmental Alliance had proposed to build new recycling and composting facilities for about $200 million. People would put kitchen waste in one bag and everything else in another. It would keep 75% of the city's waste out of landfill. Good idea. It works. In Guelph. But in many parts of Toronto as many as two thirds of people live in apartment houses.. They are notoriously laggard in recycling anything - even newspapers and cans, which is one reason why Toronto's diversion rate is about 25 percent. And the idea doesn't take into account the tons of stuff left by restaurants, produce stores and supermarkets.
  There's a composter in Newmarket - they'll take 100,000 tonnes. There's a composting plant being built here to take another 120,000 tonnes. They can run these plants for a little more than it costs to ship to Michigan. The good news is that the mayor says by 2005 our recycling should be double what it is now. To long to wait. Too little to wait for.
  The Cassandras tell me incineration is not the way to go. "Read the studies" they tell me. "Look at the Japanese experience," they warn. I've looked. Many of the dire warnings come from people who also believe, (which I do not) that GM foods are nothing more than a conspiracy by multi-national chemical companies to control the world's food supply.
  There are other studies. Modern incinerators burn waste at very high temperature under carefully controlled conditions. The burning releases mostly carbon dioxide, water vapour and heat. What's left is ten per cent of the original volume in the form of inert ash. People who know have told me that there is no problem vitrifying the now-benign ash and storing it harmlessly. Even fly ash, which is mostly cinders, dust and soot is handled by filters, acid gas scrubbers and electrostatic precipitators. The small fraction - about 1% - that is potentially toxic can be dealt with as hazardous waste.
  Another expert with years in the field commented that there are clearly good and bad incinerators. Current regulations are stiffer than they used to be. In fact, the long-running incinerator at Toronto's western neighbour - Peel - is up and running with emission standards that far exceed present limits. What's more, it burns 400 tons a day and will soon be upgraded to burn 500 tons a day. By the way, for all the people who want to mess around with that arch- greenhouse gas methane and turn it into power - the Peel incinerator generates 7 megawatts of electricity per hour.
  Finally it must be said that there is absolutely no method of waste disposal that promises zero emissions. The fact is though, that incineration emits far less toxic waste than landfill.
  If we are to make sense we can't continue to be hysterical. The gloomy and alarmed only foster more gloom and alarm and fear while they feed their pet notions about what is good for the environment. I love the environment just as much as they do.

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