Incineration (with thanks to Telford PAIN and Dr. Paul Connett)
But incineration makes sense – doesn’t it?
When you first hear about household waste incineration it seems like a good idea. It promises to rid Shrewsbury of leaking landfills and to produce energy as well. It seems like a win-win situation. For a municipal official beleaguered with the responsibility for a mountain of household waste coming at him or her on a daily basis it appears to offer a quick fix solution, with little or no modification of the existing infrastructure for picking up rubbish. For a council with demanding landfill targets to meet, the modern energy from waste incinerator looks like a perfect political escape plan. Your own investigation will soon reveal a different story!
It is only when you spend time looking below the surface appeal of these facilities that you realise the huge backward step they represent, environmentally, socially, economically and from the point of view of moving towards a sustainable society. The incineration of household waste produces toxins and dioxins which are hazardous to health, and toxic ash which has to be transported away to specialised dumps.
Dr. Paul Connett is a professor of chemistry at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, USA. He has researched waste management issues with a special emphasis on the dangers posed by incineration and the safer and more sustainable non-burn alternatives for many years.
Dr. Connett says, “Far from it being the universally proven technology claimed by its promoters, the incineration of municipal waste with energy recovery has been an experiment which after 20 years has left the citizens of industrialised countries with a legacy of unacceptably high levels of dioxins and related compounds intheir babies, their tissues, their food and in wild life. Moreover, as they have sought air pollution control devices to capture the extremely toxic by-products of combustion, the resulting residues have become more problematic and costly to handle, dispose and contain.”
Dr Connett argues that for "An Energy from Waste Facility", read "Refuse & Waste Incinerator" & for "Refuse & Waste Incinerator" read "Chemical Reactor" He goes on to point out that when burning fossil fuels to generate power, the chemistry of the combustion process & emmissions is complex but understood. In terms of burning waste, then the complex chemistry varies with the waste content variation & other fuels, & so cannot be predictable. Further, the combustion process & temperatures break down the many complex molecular structures present in waste, which can & do recombine to form new compounds not originally present in the original waste.
Together, we can make a difference! Join our campaign to stop the incinerator in Shrewsbury.
