Why Are We Against Incineration?
There Are Better, Cheaper, Sustainable Alternatives
- New lifecycle products and zero-waste alternatives aren’t just the pipe dreams of environmentalists anymore. Other communities have had great success in building zero-waste facilities.
- Technology and operational standards constantly change. How much more will it cost us to keep up with these standards? No one can predict that.
- Environmental standards change.
Recommendations by the EPA put landfilling and incineration as the lowest-ranked choices in resource management. Further, the Frederick County Solid Waste Management Plan: 1998–2017 excluded incineration as a means of waste disposal, until September 2010, when it was "modified" by the BOCC to accommodate their decision to incinerate.
The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives website offers numerous solutions to waste, but the Frederick County BOCC has ignored them, even after residents have urged them to research them.
If Frederick County, Maryland, Does Not Build an Incinerator, What Are the Alternatives?
We should look to zero-waste communities such as Fresno and San Francisco, California, and Toronto, Canada, for model policies and programs that have proven successful in order to identify specific steps Frederick County should take. We anticipate the need for a zero-waste consultant, like one who spoke at the Waste Not! Expo in Frederick on March 28, 2009, in order to help design and plan specific steps to reach the maximum waste diversion and resource recovery.
Increase our waste diversion rate
An alternative plan to a trash incinerator for Frederick County is to reach a 70+% diversion rate within the next 5 to 7 years. Frederick’s current recycling rate is approximately 44%. Immediate steps should be taken to divert construction and demolition waste, all electronic waste and any and all items which can be reused rather than dumped. These goals may be reached through working within the current county programs and/or by private industry’s participation. See Reduce below.
Increase recycling
Our waste stream is ~40% paper. The Frederick County school system has minimal recycling, and business recycling is not yet widely available. The full benefits of single-stream recycling in Frederick County have yet to be fully quantified. Preliminary figures indicate that it is doing great!
Implement residential and business composting
Thirty percent of our waste stream is compostable. Composting facilities should be built. With Frederick County’s high commitment (at least in writing) to maintaining its rural characteristics and long agricultural history, this is desirable as well as achievable within 5 years. Yard waste mulching and composting have already diverted 20,000 tons per year from our landfill. When you include food composting (known as a 3-cart system), including from restaurants, you can typically see an increase in the recycling rate by 10% to 15% within ~1 year. Look at what downtown Frederick restaurant Café Nola is doing!
Reduce
Buy and use less. Make educated purchases about products with wasteful packaging. Refuse to buy wasteful products or those that have too much or non-recyclable packaging—and let retailers and manufacturers know! They listen. In March 2009, Pepsi announced it was redesigning its Aquafina water bottles to use less plastic. One of their main motivations was customer pressure:
"Consumers have cut back on bottled water purchases, in part because of environmental concerns about the waste created by disposable bottles...” and, “Bottled water sales have been hurt as consumers grew more concerned about waste created by the product."
Pepsi hopes to save 75,000,000 pounds of plastic a year.
A woman in Chevy Chase objected to receiving wine shipped in styrofoam:
...I complained to the merchant, who said "no one" in the industry used anything but Styrofoam to ship bottles. I already felt guilty about generating so much non-biodegradable material anyway, so now I have been dealing with a California merchant that uses only cardboard and newspaper to protect the bottles, which works just fine. Please encourage wine distributors everywhere to use planet-friendly packing materials.
This was in the May 9, 2009, Wall Street Journal wine column, which is read by wine merchants around the country, who have seen sales lost because they use Styrofoam. Consumers can have clout!
Waste can also be reduced by encouraging or requiring extended producer responsibility. From Wikipedia:
“Also known as 'Product Stewardship', Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) uses political means to hold producers liable for the costs of managing their products at end of life. This tactic attempts to make the transition from traditional end-of-pipe waste ‘diversion’ programs (funded by local government and therefore the public, and of no responsibility to the producer) to ‘cradle to cradle’ recycling systems designed, financed, and managed by the producers themselves. EPR promotes that producers (usually brand owners) have the greatest control over product design and marketing and therefore have the greatest ability and responsibility to reduce toxicity and waste." (Sierra Club, 2009)
This can take the form of a reuse, buy-back, or recycling program, or in energy production. The producer may also choose to delegate this responsibility to a third party, a so-called producer responsibility organization (PRO), which is paid by the producer for spent-product management. In this way, EPR shifts responsibility for waste from government to private industry, obliging producers, importers and/or sellers to internalise waste management costs in their product prices and ensuring the sustainable and safe handling of the remains of their products (Hanisch, 2000). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_producer_responsibility
Reuse
While recycling entails taking items and either converting them into something else, or re-creating them into the same product, reuse is when we take things, especially ‘disposable’ items and use them over again, repair them rather than dispose of them when they break, or pass them on to others when we no longer have a use for the item. Here is a good description and some useful tips on reuse, many of them from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences website.
Many of these things may not cost much to replace, but it doesn’t make any more sense to throw away those things than it does to throw away your bicycle after one use. And speaking of bicycles (or other durable goods like washers, dryers, etc.) -- why not repair them rather than replace them when they break? This is another form of “reuse”. New is not always better, nor it is always necessary. You’ll be helping your environment, but your pocketbook will thank you too! When you do decide to replace something large and “reusable”, be sure to donate the old one to charitable outlets like the ones mentioned here. Most of the time the item can be repaired by those groups, and then redistributed into other homes rather than landfills. Hold a yard sale or give-away. And ask your neighbors to join in too — this shares the work and increases the number of unused things that can find new homes and new uses. And your local recycling/solid waste office may run a “swap shop” at a recycling centers. When you do need to purchase something, check those yard sales and charitable outlets first to see if they have what you need before selecting something new.
Remember, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure! The important thing to remember when you intend to throw anything out is to STOP and think: can I find a way to continue to use this item? can this item be used by someone else?
In addition, just walk down East Patrick Street in downtown Frederick City and you will see several local businesses that specialize in the reuse of clothing and home furnishings. From antique shops like Cannon Hill Place and Emporium Antiques to Chic to Chic too for vintage clothing or Fabulous Finds for home furnishings, there are many places you can find a new home for that gently used article of clothing or piece of furniture.
The people of the world are aggressively working to reduce the amount of waste and divert what waste is generated from the trash cycle. Programs like StEP are designed to divert electronic waste (e-waste) from the waste stream. There are many programs and initiatives focused on addressing our global out-of-control waste problem; people working all over the world on a variety of ideas and solutions. Frederick County’s desire to rely on the 19th century idea of burying or burning trash is completely out of step with what the rest of the country and the world is currently doing.
Recycle and Compost
Frederick County has a great recycling program!
“Did you know that recycling 1 aluminum can saves the same amount of energy needed to power a television for 3 hours? Did you know that Americans use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour? Most importantly did you know that YOU could make a difference for our community, country and world, just by recycling? Recycling is one part of Frederick County Government’s strategy to reduce waste and manage resources wisely. All residents are encouraged to recycle more and waste less.” (From Frederick County’s recycling website. Use the topics on the left column for much more information about our County’s recycling program.)
An important part of recycling is composting. Nearly 1/3 of the waste we generate is organic matter that can be composted and returned to the soil. Frederick County already diverts 20,000 tons per year of yard waste from our landfill. That material is either chipped for mulch or composted to make a soil amendment that can replace fertilizers made from petroleum. see this link to learn more about our compost.
When we add food waste from grocery stores, restaurants, schools, etc. to our composting program, another 13% of our waste will be diverted from landfilling. A surprising amount of paper (up to 50%) mixed with food waste can also be composted.
Here's more about the types of materials that can be composted on a large scale. Also see PDF pg 6.
See how Dubuque, Iowa's food scrap recycling program has extended their landfill life, reduced pollution (especially methane — a powerful greenhouse gas), maintained Dubuque County’s recycling rate above 25%, and created a beneficial compost product for gardens and landscaping.
