In Support of Industrial Incinerators

 The following piece was submitted to the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal and was published in their April 24th edition under "Letter of the Day".

A while back I came across a report on a large incinerator complex in Austria, Spittelau, that is used to process garbage. From about 250,000 tonnes of household waste, they produce on average 60 GWh of electricity and 500 GWh of heating to local homes and businesses. In fact, the energy extracted is enough to heat more than 60,000 households. Austria imposed a law forbidding the dumping of untreated waste, something we do without thinking of the ramifications yet with the belief we are being “environmentally friendly” whereas Austria is not only talking the talk but walking the walk.

At the facility, the waste is incinerated. The hot flue gases are passed through a heat exchanger to generate steam which is then piped to local homes and businesses for heat or sent through a steam turbine to generate electricity. The flue gases are then cleaned using state-of-the-art systems. Only then are the purified flue gases released to the atmosphere.

In addition to heat and electricity the plant generates about 6,000 tonnes of scrap iron and 60,000 tonnes of clinker, ash, and filter cake. So, from an input of 250,000 tonnes the output is 26%, or about ¼. In addition, the scrap can be sold for additional revenue and the clinker used in concrete construction.

We have been told for a long time now to follow the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In Europe they follow that mantra. Why don’t we? Ironically, we do not have industrial scale incinerators in Canada with state-of-the-art purification of the flue gases because of … environmentalists! The people who pound on us for being wasteful and to be environmentally friendly yet lobby to prevent viable solutions! The excuse is always the short-sighted view in that “they produce air pollution”.

For a long time, incineration was a staple for many people to reduce the amount of garbage that would go to the local dump. Even there, waste was typically burned. As a result of both measures dumps lasted for years before a new location was needed. With the advent of landfills, and the ban on the incineration, we now have quickly growing mountains of waste; buried out of sight but impacting local ground water. Not smart.

We need to push back on these “environmentalists” as their dishonesty is causing more problems than we had previously. Another irony, to be true to the ideals of environmentalism we need to fight environmentalists! All because they are dominated by parasites who use this to live off the rest of us under the guise of “saving the earth” while all we have done is find ways to do damage differently. This needs to stop! And implementing industrial scale incinerators with state-of-the-art technology is a big step in the right direction!