Earlier this year, a video explaining Sweden’s efficient trash burning system made the Facebook rounds, touting a shocking statistic: less than one percent of this country’s household waste ends up in a landfill. Instead, much of it is incinerated and converted into usable electricity and heat via waste-to-energy plants. In the U.S., the clip left the social media community scratching its collective head, and asking: Why aren’t Americans burning more of our own garbage?
Considering we’re in the midst of a trash crisis, it’s a good question. Every year, humans generate more than a billion tons of solid waste, and that number will be closer to 4 billion by 2100. In America, each of us throws away more than seven pounds of garbage a day. In other words: we’re surrounded by rubbish, and because our population is on the rise, the problem is set to get worse.
Today, most of our garbage makes its way into one of America’s 3,500 landfills, but this isn’t a sustainable solution. The trash here doesn’t biodegrade as quickly as experts predicted back in the ’30s when the first underground garbage heap was given a test run in California. In fact, much of it mummifies. In 1992, the New York Times reported on a portion of in-tact guacamole retrieved from a landfill 25 years after being thrown out. In the meantime, the landfill trash that does disintegrate leeches toxins like arsenic and lead into groundwater supplies, while greenhouse gases (primarily methane) are released into the atmosphere, expediting the climate change that’s set to displace hundreds of millions of people. At the same time, for their role in driving this climate change, fossil fuels are increasingly becoming fuel source non-grata. We need a new way to power the planet.
Citing these reasons, countries around the globe are increasingly turning to waste-to-energy (WTE) technology, in which the heat from burning trash converts water into steam that’s used to power a turbine generator for producing electricity. China plans on building 300 WTE plants over the next three years, including the largest facility of its kind in the world. It will be capable of burning 5,000 tons of trash a day and it will turn at least one-third of that into usable electricity. And Europe has historically been the largest market for waste-to-energy technology on the planet.
Proponents point to an allegedly subtle (relatively) environmental footprint. While waste-to-energy plants do release greenhouse gasses — just like landfills — these facilities have “much lower carbon equivalent emissions,” according to Columbia University’s Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council. Also, “WTE plants conserve fossil fuels by generating electricity.
View Article