Logo

 

zero waste

Zero Waste Hierarchy

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"546","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 400px; height: 289px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]You’ve probably heard the term Zero Waste before, but not been sure about what it meant. 
 
The peer-reviewed definition of Zero Waste by Zero Waste International Alliance involves “designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them.”
 
Notice the last part disqualifies burning or burying waste. Unfortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still includes incineration (“energy recovery”) in their Waste Management Hierarchy, a concession to the incineration industry that makes achieving zero waste impossible.
 
Like it or not, there is a landfill at the back end of any waste system. There are three main options for what to do with the waste we fail to eliminate:
• Incineration (and landfilling ash) is the most polluting and expensive option
• Direct landfilling is bad, but preferable to incineration
• Digestion before landfilling is the best option, so that the remainder is stabilized to avoid having gassy, stinky landfills.
 
The last is part of the zero waste approach, minimizing the volume, toxicity and nuisances of landfills. Incineration includes experimental gasification, pyrolysis, plasma and trash-to-ethanol schemes), where the toxic ash, slag or other residue still must be landfilled—unless they try to get away with something really inappropriate, like pretending ash is a useful building material, or dumping digested trash on farm fields.
 
After years of careful study, Energy Justice Network has designed its own Zero Waste Hierarchy, with each of its ten steps summarized below (and in the graphic).
 

Maine Towns Vote Whether to Burn Trash or Make Biogas

Actually, there's a third (and better) option and it's called Zero Waste.
 
- by Andy O'Brien, April 7, 2016, The Free Press
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"540","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"320","style":"width: 333px; height: 222px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]On March 31, 2018, it will no longer be economical for midcoast towns to send their household trash to the  Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. (PERC) incinerator in Orrington. That’s the date when the facility loses a lucrative energy contract to sell its electricity at above market rates. With PERC out of the picture, two nonprofits are bitterly competing for thousands of tons of midcoast waste. 
 
In one corner is the Municipal Review Committee, a municipal cooperative serving PERC’s 187 user communities and governed by representatives of its member towns. After determining that PERC was too expensive to continue running, the MRC developed a proposal with Maryland-based fiber-to-fuel company Fiberight and waste-to-energy giant Covanta to build a $67 million waste-to-biogas processing plant in Hampden. Fiberight claims it will be able to convert 100 percent of the organic material in the waste stream into compressed natural gas by using an anaerobic digestion process. In order to secure financing for the project, it needs a commitment from at least 80 percent of PERC’s user municipalities. 
 
In the other corner is Ecomaine, a municipally owned nonprofit that operates a waste-to-electricity trash incinerator in Portland. MRC would charge a $65-per-ton disposal fee and  Ecomaine would charge $70.50 per ton. But unlike Ecomaine, MRC offers its communities ownership benefits that would give member towns energy rebates from the biogas it would sell in future years. With Ecomaine, midcoast towns would only be contracted customers. 
 

Zero Waste to Landfill: How Incinerators Get Promoted

- by Caroline Eader

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"386","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"480","style":"width: 333px; height: 371px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"431"}}]]The incinerator industry promotes a false belief that the only choices we have in handling our waste is to either burn it for energy or to bury it in a landfill. The existence of what is known as a "waste-to-energy" (WTE) facility does not eliminate the need for a landfill. First, 10% to 15% of the waste stream cannot be incinerated and secondly, after burning there is a significant amount of ash (10% to 15% by volume, or about 30% by weight) which is still sent to a landfill. 

The industry notion that trash incineration doesn't compete with composting or recycling is misleading. Industry would have people believe only material which can't be recycled is processed, but the truth is incinerator contracts do not exclude recyclable material from being incinerated. When I´ve asked industry representatives why they do not remove the recoverable material, they say, "It's not my job."

If you read Covanta and Wheelabrator incinerator contracts, you'll find that their job is to get BTUs from municipal solid waste (including plastic and paper) for energy recovery. 

Dirty Energy Ash Blamed for Toxic Soil in Greenwich, CT

- by Bill Cummings, December 28, 2014, CT Post

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"368","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 250px; height: 188px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]The discovery of PCBs and other contaminants at Greenwich High School two years ago is only part of a mosaic of cancer-causing toxics that have cropped up at various sites around one of the nation's wealthiest, most exclusive communities.

Pollutants have now been confirmed at three other locations in Greenwich, providing new and expanding evidence of a decades-old trail of ash stretching from the high school to the west, down along both sides of the Interstate 95 corridor and directly into Long Island Sound.

Recent soil tests near an old pool at waterfront Byram Park that the town wants to replace revealed arsenic concentrations at 11 times the acceptable residential standard and the presence of an "ash type material."

Maryland “Zero-Waste” Plan Draws Fire Over Inclusion of Incineration

- by Timothy B. Wheeler, December 15, 2014, The Baltimore Sun

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"357","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 325px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]With Marylanders throwing away far more trash per person than the average American, the O'Malley administration released a long-range plan Monday to virtually eliminate placing waste in state landfills in the next 25 years. The plan is drawing mixed reaction, however, as environmentalists criticize the blueprint's embrace of burning debris to generate energy.

State officials say that curtailing placing waste in landfills can save communities and taxpayers money, conserve energy and natural resources, and reduce pollution, including the release of climate-warming greenhouse gases.

Marylanders have more than doubled their recycling rates in the past two decades, the plan notes, now diverting about 45 percent of what once was thrown away. However, the state's residents still discard more than half their waste, with most of that going to landfills, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.

In a statement accompanying the plan's release, Gov. Martin O'Malley called it "an ambitious policy framework to create green jobs and business opportunities while virtually doing away with the inefficient waste disposal practices that threaten our future."

Composting vs. Waste-to-Energy: The Politics Of Green Waste

- by Stephen Handley, October 3, 2014, Sustainablog

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"273","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]In Tulsa, Oklahoma, green waste is very much on the political agenda. According to Tulsa World, the city’s trash board voted this week to pursue a plan to collect and incinerate it rather than invest in an active composting facility. Proponents of the composting plan are deeply disappointed by the vote.

City Councilor Karen Gilbert says, “That [vote] sets us further back from the original plan of having an active composting, mulching facility,” Gilbert said. “It’s frustrating that we start off with an investment, but then we don’t follow through with the priority of that investment.”

Those in favor of the incinerator approach complain that the city can’t afford the cost of the proposed composting facility and that is costs too much money to separate out the green waste from the rest of the city’s trash. Doesn’t it seem as though the situation in Tulsa is a microcosm of the entire “global warming/climate change” debate going on around the globe?

Allentown, PA Kills Controversial Waste Incinerator Proposal

- by Emily Opilo, October 1, 2014, McClatchy-Tribune Regional News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"269","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"line-height: 20.6719989776611px; width: 333px; height: 187px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]

More than two years after the deal's controversial approval, Allentown has terminated its contract with Delta Thermo Energy, ending speculation about whether the company would ever build a proposed waste-to-energy facility in the city.

In a letter dated Sept. 26, Allentown solicitor Jerry Snyder wrote that Bucks County-based Delta Thermo Energy had "consistently failed to advance" plans for a 48,000-square-foot facility on Kline's Island that would have burned pulverized municipal waste and sewage sludge to generate electricity.

Covanta Incineration Deal Discourages Rival Recycling Programs

- Kathleen McLaughlin, August 4, 2014, Indianapolis Business Journal

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"240","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 222px; height: 148px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"Photo: Indianapolis Business Journal"}}]]The city of Indianapolis faces financial penalties if it launches alternative recycling programs, under a pending deal with incinerator operator Covanta.

The Indianapolis Board of Public Works will vote Wednesday on an agreement that’s worth more than $112 million in revenue to Covanta, which would become the city’s main residential recycling provider for the next 14 years.

Covanta is proposing to build a $45 million recycling facility next to its incinerator on Harding Street. Under the deal negotiated by Republican Mayor Greg Ballard's administration, the city would continue to send all household waste to Covanta, but the company would pluck out recyclables and sell them on the commodities market.

Companies that rely on recycled goods oppose the deal because they say Covanta’s facility would generate sub-par material for their industries. But the Department of Public Works says it’s a way to boost the city’s overall recycling rate without requiring residents to sign up for a separate curbside service.

Curbside recycling is currently available for an additional monthly fee through Republic Services, but participation is low.

Democrats on the City-County Council want the city to pursue other alternatives, but that would be impossible under terms of the Covanta deal, which were made available to the Board of Public Works on Friday.

Solar Power Heats 90% of Community's Homes...in Canada

- Drake Landing Solar Community

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"212","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 210px; height: 129px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;"}}]]The Drake Landing Solar Community (DLSC) is a master planned neighbourhood in the Town of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada that has successfully integrated Canadian energy efficient technologies with a renewable, unlimited energy source - the sun.

The first of its kind in North America, DLSC is heated by a district system designed to store abundant solar energy underground during the summer months and distribute the energy to each home for space heating needs during winter months.

Subscribe to zero waste