Swedish Incinerators

While reading today’s articles on Covanta, I could not help but be reminded of several months ago when a friend of mine was telling me about a similar project going on in Sweden. At the time, the waste-to-energy idea seemed positive, since it cut down on so many landfills. After reading up more however, I started having my doubts. Doesn’t it sound magical, for stuff to go into a company as waste and come out green energy that seems nearly perfect? It seems a bit too good to be true.

I was not wrong to think that the waste-to-energy systems sound great. In articles supporting the use of the incinerators like those at Covanta, the journalists often point out that garbage in landfills decreases significantly, however, it does not necessarily mean that it is better for the environment. For example, in Sweden, “less than 1% of the household trash ends up in landfills,” (Alford, 2014). Although the trash is no longer visible, it does not just disappear. A lot of it ends up as air pollution or going into sidewalks and concrete. It was interesting because it seems like the outlook on incineration of trash in Sweden is mostly positive. I believe that this is because “Swedes are used to separating these products into special bins,” (Open Knowledge, 2009). Separating out the plastics and composting the food waste helps decrease the amount of air pollution. This is why the Covanta project could be problematic. Because all of the trash is thrown in together and sorted out later, there is a lot of contamination. If the consumers separated the different wastes out before they were sent off, perhaps there would be less pollution and higher quality recycled materials.

I think that this contributes to the controversy of the Covanta project. Covanta is advertised as being really good for the environment; like the perfect solution. The  problem is that we do not really have a perfect solution yet. The company makes the project appear to be this clean system with no pollution, when in fact there is pollution. It also in a way contributes more to the problem. Although statistically more waste is being recycled, it is not necessarily being recycled WELL. Even though the total amount of recycling may increase, the amount of high quality recycled products will decrease do to the contamination caused by mixing all of the different wastes. This means that there will be less usable recycled material, which defeats the purpose of recycling.