Pros & Cons Of Waste Incineration &

Waste To Energy (Benefits &

Disadvantages)
Summary – Do The Pros Of Waste
Incineration & Waste To Energy
Outweighs The Cons?
Old waste incineration plants and technology certainly seem to have
environmental (air pollution, and greenhouse gas CO2 emissions) and human
health concerns. The same can be said for incineration plants in countries or
states that don’t have stringent regulations/standards, or in places where those
regulations/standards aren’t thoroughly enforced.
In the above cases, different chemicals and toxic substances can present risk to local
communities, society at large, and the environment (air, water and land).

Another problem is the profit motive and financial incentive with incineration.
Significant upfront investment, taxes, incineration vs recycling and landfill rates,
and a stable waste supply (plus other factors) can all influence how much profit an
incineration plant makes, and even how much waste is diverted away from recycling
to incineration.

Having said this – it is said that the newest incineration plants have far better
pollution and dioxin filters to protect the environment and human health.

With all of the above said, incineration most likely sits behind reducing, re-using and
recycling as a sustainable and eco friendly waste management option.

Whether it is better than landfill or not depends on local context – but it sits around
par with it.

What might be done is to allow incineration to co-exist with recycling and landfill.
First priority is to redesign products and innovate materials, as well as change
business and consumer behavior to reduce, re-use and modify our waste streams.

Second priority is to recycle and compost materials that make sense to do so.

Third priority is to send the remaining waste to either incineration with energy
generation, or to landfill with methane capture and leachate management – again,
depending on the type of waste.

This holistic approach makes the most of each type of waste and management
option in terms of their characteristics and pros and cons they offer.

Pros (Benefits) Of Waste Incineration & Waste

To Energy
 Pursuing waste incineration over landfill means the environmental issues of
leachate management and methane from decomposing organic waste in
landfills are reduced
 Incineration can be used for waste to energy recovery where heat is used for
municipal heating systems, or steam for electricity
 Plastic waste can be used in cement kilns as a fuel source because plastic has
a higher energy output than some other types of waste (because of the
petroleum that makes it up)
 Ash from incineration can be used as construction aggregate (once treated),
or buried
 The newest incineration plants have technology to reduce negative
environmental and health impacts such as efficient combustion, end-of-pipe
treatment, selective catalytic reduction, and the addition of suitable inhibitors
 Incineration can be a good option in countries where land is scarce, or other
conditions like soil suitability, flood risks, or bushfire risks aren’t suitable to
set up landfill
 Incineration doesn’t face the same limitation of landfill of running out of
space, or having to manage and compact waste
 In countries like China, incineration plants can be cheaper than new
sustainable energy (wind and solar) projects
  With a growing population in many places, there can be a stable source of fuel
(waste) and easily available technologies for incineration plants
 Incineration does have a place to co-exist with recycling – it can provide the
hygienic treatment of the remaining waste that is not suitable for sustainable
recycling, and at the same time generating energy from it, rather than it being
sent to a landfill. Recycling and waste-to-energy are complementary to
achieve lower landfill rates. Countries with the highest rates of garbage
incineration — Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, for example, all incinerate at
least 50 percent of their waste — also tend to have high rates of recycling and
composting of organic materials and food waste (e360.yale.edu)
 Incineration plants might be treated like recycling facilities – there might be
some types of waste that are far more beneficial to burn, or burn for energy,
compared to others. But, a waste by waste approach might be taken. For
example, some plastics might be far too hard to recycle, and might provide
good energy when incinerated – these could be a type of material suitable for
incineration (and other plastics that are easier to recycle are recycled)

Cons (Disadvantages) Of Waste Incineration &

Waste To Energy
The incineration of waste can produce greenhouse gases in carbon dioxide, as well as air pollution in the
form of carbon monoxide (CO) and noxious emissions, dioxins and particulates, and even heavy metals
like lead and mercury.

One source found that incineration facilities in New York ‘released up to 14 times more mercury, twice
as much lead and four times as much cadmium per unit of energy than coal plants’
(theconversation.com)

Burning municipal solid waste emits ‘nearly as much carbon per unit of energy as coal, and almost twice
as much as natural gas’ (theconversation.com)

Incinerators are extremely expensive to build — large, modern facilities in Europe cost $150 million to
$230 million

Some sources say that focus incineration plants is hindering our investment in recycling plants, and
there is a myth that recycling is harder and less efficient (due to sorting and processing). These same
sources say that recycling rates of 70%+ would be easily attainable if European countries and other
countries switched their main focus and financial investment to recycling instead of incineration
(e360.yale.edu)

Governments that are running out of space in landfill, or land for new landfills, can be pressured into
making poor decisions to over invest in incineration plants which ultimately can have negative
environmental and human health effects. Instead, it could be argued more effort should be put into
reducing the current waste stream, and re-using and recycling more materials
Whether incineration, and waste to energy, is a net positive, can depend on the efficiency of the
process, and the energy mix that waste to energy is replacing. If it’s an inefficient waste to energy
process and it’s replacing a low fossil fuel energy mix – incineration can be a net negative in terms of
efficient energy generation and being low GHG emissions energy generation

Not every country has the same standards, and environmental and health safeguards in place on
incineration plants – some can be very harmful to humans and the environment if not kept to certain
standards and without using certain technology to heavily reduce toxins, dioxins, air pollution, GHG’s
and increase efficiency

Recycling is generally seen as a more eco friendly option in terms of global warming potential and
energy use compared to incineration

Incineration may be better, but can be worse, from an environmental perspective, compared to landfill.
This depends on how the incineration plant runs/is set up, and the type of energy generation it is
replacing if it’s a waste to energy plant

Incineration plants need continual external monitoring to make sure they are safe from an
environmental and human health perspective in terms of their emissions and waste that they produce

In some countries, such as China, there are some who report incineration plants and waste to energy
plants fraudulently obtain government waste disposal subsidies, and have significant environmental
concerns. They also report these plants have complex vested interests (with governments and auditing
bodies), and unwritten rules at work which can place profit over human health and environmental
standards.

Manipulating external emissions auditing for incineration plants can be common in some countries –
some plants use more active carbon in the days before an auditing body visits (inspecting how much
active carbon is being used – which absorbs dioxins well – is a way to tell how environmentally friendly a
plant is being)

Auditing incineration plants can have uncertainties – such as dioxins being hard to detect, and weather
playing a part in getting accurate readings

There is a conflict of interest with incineration plants in some countries – there are generous
government subsidies to set up and run them – but they take many years (20-30 years) to see a
profit/return on investment, and investors have to put a certain amount of waste into them to
guarantee a certain amount of profits and provide a certain amount of jobs. This can lead to not only
continuing to run older plants that are damaging to the environment and human health, but can divert
waste that can be recycled away from recycling plants (because the incineration plants need it, and
incineration rates might be much cheaper than recycling because of the subsidies)

Incineration plants, especially in places/countries where there is heavy subsidisation, can be an excuse
to incinerate waste (which is the easier and cheaper option) over recycling. The same can be said for
organic waste and composting. So, incineration can hinder recycling and composting rates in some
countries due to profit motives or political agenda
Some companies may own both recycling plants and incineration plants. This is also a conflict of interest,
because if they can make more profit by sending waste to incineration plants, they will do this over
recycling

In some countries like China, some say that local protectionism and relationships of other bidders to
members of government, makes it very expensive and difficult to put in bids for new incineration plants,
and have a competitive advantage over local bidders who receive big subsidies. Some say it comes down
to – your connections, your technology, your price – and there can be loopholes in certain bidder
requirements

Waste-to-power profits come from electricity sales and waste disposal subsidies. Costs include the
purchase and maintenance of equipment and staff. Those costs are basically fixed, but income depends
on how much waste you process – with this being the case – if plants aren’t processing enough waste
(they don’t get the supply they need), or they don’t get enough of the right type of waste (high energy,
burns well) – the plant will turn a loss and it doesn’t make economic sense to keep it running. With this
the case – incineration plants are HIGHLY reliant on the amount of waste and the type of waste supply
they are getting. They may not be as flexible as a landfill or recycling plant in this regard.

Incineration plants can be location dependent. They tend to only do well in locations with waste with a
high heating value and well-off local governments

For waste to energy plants, they can be reliant on electricity prices in the area too (as it can affect their
business model)

Investing in incineration plants can come with a lack of accountability in some countries who have an
agenda to set up and develop more of them. Some investors buy non profitable plants so they can bid
for an obtain much larger profitable ones (if pre owning a plant is a requirement of a bidding brief), and
some investors let profit slip on some plants because they know they can pass on costs to government
and state owned firms

The ash incineration plants can produce via burning has high levels of heavy metals, which are not
burned during incineration, and for this reason ash is listed as a type of hazardous waste. If not disposed
of properly and treated – this ash can be harmful in numerous ways

Recycling most materials from municipal solid waste saves on average three to five times more energy
than does burning them for electricity.

A combination of recycling and composting can save three to four times more energy than an
incinerator can produce (zerowasteeurope.eu). Recycling can also save a significant amount of CO2
emissions

The costs to build the facilities [for incineration] and to run them are covered mainly by public funds
with very little private contribution. Therefore, its costs are, in reality, to be paid by the citizens through
higher taxes and bills for waste management. On the contrary, the recycling sector has developed into a
successful business. In Germany, its turnover increased by 520 per cent between 2005 and 2009
(zerowasteeurope.eu)

Recycling creates more jobs, and is more flexible and dynamic than incineration (zerowasteeurope.eu)
Incineration takes accountability away from citizens and businesses about what waste they are
generating compared to recycling

With a growing population, and decreasing resources, it doesn’t make sense to burn waste, even for
energy. There should be more of a focus on re-using and recycling resources

Some sources say Swedish incineration is not profitable – forbes.com

With Croydon Council in the UK, and perhaps other places, some believe there is an economic conflict of
interest with governments, and private companies that manage landfill, recycling and incineration
waste. Because of the way the rates are set up and taxes work, diverting waste away from recycling to
incineration is very profitable. ‘Contaminated’ recycling waste is a loophole companies might try take
advantage of to divert more waste to incinerators and make more money (insidecroydon.com)

Co-firing, or co-incineration, which involves the burning of waste alongside traditional fossil fuels like
coal in facilities such as cement kilns, coal-fired power plants and industrial boilers – is seen as an
unsustainable and nonrenewable form of waste disposal and energy generation

Operators use ‘clean energy’ as a label for incineration or co-incineration to get access to clean energy
grants from the government, or to gain environmental credibility (which can be seen as a form of
greenwashing)

Some point out that better options than incineration are redesigning products for recyclability or
eliminating toxic, hard-to-recycle plastics

Some see incinerators as a ‘false solution to climate change that diverts precious resources, time and
attention from more systemic solutions, such as waste reduction and real renewable fuels like solar and
wind.’ The same might be said for co-incinerators, cement kilns and coal plants. (theconversation.com)

In the US, there has been a case of an incineration facility having to pay a significant fine (in the millions
of dollars) to the EPA for pollution breaches