Now that a deadline has been set to stop trucking Toronto’s garbage to Michigan, the problem of what to do with the city’s trash is on the minds of many gearing up to the election. David Miller has said incineration is not an option, but after reading Christopher Hume’s (other) column in yesterday’s Toronto Star, I can’t help but question why.
Hume reports that in Sweden, where there are now 30 incineration plants, dioxin emissions in the whole country are one gram, compared with 35 grams in 1985 when only 18 plants existed. In Malmo, Sweden’s third largest city, 40% of the homes are heated by a plant in the region. Writes Hume:
The plant, built in 1974, has been updated and expanded several times to meet growing demand and stringent European Union emission standards. Thanks to advanced flue-gas cleaning technology, exhaust is 98 per cent water. It’s now so clean the locals didn’t make a peep when the most recent expansion was launched last year. After completion in 2008, the facility will generate fully 60 per cent of the region’s electricity.
As John Lornic points out is his book The New City, here in Canada, we’ve chosen to emit toxins in a different way: every truck we send to Michigan emits carbon dioxide from its tailpipe, while toxins from our landfills seep into the ground. The only way we can really improve things is to reduce the amount of crap we produce in the first place. (Sweden’s kicking our butt on this front as well, passing legislation that forces companies, such as McDonalds, to organize and pay for recycling.)
One of the things that makes incineration dangerous (besides that fact that, despite improved technology, it still releases bad stuff into the air) is that it could allow us to become dependent on burning our trash. In the absence of strict regulations to reduce the amount of garbage we produce, knowing we can burn our waste may not do much to encourage further efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Another downfall: environment guru (and ward 14 Parkdale-High Park candidate) Gord Perks points out in a column he wrote for Eye Weekly this spring that, “burning garbage creates more climate pollution per watt of energy produced. The only thing reduced here,†he says, “is the millions spent on fuel.â€
So is building incinerators like the ones they have in Sweden a reasonable option for Toronto? Perhaps, given the right circumstances. Hume’s column on Sweden paints a pretty compelling picture. It sounds like an option we shouldn’t be afraid to at least discuss.
8 comments
The aspect of heating homes (Malmo) from the article is something that gets overlooked. District heating is essentially Enwave’s cooling project in reverse.
Vienna, Austria, for example, has an incinerator that is used for this purpose (it even let a famous artist provide ideas for its external design).
And it’s not like district heating would be a new thing for N. America – though it fell out of favour due to cheap alternative sources of local heating. ConEd in New York has been providing steam district heating since 1882.
Now as for reduction and reuse – that’s the big target. How much packaging do we really need? Could we have a industrial design program at one of our post-secondary institutions to try to tackle this?
The recycling goals using the beer stores…I think it’s great that Ontario is finally planning to put deposit on all alcoholic products, but why not have an automated bottle return system, like there are in many other countries’ supermarkets?
I made sure to see the Vienna incinerator when I was visiting there. The artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s architecture is usually asssociated environmentally sustainable practices and green spaces on roof areas. If I recall correctly, his logic for accepting the incinerator commision was that the pollutants escaping an incinerator was a slightly better alternative to the same pollutants leaching into the environment in a landfill scenario.
I remember, a *very* long time ago (roughly fifteen years, I’d have to say), there was a kiosk at the local Loblaws for automated bottle return. You placed bottles on a little conveyor belt, in the shape of a half-crescent, and it took the bottle behind a rubber curtain. There was some kind of credit system, I think, but my memory is fuzzy.
I have no idea why it was removed. Does anyone else remember them?
There is still really no plan by the city for gabage. They are fixated with little tweaks that will increase “diversion” but not address the whole way we see waste. Even Edmonton sees garbage as a product that can be turned into heat or electricity and they have tons of room to just bury it. A solution in my mind would include incineration, legislated packaging rules where manufacturers pay for the cost of recycling their packaging, and mandatory recycling for everybody.
How stupid is the City gatbage plan? Well look at how dirty the city is. Look at all the garbage dumped at night in parks and in alleys. The City’s plan is really about money instead of waste management. They made disposal workers get tough on what people can throw out (to save money on shipping to the US) and provided no options for home owners besides calling 1-880 Junk, somehow driving materials to the other end of the city, or dumping at night. Which do you think proved popular? So the City saved money and there is garbage all over the place. Next time you walk in a park like the one near me and you may see a sign warning you that the garbage can is under constant watch for illegal dumping. That sums up the City’s garbage plan.
I remember those bottle-return machines too… I suppose they became obsolete when refillable glass pop bottles were discontinuned. Which wasn’t all that long ago really, I worked at a supermarket in the mid-90’s and I remember dealing with bottle deposits on occasion.
Too bad that Miller has come out so firmly against incineration, when it can obviously be done well, if done with care. It’s uncharacteristically cynical.
Scott – Edmonton doesn’t have a lot of space to bury their trash, as city owned dumping grounds were forcasted to be filled by about this time in the late 80s if no action was taken. Many communities surrounding the city had no interest or capacity in taking the trash.
So even as the city had a succesful bluebox program, that wasn’t enough. So they built their Edmonton Waste Management Centre with a massive composting and dry waste processing facility along with a waste research centre.
See http://tinyurl.com/fshrw
Its true, Toronto is one of the worst when it comes to garbage/household ratio. I also read some were that in Sweden, the heat generated by the incineration of garbage losses less then 1% of its overall heat from the plant to a home 3 km away. I also remember in a video I watched last year in my gr.9 geography class that even though we think me are going our part with the brue bins, most of the glass and plastic is shreded and stored, hoping some company will by a bundle of them. Enevatably, it is send on the road to the dump.
I look up to the Swed’s. My dad says they are ahead of their time, but are they really? No, its just that we are lacking creativity to find a way to protect the planet, animals, people and MY generation and so on from the desasters of posponing(sp?) until its forced upon us and its too late.