Talking trash

I read in the New York Times last week that "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags." It seems that, in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, especially, garbage is now viewed "as a clean alternative fuel rather than a smelly, unsightly problem." This is due to large energy plants that burn household and industrial waste. "Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration."

Europe has some 400 such plants, with more under construction. Denmark alone has 98, serving a country of only 5.5 million people. By contrast, the United States, with more than 300 million people (as you know, we're still counting), has only 87 plants, almost all 15 or more years old.

Where does our garbage go, then? In New York, the answer is landfills. "New York City alone sends 10,500 tons of residential waste each day to landfills in places like Ohio and South Carolina." (italics mine) New York has a population of 8,008,278 (2000 census).

In Alameda County, like San Francisco to the west, we're taking a two-fold approach. We want to reduce the amount of solid waste we produce, but what we do produce, we put in...landfills! Berkeley's solid waste "production" was 91,008 tons in 2008, or 249 tons per day, from a population of 102,743 (2000 census) That amount represents a decline according to the 2008 Alameda County Waste Characterization Study. "Overall annual solid waste quantities within [Alameda] County have decreased by approximately 24 percent since 2000, with the greatest decrease (based on weight) represented by the City of Oakland and the greatest percentage decrease represented by Emeryville and Albany."

Even so, we generate more trash per person than our East Coast counterparts. New Yorkers make some .13 tons per person per day, and we Berkeley folks churn out some .24 tons per person per day. Oakland does better at .18 tons per person per day.

Returning to the resistence to waste-to-energy conversion plants, aka trash-burning, the article in the Times identifies American popular antagonism as having three causes: "relative abundance of cheap landfills in a large country, opposition from state officials who fear the plants could undercut recycling programs and a 'negative public perception.'"

What really amazes me about the "negative public perception" is this: when I was a little girl, trash burning in the back yard was an ordinary thing. You grew a hedge at the back of your yard to hide the brick or stone rubbish bin, and once a week or so, someone went out there and set the garbage on fire. It smelled bad and made black smoke, but virtually everybody did it.

Not everything burned, of course. I can remember poking through the ashes and finding charred wads of tinfoil. It looked ancient, transformed into an artifact, something I could pretend had a secret story to tell, not simply the leftover covering from a meatloaf or maybe a jiffypop top. You might say that, when it came to trash burning, we Americans had an In-My-Back-Yard approach right up until the Clean Air Act was passed in 1963, putting a stop to those backyard hijinks.

Seven years later, in 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency opened its doors, and today the EPA actually has a Backyard Trash Burning website! This page explains all the problems with trash burning--for example: it turns out kids like to poke around in those ashes, and they're toxic, gosh darnnit! As a bonus, the site features a link to Bernie the Burn Barrel--don't you just love public service mascots?

In other words, today, we find ourselves in the situation of having gone through a societal IMBY-to-NIMBY conversion. Remarkable!

Besides apparent distaste, the other opposition to the fancy new trash burners is Big Environmentalism. The argument goes like this: the energy plants create a market for trash when our goal should be zero waste. That's what I call making Perfect be the Enemy of Good! Nearly every week, I have to consign to the trash (aka "landfill destination bin") the containers that the City of Berkeley will not collect for recycling, because they claim they can't find a buyer for those types. These include any and all plastics that aren't classed #1 or #2. I try to buy strategically to avoid these plastics, but it simply is not always possible.

Here's my question: Why not be making energy from this stuff? Let's put one of these new burners in Berkeley. Looks like we have the tonnage to spare.