Not Enough Garbage for Trash Incinerators?

Here is a fascinating conundrum brought up by Helen Spiegelman of the Georgia Straight. As you may already know, Metro Vancouver is currently in the planning stages for building a trash incinerator. This incinerator will light our garbage on fire and, presumably, produce some energy that we can use. The trouble with such a waste-to-energy design is that the incinerator requires a certain amount of garbage for it to work properly.

The trash incinerator being planned for Metro Vancouver will require one million tonnes of trash each and every year. As it stands, Metro Vancouver is producing about that much garbage on an annual basis, but then wouldn't we have no real motivation to cut back on our garbage? Wouldn't we have fewer reasons to look into composting, recycling, and other greener alternatives?

If we were to reduce our garbage to below the one million tonne mark, Metro Vancouver may have to take a page out of Germany's book and import garbage to keep the trash incinerator working.

A write-up in the webzine Monsters and Critics, citing the German environment ministry, reports that Germany had to import six million tonnes of refuse last year. In the bizarre logic of trade, Germany exported 1.8 million tonnes of trash the same year. This summer Germany imported 160,000 tonnes of garbage that had been piling up in the streets of Naples.

What's your take on the trash burners? Should we build them or no?

Source: Straight.com

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Not Enough Garbage for Trash Incinerators?

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