Dear Editor,

Further to various conversations on the subject of waste management, it is a good time to consider incineration as . . .

part of a plan to deal with the waste materials we have already accumulated and will accumulate in the future. One aspect of consideration is contemplating possible downsides in advance before big investments of time, money and faith in the program. At Warden Toller’s prompt, I visited the website of Covanta, a company promoting the waste-to-energy process. 

Their website is very inviting with an overview of the company strategies and a tease of the actual processes involved. That’s where the skeptical me takes notice. There is no mention, that I’ve found, of how waste material is brought up to the extreme temperatures required to safely demolish plastic and other durable waste materials. There is a ‘further information’ box on their website, but I received no response to my inquiries. Not surprising, I’m just a concerned citizen with no special credentials to obtain information.

That belies the whole waste-to-energy concept. There must be a tremendous input of energy in the first place because garbage just doesn’t burn like that on its own. It seems to me, that recovering heat energy in the aftermath of incineration is damage control, not free energy. So, until further enlightenment, let’s leave the ‘to energy’ part out of the equation. Is it a good way to dispose of the inorganic, non-recyclable parts of the waste stream? 

That, in itself, could be a better way of dealing with that part of the waste stream than the current transport-and-landfill method. But past programs of a similar nature (plasmafication) proved to be non-scalable, so that the gathering, sorting and transfer of those portions of waste become more, not less complicated. The facility for incinerating waste will be a big project and it will be located near the epicentre of waste production. In other words, it should be near Ottawa/Gatineau. So, few or no jobs for Pontiacers and we’ll still be collecting, sorting and shipping garbage we make to a more central location. It still may be a better method if it doesn’t shift citizens’ consciousness away from personal responsibilities to reduce, re-use and recycle. Incineration should be for the stuff left over after all the ‘re-s’ are thoroughly exhausted. 

Let’s continue investigating and considering, because waste management is a big problem that won’t go away on its own, and it’s all ours. Only humans can mess the nest in that way. 

Robert Wills

Shawville and Thorne, Que.