Yes of course, but it doesn’t have to go into this landfill or any landfill for that matter. In fact, the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) that is generated by residents of Lower Windsor Township all goes to the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant North of York [Click to Read Document].
WTE plants involve a smoke stack which suspiciously looks like it should be a major source of air pollution. However, 30 years of diligent development of technology for cleaning up the flue gas have reduced emissions of hazardous pollutants about 100 times. Today’s WTE facilities are far cleaner and far less damaging to the environment than making a permanent mountain of trash in somebody’s back yard. It takes up much less space and doesn’t pollute the groundwater or streams and rivers. It is orders of magnitude better for the health of local residents: [Click to Read]
Most developed countries, all of Europe for instance, are in the process of practically eliminating landfills in favor of WTE plants. Today in Sweden, 49% of their waste stream is recycled, 50% is incinerated in WTE plants to produce electricity, and 1% is landfilled. Sweden has gotten so good at this that they actually import waste from other countries to generate energy with their incinerators.
Today’s cheaper-than-usual fossil fuels to make electricity have temporarily slowed the growth in the US of WTE plants, but another factor is that every new or expanded landfill diverts fuel for the plants, reducing the market for WTE. This enriches landfill operators but is not a good thing for our health and the environment.
65% of electricity in the US today comes from the burning of fossil fuels, i.e., coal, oil or gas, creating greenhouse gases. This takes carbon out of the ground where it’s minding its own business and increases the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere where it warms our Earth. WTE plants, on the other hand, create electricity without burning fossil fuel.
Burning trash creates carbon dioxide, too, correct? Yes, but that is just putting it back in the air where it came from. With the exception of most plastics, which are a small portion, the burnable part of MSW started out life as plants, which get their carbon from the air. Carbon dioxide becomes plants which in turn become paper/cardboard/wood/food scraps/etc. and back to carbon dioxide when combusted, resulting in no net change in greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
And, of course, trash rotting in a landfill creates methane, which is effectively 26 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Some of this can be captured and burned but much of it ends up in the air.
Tired of putting up with climate change and want to make a difference for your kids and grandkids? Well, you can buy a $60,000 Tesla electric vehicle and take one fossil fuel burning car off the road. Or you can just say no to the landfill expansion and effectively take 300,000 gas burning cars off the road. Here’s why: [Click to Read]
We won’t stop generating trash any time soon, but there are much better ways to deal with it than to make a steaming pile on prime farm land. The trash and recycling we as residents of Lower Windsor Township put out on the curb goes to much better places than Modern Landfill. We don’t need the landfill, and we shouldn’t have to put up with the health issues nor the environmental disaster caused by other people’s trash in our back yard.