Is burning waste the answer to landfill woes?

Britain is drowning in rubbish. In 2006, 20.9m tonnes of garbage found its way into landfill, a measly one per cent reduction on 2005. With binding obligations to the EU Landfill Directive, the UK has to reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill in 2010 to 75 per cent of that produced in 1995, and by 2013 to 50 per cent.

In addition to recycling and re-use, the government views incineration as a critical strategy, and what better way to reuse waste than by converting it into energy? The government is encouraging local councils to green light energy from waste (EfW) schemes at their rubbish dumps.

The idea of generating power and reducing the amount of non-recoverable waste that goes to landfill should be appealing to local authorities. But they're in an awkward bind. They face fines if they do not reduce the levels of waste going to landfill, however, many local residents and political groups such as in Somerset and Buckinghamshire are fighting against the construction of EfW incinerators. They don't want them in their backyard, fearing the emissions of harmful gases and particulates.

Energy from waste faces considerable criticism from many environmental groups as well. An expose in The Ecologist last year revealed that fallout from waste incinerators has been linked to cancer, dioxin poisoning, hormone disruption and birth defects. Ecologist editor Pat Thomas writes, "There is no technology that can remove all the pollutants and there are too many uncertainties and variables to say whether anything that gets released into the air is categorically safe."

In 2006, Friends of the Earth commissioned an independent report that found that waste incinerators that generate electricity emit a third more greenhouse gases for the electricity they produce than gas-fired power stations do. Plus, the situation will get worse as the carbon dioxide emissions from incinerators increase due to a higher percentage of fossil-fuel-containing plastics in the waste they burn. 

Nonetheless, councils are giving EfW the go-ahead. Lancashire-based EfW company BioGen Power was recently given permission to build a small-scale power plant in North Ayrshire and plans 11 more throughout the UK. Its plants will be able to treat 120,000 tonnes of non-hazardous waste per year and will provide electricity generation capacity of around ten megawatts per hour.

BioGen Power claims its technology is much greener than traditional EfW with evidence from six facilities already using the ENERGOS technology in Norway and Germany. According the firm, advanced thermal treatment plants cause less harmful emissions than large incinerators because they have a two-stage gas capture process, which ensures that harmful gases are properly burnt.

Another virtue, says BioGen Power, is that because its plants are smaller, they can be located close to the source of waste, reducing the need to transport waste over a wide area. You can find more about how their approach differs from mass burn incinerators on its website.

Incineration is not the only way to derive energy from waste. It's also possible to turn landfill gases into biofuels, which is what the largest rubbish collector in the US, Waste Management Inc., plans to do. The garbage company is partnering with the Linde Group to build a plant to purify and liquefy landfill gas at a landfill site in Altamont, California, due to open next year. Three hundred dustbin lorries will be converted to operate on the biogas derived from landfill gas.

Landfill gas is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, and is collected, purified, compressed and super-cooled to form liquid natural gas. Only methane is used to form the fuel. Waste Management Inc. already harnesses landfill gas to produce electricity at about 100 of its 280 landfills around the US.

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