Clear The Air News Blog Rotating Header Image

Recycling

Denmark’s transition from incineration to Zero Waste

Aug 10th, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

http://www.zerowasteeurope.eu/2014/01/the-story-of-denmarks-transition-from-incineration-to-zero-waste/

“The truth is that the construction of the Amager Bakke incinerator has sparked lots of debate in the country. Danish citizens and politicians are more and more aware that they are recycling too little and burning too much, and that the incineration overcapacity of the country is not something to be proud of. For this reason, the ministry of environment led by Ms Ida Auken opposed the construction of this incinerator and in the end it was only because of the pressure from the finances minister, Mr Bjarne Corydon, that this project got the green light. If you wonder what does the minister of finance have to do with waste incineration it will help understand that he is elected in Esbjerg, the city where happens to be the headquarters of the company which will build the incinerator.

This conflict of interest that in southern Europe would be quickly associated with corruption did spark some public debate in Denmark but didn’t stop the process. Actually just after the decision to stop the incinerator was changed through secret negotiations the director of the supplier company wrote an article in the national business paper thanking the finance minister for good lobby work in the case of Amager incinerator. It has also been implied that the interest from Chinese companies to order a good number of burners from the Danish company has played a decisive role in rubberstamping this unnecessary and expensive infrastructure.”

Denmark is perceived to be one of the world’s greenest countries. But is it really? Besides the Danish windmills and bike lanes there is a not-so-well-hidden secret of this otherwise rather environmentally friendly country; their passion for burning garbage!

This burning passion has received widespread and often misleading coverage by international media such as the New York Times or the National Geographic who didn’t bother to dig too much into the details and instead succumbed to the charms of well-designed green washing.

Objective facts about Denmark are that is one of EU countries that generate more waste per capita, and is world leader in incineration of household waste, burning 80% of it. For comparison this means that after discounting recycling Denmark burns more waste than what is generated in countries such as Czech Republic, Estonia, Bulgaria or Poland. How green is that?

Contrary to best practices in the sector, in Denmark most household waste is not separately collected this means that recycling rates are as low as 22%. Most organic waste, which is 90% water, ends up in the oven.

More waste is good, less waste is bad

It might look like a contradiction but in Denmark the system is set up in a way that the worst thing you can do is reduce the size of your waste bin. Why? Well, every city in Denmark has its own incinerator and they are mostly publicly owned. This means that the citizens are actually the owners of the burners and hence if less waste is sent for burning -because it is being avoided, reused or recycled- the incinerator will function under full capacity, lowering the efficiency to generate heat and power. Yet the incinerator has to meet the capital and operating costs with less income which will result in an increase in the waste management fees. I.e. the more waste you generate, the better for your pocket.

With the current system of incentives in Denmark getting to Zero Waste would be a financial catastrophe. It is therefore unsurprising that the country that burns the most also generates more waste than any other. Denmark is the perfect example of the linkage between waste burning and waste generation.

But burning waste is good to heat and power the Danish homes!

This has been the mantra in Denmark and in some other northern-European countries. Scandinavian long dark cold winters of course justify higher intake of heat and power and this has been the main reason why generation of energy from waste has been pioneered in these countries. However waste burning in Denmark is a 19th century practice which is clearly unfit for the 21st. Not only because burning waste is extremely inefficient way to generate energy but rather because there are already other carbon neutral technologies that are put on stand-by for as long as the incineration capacity is in place.

In other words, incineration is one of the main obstacles in the path of Denmark towards becoming a carbon neutral country. Indeed, 20% of heat production and 5% of electricity in Denmark are generated from waste incineration but this heat and power could be replaced with a combination of geothermal, wind and biogas from separately collected bio waste, all mature and available technologies. Moreover, EU law dictates that as from 2020 all new buildings will need to be carbon neutral radically reducing the need for energy input. Last but not least, there is a clear overcapacity of installed power between the waste incineration and large combustion plants which causes that in the coldest months of the year the windmills are stopped despite the strong winds, only to give priority to the thermal installations due to the need of heat.

The case of incinerator with the ski slope. Why not building a sauna instead?

Have you heard of the latest Danish contribution to waste management? It is about merging garbage and sports by skiing on piles of garbage burning under immaculate synthetic white… and in order to remind skiers of the real purpose of the plant, each time a metric tonne of CO2 is released the smokestack will puff out a 30m wide ring into the sky. This is the project of the Amager Bakke incinerator, the jewel of the crown of Danish incineration.

As usual the too-good-to-be-true things are actually not that good at all. This half a million tonnes burner is the latest attempt to sell this technology to the world. As long as you keep people entertained talking about the ski slope they will not think about avoiding or recycling this waste instead. Why is it that Danish composting plants don’t try to use the heat generated in the organic decomposition of food waste to sell fancy saunas? Well, firstly because they don’t need this kind of marketing to operate and lastly because there aren’t many composting plants in a country where most organic waste is not recycled but burned.

The truth is that the construction of the Amager Bakke incinerator has sparked lots of debate in the country. Danish citizens and politicians are more and more aware that they are recycling too little and burning too much, and that the incineration overcapacity of the country is not something to be proud of. For this reason, the ministry of environment led by Ms Ida Auken opposed the construction of this incinerator and in the end it was only because of the pressure from the finances minister, Mr Bjarne Corydon, that this project got the green light. If you wonder what does the minister of finance have to do with waste incineration it will help understand that he is elected in Esbjerg, the city where happens to be the headquarters of the company which will build the incinerator.

This conflict of interest that in southern Europe would be quickly associated with corruption did spark some public debate in Denmark but didn’t stop the process. Actually just after the decision to stop the incinerator was changed through secret negotiations the director of the supplier company wrote an article in the national business paper thanking the finance minister for good lobby work in the case of Amager incinerator. It has also been implied that the interest from Chinese companies to order a good number of burners from the Danish company has played a decisive role in rubberstamping this unnecessary and expensive infrastructure.

Two more interesting facts are the uneasiness of the neighbours who will have to pay for this piece of design and above all the fact that for the moment no company is interested to run the famous ski slope. As explained, household waste incinerators in Denmark are publicly owned but this doesn’t apply to ski resorts. In other words, for the moment the ski slope doesn’t have an operator and the neighbours have said that one thing is to have to pay for the incinerator and another thing is shouldering the costs of running the ski slope. Stay tuned because the saga of the Amager Bakke is far from over.

Denmark is leaving behind the incineration age

Leaving behind these isolated desperate attempts to make incineration fashionable in order to sell the technology to Asia, the truth is that Denmark is planning to embark in a very challenging journey. The country aims at becoming independent from fossil fuel by 2050 and this will mean having to close down all polluting power plants by then, including of course the waste-to-energy incinerators.

This will not be an easy task because as already explained the link between waste and energy in Denmark is very strong. This has an impact on waste management, creating perverse incentives which are contrary to waste reduction, reuse and recycling and it also has an impact on energy policy, effectively blocking cleaner technologies from taking over. Moving away from incineration allows hitting two targets with one shot and the Danish ministry of Environment knows it.

This is why the new waste management plan that minister Auken presented in November 2013 is called ”Denmark without waste – Recycle More, Incinerate less”. In her own words: ”in Denmark we have been incinerating almost 80 % of our household waste. Even though this has made an important contribution to green energy production, materials and resources have been lost which could otherwise have been recycled. Now, we are going to change this.”

Some measures envisaged by the plan consist in replacing incineration with separately collected garden and food waste to produce biogas and compost, with the recycling of plastic and paper that are now being burned or to landfill toxic materials such as PVC instead of releasing them into the air through combustion. It also implies the privatisation in the ownership of the incinerators so those that are not profitable will have to close. All in all it aims at reducing the waste sent for burning in 820,000 tons by 2022.

It looks like the showcase for incineration in the world will be changing business. This will be good for the Danish recycling industry which might see a rebirth after having turned to ashes by decades of burning fever. It will also be good for the Danes for the decrease in incineration will reduce the pollution and associated health impacts and the increase of recycling will generate jobs and a more self-sustainable economy. And finally it will be good for the rest of the world which finally will be able to import good waste practices from Denmark.

This change of paradigm will not happen overnight but considering the determination and efficiency of the Danes once they set their minds into something it is to be expected that they will be as good in moving towards zero waste as they have been in championing incineration

Estimates of the amount of Hong Kong rubbish being recycled are plain rubbish

Jan 29th, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

Overhaul of system is promised as officials admit estimates of the amount of waste the city recycles have been drastically overstated

Officials have admitted that estimates of the amount of Hong Kong waste being recycled – once put at over 50 per cent – have been drastically overstated.

They said yesterday that the figures were distorted by “external factors” beyond their control and the system for calculating them would be overhauled. The admission came as the Environmental Protection Department reported a slashed recycling rate of 39 per cent in 2012, down from 48 the previous year and a peak of 52 in 2010.

The department blamed fluctuations in the waste trade and irregularities in export declarations for the distortions. In an effort to improve its data collection, it will introduce extra measures, as recommended by a consultant commissioned to look into the problem. But the officials said they did not believe the distortion would affect policy-making or the achievement of targets set out in the waste-management blueprint released last year. World Green Organisation chief executive William Yu Yuen-ping said he was concerned about the “inflation of the recycling rate” and urged the department to set up an expert group to review the system.

Friends of the Earth said the public would be confused by the figures. According to the 2012 solid waste monitoring report released by the department yesterday, Hong Kong recycled just 2.16 million tonnes of waste, 860,000 tonnes less than 2011. About 60 per cent of the shortfall was due to a sharp drop in the trade in plastic waste.

Last year, a reported 320,000 tonnes of plastic waste was recycled, down from 840,000 tonnes in 2011 and 1.58 million tonnes in 2010. But the amount dumped in landfills largely remained steady at 600,000 to 700,000 tonnes during the same period. Since then, officials have used the disposal rate per person, rather than the recycling rate, as the key indicator to measure policy effectiveness.

In 2012, the former rate rose 3 per cent to 1.27kg. (CTA comment – what about the 50 million Mainlanders’ annual waste here – no doubt excluded?)

The department said the recycling rate had been calculated from waste export figures compiled by census and customs officers, and the booming trade in recent years might have inflated the figure. It also admitted that the formula could not accurately reflect local recycling efforts since it also included waste imported and then exported after processing.

“We believe the 2012 figure is closer to the reality of how the city fared in recycling after a slump in the trade,” said an official, speaking anonymously.

Officials refused to be drawn on whether the admission showed that the recycling rate, used by former environment chiefs to highlight the city’s progress in dealing with its waste problem, had little value.

“The public still have expectations for this figure and we will try to give the best estimate,” said an official, adding that the formula was widely adopted elsewhere in the world.

Greeners’ Action executive director Angus Ho Hon-wai said the government should set up a registration system for recyclers in order to get first-hand recycling data. Lau Yiu-shing, a local waste recycler, admitted some operators might have wrongly reported export figures to suit their needs. But the scope of doing so had shrunk as mainland customs stepped up checks in recent years.

________________________________________
Source URL (modified on Jan 29th 2014, 10:15am): http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1415979/recycling-figures-plain-rubbish

CNW: PyroGenesis signs $1.5M Agreement with Leading Appliance Recycler; 2014 Backlog now Exceeds 2013 Revenues by more than 50%

Jan 28th, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

from the Canada Newswire:

PyroGenesis Canada Inc. today announced that it has signed an agreement with Canada’s leading end-of-life refrigerator and freezer recycler (“Client”) to provide them with additional equipment and services (including onsite optimization) for PyroGenesis’ patented SPARC technology. As part of this agreement, the Client will commercialize the SPARC technology on an exclusive basis within Canada.  This agreement, totalling up to $1.5M, includes several options for follow-on service contracts, all of which are expected to be executed within 2014.

PyroGenesis’ environmentally friendly and cost-effective Steam Plasma Arc (SPARC) Destruction System allows clients to safely destroy ozone-depleting substances (ODS) which can generate as much as 10,000 times more Green House Gases when compared to CO2 emissions. “The successful introduction of this technology within Canada is the first step to expanding the commercialization of PyroGenesis’ patented SPARC technology on an international scale”, said Gillian Holcroft, Executive Vice President, Strategic Alliances for PyroGenesis.

As previously reported, PyroGenesis’ SPARC technology achieved an unprecedented 10x greater destruction efficiency as compared to current requirements. Conservative estimates show that there are at least 25,000 tons per year of ODS that require destruction. This represents over $100 million of business potential to PyroGenesis with no apparent competition at these destruction efficiencies.

“Our Client intends to incorporate PyroGenesis’ SPARC technology into its existing appliance recycling business. As part of this Agreement, PyroGenesis will also be the exclusive supplier of after-sales service and support. The operation of PyroGenesis’ patented SPARC technology at the Client’s new industrial facility will demonstrate to the world the environmental and economic benefits of safe and effective ODS destruction”, said Gillian Holcroft, Executive Vice President, Strategic Alliances for PyroGenesis.

“With this agreement in place, and with only one week into the New Year, PyroGenesis’ 2014 backlog already exceeds its 2013 revenues by more than 50% while maintaining our recently improved gross margins, as reflected in our most recent Q3  financial results and MD&A”, said P. Peter Pascali, President and Chief Executive Officer of PyroGenesis. “Our continued success with traditional market sectors, combined with our penetration into key markets such as Oil & Gas and Mining & Metallurgy, is yielding significant results, and we expect this trend to continue into the foreseeable future.”

7 Jan 2014

Burnabynow: Incinerator creates toxic mess for region

Jan 23rd, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

from Hildegard Bechler of New Westminster, published on Burnabynow:

An incinerator fouls not only our airshed, with thousands of unknown toxins and a ton of greenhouse gases for every ton burned.  It fouls our rivers, lakes, and groundwater.  Toxic ash landfills foul the soil (25 per cent of our waste – by weight, 10 per cent by volume – remains as toxic ash).  Incineration fouls our health.  Only the unknowable toxic synergies are “unpredictable”; the other impacts are a sure thing.

The Fraser Valley Regional District is only one of many local governments opposing the incinerator: one-third of Metro Vancouver directors voted against it.  Native Nations, community organizations and hundreds of individuals in both regions opposed it.

An incinerator would burn our kids’ resources, waste their fossil fuels, for 50 years.  Long before 2070, the Earth’s 10 billion people will be desperate for resources. Products that are difficult to recycle will be a folly of the past.  Like the costly destruction systems Metro Vancouver is now building, which will be shut down – wasted.  Will our grandchildren have to mine landfills, fish the Pacific gyre?

Metro’s own waste plan (financial implications, page 32) points out that diverting resources from the waste stream has economic benefits.

“There is considerable economic activity that takes place in the process of recycling the collected materials into new goods as an alternative to virgin feed stocks.  Although difficult to estimate, the economy associated with the remanufacturing of recycled materials into new products exceeds the costs for collection, transportation and processing.  Net expenditures associated with disposal more closely reflect the entire disposal economy since there is little economic activity that occurs following disposal.”

So why choose incineration?  Metro Vancouver’s plan states that we can’t recycle more than 80 per cent unless distant markets remain stable; that they are looking for contingencies.  Asian markets fail when the price of oil gets too high, as happened in 2008 when we had to pay to burn or bury our recycled materials.

What contingency could there be besides local remanufacture?  According to Metro Vancouver’s director of policy and planning for waste management in 2011, “The contingency is waste-to-energy”.  (Global incinerator corporations have deep pockets, plenty lobbyists.) This raises the question: what happens to the 80 per cent we’ll be recycling when markets fail?

It pays Asian corporations to buy, ship and remanufacture our recovered resources and ship new products back.  These are cheaper not only because of low wages and poor to no environmental protection.  These industries avoid the cost of extracting and refining virgin resources.

Instead of wasting billions of our tax dollars on massive systems for burning, on garbage transport and ash landfills, we need to use public money to develop diversion and remanufacturing capacity today: to build industries, business, jobs: local economic renewal, for public and private profit.

Metro Vancouver taxpayers can own a paper recycling plant and other remanufacturing industries, the way we own the incinerator.  We can partner with private industry and municipalities as we do with the Cache Creek landfill.  We can work with private recycling industries and publicly owned facilities too, to meet everyone’s needs for resources, as we already do with the various waste management companies.

Each municipality can build a bottle washing plant; facilities to convert textiles to rags and paper, construction waste to lumber, firewood and wood chips, demolition waste to product recovery and building deconstruction.  Reuse and repair community centres for appliances, furniture, bikes, can include a free store to make items available to people who can’t afford even thrift stores, taking the social justice dimension of waste into account.

Diversion options are virtually unlimited.  Most such developments are profitable industries and businesses.  Some cost the region (as does incineration) but are profitable in the long run because they conserve resources and share our wealth-ethical imperatives.    All are better outcomes for our taxes than toxic ash and destruction of our life support ecosystems.

This necessary reconfiguration of our industrial consumer society is happening all over the world.  It can happen here.   We can profit today by protecting our children’s future.

9 Jan 2014

FOTE: Dirty Truths – Incineration and Climate Change

Jan 23rd, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

Tackling climate change is the major environmental challenge of our times. Friends of the Earth believes that all government policies should be examined for their climate change impacts, from transport policy to waste policy.

At the same time, other environmental challenges must not be ignored – climate change may be the most immediate environmental crisis, but we should not ignore the possibility of others following on from it. For example, in the case of waste policy, it is vital that we also focus on maximising resource efficiency and on minimising pollution.

Waste policy has important climate change impacts, from, at one end, the emission savings by waste prevention or from recycling, to at the other end, the problem of methane emissions from landfill.

Waste prevention is the most beneficial option from a climate point of view, followed by reuse and recycling; landfill and incineration are worse options.

The UK Government is currently reviewing England’s waste policy, and is proposing to process 25% through energy from waste.

But what is energy from waste? In reality this catch-all term refers to a wide range of technologies, with a whole range of impacts on climate change. In order to better understand the impacts of these technologies, Friends of the Earth commissioned Eunomia Research and Consulting Ltd to examine the climate impacts of the different options.

In addition, in order to improve understanding of the climate impacts of different methods of dealing with residual waste (what is left after reuse, recycling and composting), we also asked Eunomia to examine this complex issue.

This summary report takes the results of the Eunomia research and puts them in context. The full report, A changing climate for energy from waste? is available at Friends of the Earth’s web site.

May 2006

Standard: Democrats hope for $5b recycling fund

Jan 22nd, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

from Qi Luo of the Standard:

The Democratic Party is hoping that today’s policy address will include the setting up of a HK$5 billion fund to help promote recycling.

Democratic lawmaker Wu Chi-wai said 60 percent of respondents in a poll conducted by the party recently supported such a move.

“We want competition in the recycling industry, not monopoly,” he added. “The number of recycling agents should not be limited.”

Wu said that sections of the Public Cleansing and Prevention of Nuisances Regulation needed to be amended along with arrangements covering contractors for the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department to allow cleaners to collect materials that can be recycled.

The survey also showed that 61 percent of 859 respondents supported waste charges being levied according to volume.

“We believe this is the best way to push residents to change their habits,” Wu said.

He went on to urge officials to look at charging individual flats for garbage rather than a building.

Backing that plea, Wu said 58 percent of respondents said charging for waste would make them more active in recycling. And nearly 60 percent said a reward for recycling would help.

Another survey by the party showed 53 percent of public housing residents back charges for waste.

15 Jan 2014

grist: San Francisco finds new life for dead threads

Jan 18th, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

by Darby Minow Smith on Grist Magazine:

Style meccas, tilt your ears: San Francisco’s moving sustainability forward along with their fashion. On Wednesday, Mayor Ed Lee announced the debut of a city-wide textile recycling initiative.

San Franciscans trash 4,500 pounds of clothing an hour, according to the SF Environment Department. To put a dent in that number, more than 160 textile recycling bins were rolled out at noon in schools, stores, and libraries around the city.

The bins, and today’s announcement, are the first step in what will be a learning process for both San Francisco and the global clothing recycler they’re working with, I:CO.

To understand why textile recycling is more complicated than the standard plastic #2, cardboard, and glass, simply look down. How many different materials are you wearing? What are the blends? And are your duds in good enough shape that another person would happily wear them? The sorters at I:CO facilities use 400 criteria to determine where a particular piece of clothing is headed to next.

Anywhere from 95 to 99 percent of textiles can be reused or recycled, according to I:CO Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Gilbert. About half of the clothing that comes to I:CO is rewearable and sold on the secondhand market. The rest can be broken down and turned into car upholstery, carpet padding, insulation, and stuffing. Even the infamously hard-to-recycle Lycra can be added in small batches to the shredder in mixed loads.

(more…)

Chairman’s Focus: Waste management consultation

Jan 9th, 2014
by Editor.
No comments yet

In Hong Kong, 43% of the city’s daily municipal solid waste (MSW) waste is food waste – ultra wet food waste (water content is 75% in mall waste and 90% in wet market food waste). The Government insists on burning this water-waste with an incinerator on a scenic island, but the feedstock does not have the required calorific value required for combustion. Previous tests at composting Hong Kong food waste failed miserably due to the low quality and water content, and the test samples were actually landfilled since they were neither saleable nor exportable.

If there could be a mandatory separation for food waste here, placed in a Green Bin (see below example on Santa Monica), then collected Free of Charge by Government contractors, delivered to Transfer stations and garburated into a puree, the food waste can be then poured into the sewage system network. The CEPT system at Stonecutters island alone (there are ten other smaller treatment plants also) can handle 2.45million m3 of sewage per day by 2016. For reference, the current daily load is under 1.3million m3, so 3,600m3 of ultra wet pureed food waste per day would be a negligible load increase. This idea came from a senior technical engineer working for a company that happens to be Government consultants and it is totally viable.

The removal of food waste contamination would leave dry MSW that could form a new recycling industry here – without this, you cannot sort MSW already mixed and contaminated by food waste. Our Government-provided recycling figures are inflated. They pad the figures using imported trash from Europe and America that was being transferred through HKG to China – this only came to light when China erected ‘Operation Green Fence’, leaving many incoming containers stuck here.

The current lack of waste pre-sort requirements leaves food waste to create methane (23 times more dangerous greenhouse gas then CO2) and hydrogen sulphide when buried in landfills. On top of that, trucks drip foul stinking water (again, because of the high water content in local food waste) onto the roads whilst delivering to landfills. Flies and rats abound. The above food waste option, aside from being a much cleaner option, will create sensible recycling industries here. Tuen Mun can become ‘Green Tuen Mun’ instead of the territory’s toilet.

Landfills: viable recyclables are currently being dumped in landfills since they are tainted with food waste and there is no viable local recycling industry. A major portion of the landfilling is construction waste. Whilst 18,000 tonnes of construction waste is hived off to CEDD daily for shipping to China the remaining 3,000 odd tonnes of unusable construction waste is landfilled.

In Belgium a joint venture between APP UK and Group Machiels is building a  plasma gasification plant at the Houtalen Hechteren landfill – this will reverse-mine the landfill back to its pristine state, the recovered metals will be sold, electricity will be generated from the plasma syngas hydrogen and sold to the local grid and the plasma’d soil will form Plasmarok, fused at 6,000 Degrees C into an inert saleable road aggregate. The Government was offered a FREE 150,000 tonnes per annum trial plasma plant and rejected it, as it went outside of their incineration blinkers. This could have been operational now at the Tseung Kwan O landfill.

Incineration requires increased oxygen, frequently the addition of low-grade coal or oil to obtain combustion of wet matter and burns at 850 degrees C. If the burn temperature drops due to wet feedstock dioxins can and do form. Dioxins also form mostly on startup and shutdown of the burner. There are numerous peer reviewed studies of cancers, orofacial child defects, and deaths in proximity to incinerators. These are facts. The Government consistently refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of this salient health matter. The proposed stack height at Shek Kwu Chau will affect the whole of Hong Kong with wind borne toxic pollutants and heavy metal emissions carried on PM1 and PM2.5 particulates that escapes bag house covers and other equipment. Meanwhile, 30% of what is burned by weight remains as toxic bottom ash and fly ash. This needs landfilling, hence the need to extend landfills instead of doing away with landfills. Government officials will start applying to Legco for funding to build mega islands in the sea for new ash lagoons, when Hong Kong is hit annually by tropical storms. Super typhoons like Haiyan are always ready to hit and destroy empty safety promises of protective structures and punish the city with a blanket of toxic ash.

With current judicial reviews and appeals, the mal-thought incinerator option would not appear until 2023, by which time the rest of the world will be using plasma gasifiers for years already. Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, countries that Hong Kong citizens don’t usually consider superior in terms of progress, are moving ahead with plasma projects; Solena Fuels Inc already signed with Pertamina Indonesia for an MSW feedstock plasma plant.

In a plasma gasification plant, plasma gasifiers operate with an initial fluidised bed at 1,200 – 1,500 degrees Centigrade that vaporises anything – construction waste, MSW, rock, metal – into its molecular gaseous state. The dirty syngas is then passed through multiple plasma arcs operating at the temperature of the sun, above 6,000 degrees Centigrade, which destroy any dioxins or other contaminants, leaving only pure hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide is captured and the hydrogen is used to drive turbines to produce electricity. The plant emissions from the hydrogen are steam. There is no ash to landfill.

Alternative processes can add a Fischer-Tropsch backend process that takes the syngas and creates carbon neutral bio jetfuel, bio naptha, bio diesel or bio marine fuel as in the Solena Fuels system. Such systems are used in large-scale plasma plants that are being built in numerous countries, with some in the UK close to completion. The BA / Solena Fuels plant with a capacity of 1550 MSW tonnes per day and produces bio jetfuel is underway in London. (BA has ordered 3 more plants, one more in UK and two in Spain.) Lufthansa / Solena plant is underway in east Germany near the Polish border. A total of 14 airlines have signed agreements with Solena for projects, including Qantas, SAS, Alitalia, Fedex, Alaskan, American, Canadian Air etc. Maersk is seeking planning permission for a bio marine fuel plant with Solena in New Jersey. The US plant in Gilroy, California will supply the US based airlines.

Westinghouse Alter NRG has operated MSW / RDF plasma plants in Japan since 2001. Their Utashinai plant closed recently due to the loss of feedstock contracts to operate the plant. The Government and recently an alliance of Govt friendly academics are misleading the public by implying that the Utashinai plant closed due to technical problems, when the real reason is the lack of MSW feedstock. We challenged the academics, CS Poon from HK Poly U and Irene Lo from HKUST, to produce the evidence of Utashinai failure or retract their statements at an open public meeting in Tuen Mun this afternoon. They rejected the invites and any ‘evidence’ they might have is of course unavailable, still lying in the EPD’s imagination. (Coincidentally, Elvis Au – the prime mover of the incinerator idea from EPD, CS Poon, Irene Lo, and other EPD engineers are all on the Environment Committee of the HK Institution of Engineers, from whence the Alliance of academics has sprung.)

Westinghouse torches will power the Teeside Airproducts plasma plant in UK. The 1,000 MSW tonnes per day plant will open within the next few months. A second plant is also being built by Airproducts next to the first and will supply the UK Government Cabinet office with an 84 million pounds savings on its future energy bills.

http://www.alternrg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Nov-13-2013-50-MW-Plasma-Gasification.pdf

Building an incinerator will cost 20 billion, landfill extensions 10 billion, operational cost per year 300 million + landfill management costs, new ash lagoons in sea 15 billion – treatment costs of illnesses caused by the emissions ??$ billion

Plasma gasifier – cost ZERO – funded by the design build operate company – operation cost funded by operator – emissions hydrogen/steam

Coming back to the Green Bin collection of food waste. This has been done successfully in numerous cities in California, especially with Santa Monica, where incidentally the undersecretary of environment, Christine Loh, has a residence. There is no excuse as to why Hong Kong should not take up the idea. By removing the food waste problem and initiating proper local recycling businesses, we obviate the need for an incinerator and the need to extend landfills.

The Government Environment minister previously stated unwisely that they have no Plan B – it’s time for a plan ‘G’ (‘G’ for Green Bin).

James Middleton

Chairman

8 Jan 2014

Food waste creates methane (23 times more dangerous greenhouse gas then CO2) and hydrogen sulphide when buried in landfills. The delivery trucks drip foul stinking water onto the roads whilst delivering to landfills. Flies and rats abound.

SCMP Letters: Citizens support waste-cutting, opposed to incineration

Dec 30th, 2013
by Editor.
No comments yet

Incinerator will pose risk to residents

from Massimo Massarola, Lantau

Studies have shown higher rates of adult and childhood cancer and also birth defects around municipal waste incinerators. The results are consistent with the associations being causal.

Incinerator emissions are a major source of fine particulate, of toxic metals and of more than 200 organic chemicals, including known carcinogens, mutagens and hormone disrupters. Emissions also contain other unidentified compounds whose potential for harm is as yet unknown, as was once the case with dioxins.

Since the nature of waste is continually changing, so is the chemical nature of the incinerator emissions and therefore the potential for adverse health effects. Incinerators produce bottom and fly ash, which amounts to 30 to 50 per cent by volume of the original waste (if compacted), and require transporting to landfill sites.

Abatement equipment in modern incinerators merely transfers the toxic load, notably that of dioxins and heavy metals, from airborne emissions to the fly ash.

This fly ash is light, readily windborne and mostly of low particle size. It represents a considerable and poorly understood health hazard. Two large cohort studies in America have shown that fine (PM2.5) particulate air pollution causes increases in all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality and mortality from lung cancer, after adjustment for other factors.

A more recent, well-designed study of morbidity and mortality in postmeno-pausal women has confirmed this, showing a 76 per cent increase in cardiovascular and 83 per cent increase in cerebrovascular mortality in women exposed to higher levels of fine particulate.

The fine particles are primarily produced by combustion processes and are emitted in large quantities by incinerators.

We need to support zero-waste alternatives such as waste reduction, product reuse, recycling and composting, and oppose the planned waste incinerator in Hong Kong.

Cut waste with far better recycling

from Chan Wing-ki, Ngau Tau Kok

There has been strong opposition to the government’s proposal to expand our landfills, which are nearing capacity.

Residents living near the landfills are concerned because of the odour caused by the waste. Other people are against the expansion proposals because they will encroach on country parks.

Another proposal is to build an incinerator. If this option is chosen, I hope the government will give careful consideration to the site and have a thorough public consultation.

The most effective way to deal with this problem is to reduce the volume of municipal solid waste generated. The administration should be putting more resources into the recycling industry.

11 Dec 2013

Eunomia: English Local Authority Recycling Limited to 60%

Dec 28th, 2013
by Editor.
No comments yet

from Eunomia:

The Fifth Issue of Eunomia’s Residual Waste Infrastructure Review, published today, shows that residual waste treatment facilities already in the pipeline could limit the rate of recycling in 2020 for local authority collected (LAC) wastes in England to no more than 60%.

This limit will be in place for as long as the infrastructure remains operational and well beyond 2020 unless contracts can be renegotiated. If the country is successful in its efforts to reduce waste arisings or if more treatment capacity is commissioned, this will further limit recycling rates. Meanwhile, Scottish and Welsh authorities have invested in less infrastructure and will be able to achieve much higher recycling rates.

This is on the conservative assumption that only the 2 million tonnes per annum (tpa) of residual waste treatment capacity commissioned by local authorities that has reached at least ‘preferred bidder’ status reaches financial close. The finding is in stark contrast to the potential recycling rates for LAC in the devolved administrations, which the report shows could reach 82% in Scotland and 79% in Wales.

Adam Baddeley, the report’s lead author said:

“It’s worrying that we are already in danger of limiting how far we can go with recycling in England. If we genuinely aspire to develop a circular economy, then we must shift the focus of investment away from residual waste towards options further up the hierarchy.”

The report is based on local authorities’ annual WasteDataFlow returns to Defra, and Eunomia’s Facilities Database, which holds information on all residual treatment facilities in the UK (both operating and under development) to model the balance between the two. Data is analysed on both a national and regional basis, to provide a detailed picture of where insufficient or excess capacity is anticipated.

28 Nov 2013

← Earlier Posts Newer Posts →