SJ Article

Let me outline this.

Marion Co’s household garbage gets trucked to an incinerator plant and burned. The heat from that fire boils water and that steam is turned into power that the plant sells. It burns everything and carbon is emitted. The plant argues that the percentage of carbon emitted from the burning is miniscule compared to what rotting garbage in a landfill would cause. Less space in a landfill, energy created.

If the waste isn’t burned and the incinerator plant isn’t used – then the space of our waste in a landfill is gigantic, no energy is created and carbon is still produced from the decomposition of the waste. We’ll have to create more landfills and we’ll be overrun with garbage with no place to go.

The incinerator plant is wants renewable energy status for the incentives.

We are being presented with a false choice — it really doesn’t boil down to if we want a landfill or an incinerator plant — the choice that we have to make is if we want to continue to consume w/out any regard to the waste it produces and let someone else deal with the problem OR if we want to change the way we consume and take responsibility for our ability to produce less waste so we aren’t faced with the problem or how we dispose of it. Trash isn’t a renewable energy source – it is something that people willingly create. That’s our choice.