Environmental Performance

The waste-to-energy (WTE) industry may tout its facilities' environmental benefits, but the environmental movement has found fault with the plants. They use a dirty combustion process, activists say, pointing in particular to dioxin emissions. In addition, environmental groups contend that much of the trash that is burned should be recycled, thereby avoiding the need to expend fresh resources to manufacture new products.

In fact, WTE facilities comply with stringent emission standards. In response to the federal Clean Air Act, the industry has installed more than $1 billion in upgrades to emission control systems. The results led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to congratulate the industry in a letter dated August 10, 2007. In part, the memo read: "The performance of the MACT [maximum achievable control technology] retrofits has been outstanding. … Of particular interest are dioxin/furan and mercury emissions. Since 1990 [pre-MACT conditions], dioxin/furan emissions from large and small MWCs [municipal waste combustion units] have been reduced by more than 99 percent, and mercury emissions have been reduced by more than 96 percent. Dioxin/furan emissions have been reduced to 15 grams per year [from 4,400] and mercury emissions reduced to 2.3 tons/year [from 57]."

The EPA concluded that the overall reductions in emissions enable WTE to generate electricity with "less environmental impact that almost any other source of electricity."

As for the recycling complaint, a September 2008 study by Eileen Brettler Berenyi, a Ph.D. with Westport, Conn.-based Governmental Advisory Associates, found that communities served by WTE facilities on average recycle more than the national recycling average. The average recycling rate in a WTE community is 33.3 percent, compared to the national rate, as computed by the EPA, of 32.5 percent.

The study, entitled “A Compatibility Study: Recycling and Waste-to-Energy Work in Concert,” concluded that “waste-to-energy does not have an adverse impact on local recycling rates. The most influential parameters that affect recycling rates appear to be state policy and the proactive position of a municipality.”