![]() ![]() Operations and maintenance costs typically increase as plants age and their performance decreases. At least 31 incinerators have closed since 2000 due to issues such as insufficient revenue or inability to afford required upgrades. These revenue streams are volatile and can undermine the industry’s financial stability. These facilities’ revenues come primarily from tipping fees that waste haulers pay to dump trash, and secondarily from generating electricity. Three-quarters of operating waste incinerators in the United States are at least 25 years old. ![]() Incineration plants’ average life expectancy is 30 years. The facility ultimately closed when a 30-year power purchase agreement with the local utility expired, leaving it without a sufficient revenue stream. The California plant closed in June 2018 after a yearlong campaign by two community-based organizations, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and Valley Improvement Projects, to prevent incineration from qualifying for state renewable energy subsidies. Groups such as Breathe Free Detroit and Zero Waste Detroit rallied residents to oppose the public financing and health burdens that the facility imposed on surrounding environmental justice communities. The Detroit incinerator was built in the 1980s and received more than $1 billion in public investment borne by local taxpayers. In the past year environmental justice advocates successfully have shut down incinerators in Detroit, Michigan, and Commerce, California. Some of these states also provide favorable economic incentives, such as allowing incinerators to earn renewable energy credits for generating electricity. Waste incinerators are heavily concentrated in northeast states and Florida - areas with high population densities and limited landfill space. Incinerators worsen cumulative impacts from multiple pollution sources on these overburdened neighborhoods. Most of them - 58, or 80 percent - are sited in environmental justice communities, which we defined as areas where more than 25 percent of residents are low-income, people of color or both. Nonetheless, 72 incinerators are still operating in the United States. They include a volatile revenue model, aging plants, high operation and maintenance costs and growing public interest in reducing waste, promoting environmental justice and combating climate change. waste incineration industry due to many factors. I recently co-authored a report (PDF) that describes signs of decline in the U.S. Emissions from burning waste worsen environmental inequalities, create financial risks for host communities and reduce incentives to adopt more sustainable waste practices. As an environmental justice scholar who works directly with low-income and communities of color, I see incineration as a poor waste management option.Īlthough these plants generate electricity from the heat created by burning trash, their primary purpose is waste disposal. And they challenge governments to make these environmental efforts attainable through education and funding.Burning trash has a long history in the United States, and municipal solid waste incinerators have sparked resistance in many places. They call for consumers to become less dependent on disposable products, and to recycle and compost more. Meanwhile, in a time that the World Bank estimates that countries are generating 1.4 billion tons of municipal solid waste annually, environmentalists believe businesses, governments, and associated professionals need to change their practices. They call for recyclable merchandise packaging that is well labeled and has clear instructions. The unknowns have some concerned about the slowly growing number of trash-burning WTEs. While dumping on landfills indisputably poses public health risks and harms the environment, there is no solid proof that burning trash cannot do the same. Groups like the Sierra Club argue that it’s a stretch to say that trash counts as a renewable energy source. In Arizona, the controversy is ongoing: state utility regulators are standing by garbage qualifying as renewable energy, while the Sierra Club argues that an incinerator does not qualify for this status. The discussion of trash as a renewable energy source is one that has built heated debates in some states. ![]()
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