1. Toxic emissions : Solid waste when burned emits acidic gases that contribute to acid rain; heavy metals that pollute our environment, and persistent organic pollutants such as dioxins accumulate in our foods and our ecosystem.
2. Toxic ashes : A heavily contaminated unwanted product as the incineration plant tries to purify its air emission. The rule of thumb is that the cleaner the smoke, the more toxic the ashes will become. Disposal of ash is an expensive business if done properly but even so absolute safety is not guaranteed.
3. Huge cost : Apart from being a major civil engineering project, much of the money is spent on pollution control equipment. It also requires expensive expert personnel to run it, so-called "safely". Other major hidden costs include money spent on its decommissioning, as it has been generating toxins for at least 20 years.
4. Waste of energy : Incinerator promoters use waste-to-energy recovery as a selling point. In fact, only very little electrical energy can be retrieved and the energy that was put into the manufacturing and the transportation of the products can never be recovered.
5. Public opposition : Understandably no one likes an incinerator being built near his home. It is the case in Hong Kong as well as abroad. Hundreds of incinerators and pending proposals have been shelved in the US and Europe. Locally, the Lung Kwu Tan and Tsing Yi residents are also up in arms fighting the government's proposal to incinerate medical waste and another plan for two mega municipal waste incinerators.
6. Alternatives : There are always better ways than incineration. Reduce, reuse together with recycle (3Rs) are the ultimate motto to sustainable waste management anywhere. Not only can the 3Rs solve our waste problem intelligently but also they can actually create new jobs and turn waste into profits.
7. Non-Sustainable : Incineration systemically generates toxic emissions and ashes. The question is "Do we really want our future generations to deal with a toxic aftermath that we could have easily avoided?"
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Building an additional incinerator will certainly cause damage to the environment. However, the amount of waste created by Hongkongers is rapidly increasing, and the rubbish-dumping sites can hardly meet the soaring demand in the coming decades. Of course, the 3 Rs campaign should be one of the most important and effective (comparatively) solutions to the waste problem, but the public is still not fully aware of the need to, or take the initiative to reduce waste and conserve resources, especially in such a society, in which most people are more concerned in their own economic benefits and convenience than protecting the environment.
So, if an additional incinerator is not to be built, then there will be a new rubbish-dumping site, or the rubbish might be used to reclaim land, that will undoubtedly harm the ecosystem too.
When going on a travelling trip in Taiwan this summer, I was fascinated to know that there is an incinerator that produces white smoke, and that the heat energy produced by the burning is used to provide hot baths for the public. In addition, there is a "rotating restaurant" like the one in Hong Kong on top of the incinerator, hoe incredible! Could we build such an incinerator in Hong Kong, that is beneficial to the public? Maybe we can learn from the Taiwan's example and get advice on how to make the smoke purer and less toxic at the same time. This can also create job opportunities for workers. And a tourist attraction site too!
The colour of the smoke produced by an incinerator is not important(correct me if I am wrong) because what you burn (in a usual way), even with a barbecue, always produce dioxine, a very dangerous poison (as with the accident in Seveso-Italy) and it is invisible. Dioxine can cause diseases for just born babies and you find it on the ground, in the milk and everywhere in a circle of a few miles. Even if you put some filters on an old incinerator the result is still : DIOXINE (but less). And in fact the norm for dioxine should be ZERO!! The solution is to install a new type of "incinerator" as in the Netherlands and Germany but I don't know exactly how it works but it seems that it can avoid any dioxine. Maybe we can ask Greenpeace about it. Rob.
The Fine Print: Comments and articles posted on this website
are owned by the person who posted them and do not necessarily represent
the views of Greenpeace.
