Why even use these incinerators? Isn’t it better for air quality to just use landfills?
Depending on what you are considering as air quality, and if you also consider water/ground quality risks too? Landfills produce a large amount of methane which not good on greenhouse gases, as well as providing a large amount of leachate risk. This is compared to the much lower land use and Waste to Energy production capacity which incinerator provide, while also having some emissions, particulate, and ash disposal issues.
So if you are a big city or Island without enough land and enough budget to build a facilite to mitigate the negatives (San Francisco, Hawaii, Washington DC, New York, Boston, etc), then incineration begins to make sense if you can mitigate the negatives to a high enough degree. Islands can indeed have to do it as there is just no viable alternative. It can be incredibly well used to as the Shetlands have a WTE which also uses waste energy to heat homes and buildings replacing home furnaces and being more efficient.
Luckily the law is an unerring indicator of absolute fact and guarantor of the common good, and it says these emissions are totally cool.
Our state mandated that these facilities add air monitoring equipment to measure what they’re releasing. In return, the local garbage burning facility closed its doors.
Good
You mean burning trash isn’t good?
Me in Boy Scouts years ago not throwing my styrofoam plate into the campfire because it would put shit into the air 🤡
That’s pretty smart actually. Incinerators tend to burn trash at much higher temperatures than campfires, less harmful chemicals survive the heat and the toxic ashes are supposedly managed, at least they’re meant to be in the EU.