If we recycled closer to 100% of our recyclable materials ... and burned our other solid waste to produce?

Question

energy .. would our economy be better or worse ? How about our air quality or environment ?

Answer 1

There are two mass burn facilities on the East Coast that I know of - very high efficancy, very low pollution (on in Baltimore (Resco I beleive), one on Long Island.  The one in Baltimore produces electricty and steam for heating the downtown.  Good luck getting one approved. You would have environmentalists protesting all over the place.  But they are cleaner than landfills (and landfills produce methane, a "greenhouse gas").  NIMBYs would kill it, and if you don't beleive me, read about Walter Cronkite and Kennedy protesting windmills off the coast of MA.  They are envirnmentalis Liberals and soon as they want to build a wind farm in their view, they are against them.  By the way, in Japan they count burning garbage as recycling, since they are recycling the garbage into an enerby source.