Someone suggested 'garbage to engery' causes more pollutants than it saves so it is bad for the environment.

Question

There is a "Garbage To Energy" plant near my home, and someone trying to 'go green' was concerned that the plumes of smoke rising from the smokestacks were just creating more pollution and could potentially be more harmful to the environment.

Answer 1

If what is being burned is being reduced to carbon then the smoke is primarily carbon based and will help to replenish the soil nearby with nutrients so that plants will grow better. This is one of the requirements of the "garbage to energy" plants. Until practical fusion reactors are perfected this is just one of the practical means available to us for reducing pollution.

Answer 2

Are there really visible plumes of smoke? This is now the third millennium! The day of smoke belching chimneys is so 19th century! I would have thought that filters and scrubbers and precipitators and all kinds of pollution controls would have been put on the stacks. As to the CO2 being put out, it is no problem, because it comes from things like paper that were made of materials containing carbon recently taken out of the air. Not all CO2 is bad. Only CO2 from coal and oil is bad. CO2 from coal and oil was locked up underground and releasing it changes the amount in the air. But CO2 from paper or wood or animals or whatever is just recycling CO2 that was recently taken out of the air by plants. It is green.

Answer 3

This is a bit tricky - for the reasons you discuss.

Garbage to energy is not really a fabulous solution to our energy solution, but it is may be a good solution to our garbage problem - and that is usually how these plants are viewed.

Starting at the very end - the stack - you should realize that there are very specific and strict laws that address what can be put into the air from ANY energy source.  As one of the answerers pointed out, there are numerous different types of pollution control devices that will remove most of the worst types of pollutants.  Any NEW combustion energy source still needs to pass all the necessary permitting requirements, so while the wast to energy (WTE) plant will put tiny amounts of controlled pollutants into the air, they will be very very small amounts.  The biggest concern would be about those pollutants that aren't yet heavily controlled - CO2 being one.  Dioxins and furans are another concern, since they are not as universally regulated as more well-known pollutants.  I'm not sure about existing plants, but the permit under which they operate would be public record.  You could contact your state EPA division and they can tell you what the permitting details are for the plant in your neighborhood (which will detail how much of each pollutant the plant can put into the air.)

But to get the complete picture, you also need to realize that something will be done with all that garbage, one way or another.   The usual alternative is to bury it in the ground.  Landfills are also heavily controlled, and need to be lined to prevent toxins from leaching into the soil.  Nevertheless, liners won't last forever, and an interesting question arises about what happens to all the stuff that is buried.  

Most (but certainly not all) trash that is put into WTE plants is sorted, by the way.  Recyclable materials such as steel and plastics, and most things that you wouldn't want to put into the air (or the ground), like mercury thermometers, are separated out (as best as possible) before the trash is put into the WTE.

How to dispose of our trash is a big concern, and there are debates raging throughout the country about whether it is more environmentally responsible to recover the energy from the waste, or to bury it in the ground.

It is interesting to note that no new WTE plants have been permitted in the USA in the last twenty years or so, mostly for the concerns that you raise.  At the same time, it is difficult to permit new trash dumps for the same reason.

To summarize, I'm not sure what the "right" environmental answer is - and I'm not certain that anyone knows what the "right" answer is.  We could strictly countrol what can be thrown away, but we are long way from that in most places.