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I've been just looking at that a little bit Nationally now I know that I committed sort
of a 'cardinal sin' here because I am using USEPA's numbers and
I know some of the problems with EPA numbers. But, (....) historically,
I was just looking at percentage of waste disposed via recycling
and via waste-to-energy since 1995, in the last 15 years,
So, what we see basically is that waste-to-energy as the percentage of waste
generated - has come down. Starting from 19% in 1995 down to about 12%
(USEPA numbers) of the waste now. So, we've actually gone backwards in terms
of waste-to-energy. Recycling has gone up somewhat, from about
25% to about 34% (from 1995) But that's not a huge increase either in 15
years! And, what the most depressing thing is
you take these two numbers together, the waste that's converted to energy and waste that's
recovered (recycling), there's been no change in the last 15 years,
Hovering about 54-55%, We're still landfilling.
We are disposing on land. So, in the past 15 years,
it is quite amazing to see that there's been not so much progress in the United States
to the extent that we've been able to divert (...) (...) more sustainable management of
our waste. Just to go a little bit into (...), as many
of you know,too, a waste-to-energy facility is still really
taking materials that have been discarded and trying to find best use in terms of energy
recovered. But, in addition, even with all the attention
that's been paid to recycling, it is quite remarkable in the United States,
how much metal - good metal: aluminum, ferrous, non-ferrous, copper, etc. -
is being pulled out of that waste stream of a conventional waste-to-energy facility, post
combustion. There is a lot of work we still have to do.
These are not incompatible strategies, whatsoever. - Well, I would say that
recycling has its place and the efficiency in recycling has been increasing throughout
the last years because of better technologies
But, we have also increased waste-to-energy and completely banned the disposal of untreated
wastes in landfills. I can show you a graph - I can supply this
picture later on to you, if you like - where you see
the total amount of residual waste after deducting recycling materials
You see exponential growth, source-separation and recycling reducing it
and now it is slowly increasing because of increasing populations and smaller households
You see that green (color) is waste-to-energy And you see that waste-to-energy is still
increasing and this is mechanical biological treatment
- this is decreasing for good reasons. This was landfilling of untreated wastes
And since 2008, the last exceptions have been legally banned in Austria.
So, this has been a development of course, where we have a lot of know-how and experience
and we're very happy with using waste-to-energy as a sustainable method.
I would like to mention one expression we use in Austria.
It is called "precycling", meaning, rather than just using oil and natural gas for energy,
we first look to make products like plastic polymer products.
Then, maybe you recycle the plastic polymers to some extent, where it is reasonable
And then, you use the plastic wastes eventually for waste-to-energy.
So, we have a much better use and recycling is combined or seem complementary to waste-to-energy.
- In my research for some recent articles about this,
I've noticed that it is true what Eileen had said that
communities in the United States that have waste-to-energy plants tend to recycle 5%
more of their waste than communities that don't.
That's true also in Europe That correlation existing to a very very high
degree. So, the argument that they are not compatible
just doesn't seem to be borne out by the evidence.