Incinerator to remain?

[KOMPOST]

I'm sure this has been bandied about here, but I could not find an open thread on this topic. Since tomorrow [[July 1) is the end of the current deal between the incinerator and the city I wondered if anyone has any insight into what the next step may be.

http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=14107

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's spokeswoman, Meagan Pitts, said Tuesday that the mayor "is committed to a greener Detroit, ... aware of the contractual obligations ... and remains sensitive to the concerns of the community."

[Mikeg]

Per the Toronto Star, Toronto's flawed "green bin" organic waste collection program has been sending thousands of tons of "residual" plastics to be burned in Detroit's incinerator.

Read Green Bins: A Wasted Effort?

[Russix]

What? They actually come and pick your recycling up? Thats AMAZING!

[KOMPOST]

I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention here.
Guess the air we breathe is not all that important after all.
I shoulda hi-jacked one of the many open "Monica Conyers" threads 'cause apparently Photoshopping Eddie Munster's features to her face is where our energies should lie.
Sad.

[Huggybear]

Hmm... we should [[1) stop incineration so that we can [[2) put trash in the ground, threatening our groundwater and [[3) burn fossil fuels [[degrading air quality) to convert recyclable plastics into non-recyclable plastics so we can put them in the ground, too. And let vegetable waste decompose into methane [[itself a greenhouse gas). Swell.

I would hope that people who are against incineration have a very solid plan for reducing solid waste in the first place - since that's the only thing that will make a meaningful improvement for the environment. There is a lot of talk about air quality impacts, but the data is always presented in relative terms [[sixth largest static source of nitrous oxides) - is this so that people overlook that the first five might be auto plants, power plants, or our water treatment plant? Or so they overlook vehicles [[probably 1,000 times worse in the aggregate) as sources?

You can only judge the impacts of incineration against the alternatives, and if you look at what happened in the EU, i.e., banning the landfilling of untreated waste, you can see that people who are very freaked out about the environment think that burning is better than burying.

I do get a laugh out of the idea of curbside recycling. A good number of my fellow citizens have enough problems figuring out that the sidewalk along Jefferson is not a trash can. I can't wait to see them sorting recyclable materials from lookalike non-recyclable ones.