Incinerator

Burning or destroying resources instead of recycling, reusing or composting them wastes energy, releases harmful greenhouse gas emissions and other toxins into our air and water. Here are the facts about ‘energy’ from waste.

The communities surrounding incinerators and 'energy-from-waste' facilities face a greater burden of local air pollution, which can harm the health of nearby residents. Historically, these facilities and their toxic burdens are more often placed next to racialized and/or lower income communities.

incinerator中文

The majority of what is in Toronto’s and other city’s ‘garbage’ isn’t garbage, and should be recycled, composted, or reused to conserve more energy. It is undisputed that diverting waste by increasing efforts to reduce, recycle, and compost resources conserves more energy and prevents more greenhouse gas emissions than any form of disposal, even with energy recovery.

Waste incineration plant

Incineration in all its forms, ‘energy-from-waste’, 'recovery' of energy, gasification, pyrolosis, plasmification or any other ‘thermal treatment’, create greenhouse gasses and is an extremely inefficient source of energy (i.e. it requires more energy than it produces).

[1] EU statistics show EfW releases an average of 580 g CO2e per kWh, natural gas releases 340g CO2e/kWh (Zero Waste Europe, 2019 "The impact of Waste to Energy incineration on Climate"), ten times higher than Ontario’s grid which released an average of 34g CO2e/kWh (Canada Energy Regulator Provincial and Territorial Energy Market Profiles, accessed October 2023)

For example, the Emerald energy-from-waste mass-burn incinerator is located in Peel Region, in an area already burdened with significant air pollution related to highway traffic and industrial pollution, including pollution from a gas-fired power plant. The residents in the area are more likely to be racialized, experiencing precarious employment and have lower incomes than the Ontario average. [5][6]