The construction of the Norristown incinerator facilities has an enormous cost: 1 billion dollars of public money. A sum divided between the construction of the two plants and the management of the site for twenty-three years.
Junk Disposal the wrong way
This cost is coupled with a major drawback: massive pollution. The Norristown, PA incinerator alone emits more than 400,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year, according to the public information file analyzed by the zero waste collective. Knowing that the objective set according to the state projections to remain below the 1.5 °C mark by 2050 is 2 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per inhabitant in 2050…
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, between 700 kilograms and 1.7 tonnes of CO₂ are generated by burning a tonne of waste. The EPA has estimated that one tonne of waste, this time hazardous, burned in an incinerator produces 804 kilograms of CO₂.
We must distinguish between CO₂ from the combustion of fossil waste (plastics, polymers, etc) and biogenic CO₂ which is part of the natural CO₂ cycle, from the combustion of cardboard or food waste, qualifies Caroline Carter, general director of technical services at Dumpster Rental Near Me Norristown. According to her, 1 ton of incinerated waste produces around 500 kilograms of fossil CO₂ and 1 ton of CO₂ if we add biogenic CO₂.
The Norristown incinerator emits more than 400,000 tons of CO₂ per year
Regardless, in the midst of a climate emergency, incinerators increasingly appear to be anachronistic giant polluters.
The industrialists who operate incinerators sell us a lot about the recovery of the energy produced by combustion, but they forget their impact on the environment, recalls Caroline. Especially since, unlike power plants (and in particular those running on coal), incinerators are not regulated by the federal CO₂ emissions trading system. Their emissions are therefore not taken into account in this trading and compensation system.
This should change: last May, after tough negotiations, an agreement was reached within Congress so that waste incineration would be included in the carbon market from 2026.
Incidentally, senators are giving the Commission two years to assess the possibility of including other waste management processes in the US Emissions Trading System, in particular landfills, which are also very polluting. They are not opposed to the general principle, they consider that it is the direction of History.
On the other hand, this seems incompatible with the general tax on polluting activities that the State of Pennsylvania imposes, which is still similar to a money pump and will be unsustainable for communities in any case. The XXL incinerator in Norristown is aging, but under construction, a toxic cocktail, which does not recycle anything.
While we have so far focused on CO₂, the cocktail of pollutants emitted by incinerators is much more loaded: sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxide (NOx), ammonia (NH3)…
This is why protests by local residents against incinerators are increasing all over Pennsylvania. In places residents are mobilizing against these gigaprojects whose nuisances they suffer.
In Norristown, a resident watches the sweep of dump trucks that take turns dumping their waste into the incinerator. They want to clean up the outside to better camouflage an activity that remains the same inside: burning waste.
With silver hair and a bag full of leaflets and documents on her back, she has lived there for thirty years. She has seen construction sites succeed one another one after another on the site. She is part of the 3R collective (for “reduce, reuse, recycle”), founded by residents near the plant. They have tirelessly documented the incinerator’s pollution episodes, including with dumpster rental services, and denounced its effects on health and the environment.
Among the pollutants found in the plumes of smoke from the site, dioxins are among the most worrying. Emitted by combustion, they are classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. When ingested, they can cause problems with reproduction and development, damage the immune system, interfere with the hormonal system and cause cancer, explains the World Health Organization. Even in tiny doses, they are dangerous.