Incinerate the trash

In its dreams, Toronto imagined that it could dispose of its garbage problem with the wave of a magic wand. Under the city‘‘s waste plan, recycling, composting and other methods would divert 100 per cent of its garbage away from landfill by 2010, eliminating the need to truck it to Michigan in a exhaust-spewing daily convoy.



An authoritative new report shatters that fantasy. An advisory group of citizens and experts concluded last week that there is no way Toronto can reach 100 per cent by that date. It could, however, redirect between 88 and 96 per cent of its trash if it started burning the stuff, they said.



Horrors, cried the environmental lobby. Gordon Perks of the Toronto Environmental Alliance said that whether the city used ordinary incineration or new, high-tech thermal technologies, “you‘‘re polluting when you burn garbage. . . . It‘‘s making your lungs the landfill.”



Mr. Perks has a colourful way with the language, but he is talking trash. Well-run modern incinerators are remarkably clean. Using an array of cleansing methods, from dry-lime injection to selective catalytic reduction, they “pose little risk to public health,” according to one U.S. study released in 1999. A large incinerator in the Toronto suburb of Brampton — the only one left in Ontario — burns 160,000 tonnes of garbage a year while coming in well under provincial air-pollution limits. The few emissions from its smokestack are clear and virtually odourless. The same is true of the modern and efficient incinerator in Burnaby, B.C., that burns much of Vancouver‘‘s trash.



Because modern incinerators are so clean, many countries make free use of them. The United States burns 20 per cent of its waste, Japan 34 per cent and Sweden 41 per cent. Thanks to scaremongers like Mr. Perks, the figure in Canada is just 5 per cent.



That‘‘s a shame, because without incineration Toronto will continue to struggle with its garbage problem. The city is aggressively expanding its blue, grey and now green box campaigns, but recycling will never eliminate all garbage, as the new report confirms. So Toronto will have to keep shipping its garbage down the highway to the United States. If that option falls through, as it may if the people of Michigan get even more fed up with taking another country‘‘s leavings, the city will have to find an Ontario landfill for its trash, a tall order given how fiercely communities have fought the idea of accepting big-city garbage.



The conclusion for Toronto is clear. Mayor David Miller should get over his reflexive aversion to burning garbage and reconsider incineration as a solution to the city‘‘s garbage woes