Monday
Aug312015
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Is landfill the greener way to recycle?
Aug 31, 2015 Recycling ;)
Another recycling plant has gone up in smoke. This time the facility involved is in Wales, and there is apparently a fear that it could burn for days.
In related news a plastics recycling facility in Thailand was wiped out by fire a few hours ago.
On Saturday, it was a facility in Virginia that proved incendiary.
On Friday, there were two facilities in flames, one in Forth Worth and one in South Carolina.
Two days earlier, it was another pair, one in Maryland and one in Phoenix.
You do start to wonder whether it wouldn't be better for the environment to put all that stuff in landfill and collect the methane given off to use for fuel. Wouldn't that be a greener form of recycling?
Reader Comments (57)
Penn and Teller answered the question here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh-KDa_Jmok
Recyling should be the next target for the Tories, now is a good time because the opposition is distracted, Labour by its election, the BBC by the plight of migrants.
I posted a link to this on unthreaded, asking if anybody was keeping count of the number of fires. Johanna responded with a statement that they have them in Australia all the time.
wouldn't be better for the environment to put all that stuff in landfill and collect the methane given off to use for fuel.
Electricity generated by burning methane emitted from landfill sites was for roughly the first decade of the RO/ROS schemes in 2002 (and may still be - I'd need to check) the largest contributor to UK "green" energy targets. It follows that burning landfill methane earned more ROCs than wind power during that period, not that you'll discover the fact in any BINGO report.
Yep, I don't have any numbers, but just in my small city of about 350,000 people we have had several in the last few years.
In a place the size of Australia, the notion that landfill is a bad idea is nonsense of the highest order. We could take all of Europe's garbage into landfill and it wouldn't even be noticeable.
There is a covered landfill in California providing gas for 1500 homes and is also a golf course.
The sites in question seem to be for recycling plastics. Would not produce methane as the plastics take too long to break down. Better to burn to produce power.
Tin-foil hat on. Do these facilities get rebuilt after the insurance money has been collected, and what grants are available for rebuilding, in the UK? What's the position in Oz, Johanna?
Philip Bratby
Not sure of the numbers but a quick Google brings up a lot of names.
Smethwick, Kidderminster, Arcwood, Wellingborough, Ramsbottom, Duxford, Caythorpe, Basildon and the list goes on.
Not sure if any are duplicates depending on local or national source.
As you say worth monitoring, given the choice between fracking, windmills or recycling in my backyard there seems to be only one winner.
Charlotte, North Carolina is not in South Carolina.
If its worth recycling drunks and drug addicts will do it for you for free.
Sorry, Kevin, I don't know how that works.
But as far as I can tell, recycling plants are at a minimum major fire hazards. Why anyone would allow them near built-up areas is a mystery.
Some of these fires are merely nuisance. The linked fire in Virginia happened in a feed hopper, sprinklers activated, and fire was out in 10 minutes.
About the only harmless emission from these disasters is:
(drum roll)
CARBON DIOXIDE
I'm with Kevin. These are insurance scams. And why not the whole "Green" thing is a massive con.
Brussels abruptly decided landfill was unacceptable, thanks to lobbying by little countries, like Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands, which were afraid they would need to rely on incinerators, to dispose of waste, and wanted to ensure that their neighbours incurred the same costs. Johanna points out, rightly, that Australia could easily take all of Europe's refuse, but the fact is that Britain, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Spain, France (all of which, together, would fit very easily into Australia) were never in the slightest danger of running out of landfill space, either.
In Britain, the prime mover behind the closing down of landfill sites was the convicted criminal, Elliot Morley, who, for whatever reason, was fanatically keen on closing down (without previously filling up) Britain's landfills. The fact that people don't actually open up huge holes in the ground just so that they can deposit rubbish in them, seemed to escape Morley.
In the Unsustainable Green economy, Green jobs are created by rebuilding recycling plants, that have burnt down.
No one actually knows how they dispose of the burnt out wreckage of the remains of the previous recycling plant. It seems recycling plants are not easy to recycle.
There is a need for incinerators capable of producing Combined Heat and Power, from incinerating Green Waste. Green Waste, is the major bi product of all Green ideas. The money poured into them, always vanishes into Fresh Air, without any stain on the Greens. That is why Greens cannot get enough of their own ideas, providing they do not have to pay for them.
johanna
The UK could also put all its garbage into landfill. I don't know the most recent figure but the last time I looked we were creating about twice as much hole in the ground as we were the garbage to fill it.
There are some things that it makes sense to recycle. For others there is the option either of incineration (which the greenies hate because of "all that dioxin") or landfill (which the greenies hate because of "all that ground water pollution and the leaking methane and the rats")
As far as the dioxin goes, if they were really, as in really, serious they would be campaigning to ban firework displays which create many times the almost negligible dioxin emission from properly run incinerators which also, properly sited, produce waste heat which can be used for local buildings.
Landfill not only disposes of inert waste and mildly toxic wastes which are not re-usable but recycles land for recreation and possibly even housing development in the long term. Most local authorities have now learned how to do this. Scares from 30 or 40 years ago (and some of them were genuine) have taught us how to manage waste disposal properly. There is no need for any fear of hazards in development on properly run, properly "finished off" land reclamation sites.
(But as usual there are always scaremongers needlessly concerned on behalf of other people who will try to stop any such development.)
Owen Morgan @ 1.03: In reference to Elliot Morley;
Q: In the creation of Landfill Sites, what do you do with the stuff you dig up to make the hole?
A: You dig another hole and put it in there.
H/T Ronnie Barker aka Norman Stanley Fletcher
Best practice for landfill sites is to reduce the amount of methane generated by aeration. Turning over the garbage gets air into the mix and allows aerobic bacteria to break down the solids. Without aeration, anaerobic bacteria break down the solid waste and in the process generate methane.
So big heaps of garbage that just sit there produce methane, lots of it. You can get spontaneous combustion or lightening strikes and then you have a huge bonfire with lots of plastics to keep it going.
As for collecting the methane and using it for heating or other purpose, that is possible but not really practical in high income countries, except perhaps onsite.
Not to worry, the amount of methane release by humans is dominated by paddy rice production, probably 40% of methane production. And naturally by volcanoes and termites in their gazillions.
Contributing to some organization might make you feel good about doing something green, but the small amount of landfill methane that can be turned directly into CO2 is not going to make much difference in the real world.
"spontaneous combustion"
I wonder how many are the result of that and how many are arson. Any loss adjusters here..?
I don't think so. It is not so hard to prevent fire; lots of industries do that very successfully all the time.
There is no reason not to reuse stuff that is still of value. And landfills leak, take up precious space, and need monitoring, guarding and maintenance forever, practically. And attract maffia. Whereas in recycling, emissions can be controlled much better, and part of the waste becomes useful again. Burning certain types of waste (at high temperature) can also be a fairly good solution, and can generate power (the Netherlands imports waste from other European countries to burn).
jamesp, even if arson is proved, unless the arsonist can be proved to be the "policy holder", or someone acting with his/her interests in mind, the insurance company normally, still has a liability.
Just because an insurance company pays out, does not stop the company from pursuing recovery of its costs, from the "guilty party". This may occur independent of, and in addition to, any criminal charges. Not a lot of people know that.
Cees, nonsense.
There is enough space in Australia for landfills for all the garbage in Europe, without any noticeable effect. They don't need to be monitored forever, either.
These stock standard green talking points don't cut it around here.
Cees, the Green Mafia (or is that Raffia?) seem to do alright out of recycling, leaving everyone else with Fresh Air to show for it.
"Fresh Air for everyone!" really ought to be their campaigning slogan
There is a third way. Steam cracking plastics and grease into liquid fuel, then burning the residuals (glycerine and charcoal) for energy. Check out the CWT plant in Carthage MO, USA. It failed due to some poor business decisions, but the technology is promising.
If, for whatever reason, you discount landfill which, (if properly managed in a suitable location) is largely unproblematic to anyone except Big Green, a proper energy-from waste plant is the obvious way to go. The Teeside EfW plant is an excellent example. True, it only has a derisory 29 MW nameplate generation capacity. But at least that is dispatchable and not dependant on the vagaries of wind and sunshine. The waste ash is also a usable product. And I well remember a very senior guy with what used to be the Alkali Inspectorate (before being swallowed by the EA) telling me that the exposure to dioxin of some latter-day Saint Simeon Stylites sitting atop the Billingham chimney for a year would be less than if he had a garden bonfire for a couple of hours one evening.
Not that Big Green (or the EU) will ever allow themselves to be confused by mere facts.
Many of the recent spate of fires and / or explosions are from more "cutting edge" designs where, instead of simply incinerating rubbish in a properly designed and managed facility, they use anaerobic heating techniques under pressure to produce combustible gas to feed a turbine. Somewhere I have a book of different approaches to this 'problem'. Who knows, but it is likely that effective, safe and (miracle!) affordable technology will eventually be developed before too many more people are killed.
It is interesting that the politicos and greenie pundits who go along with this stuff are often the same as those loudly bleating (without evidence) of the hypothetical number of people "killed" by diesel particulates.
Incidentally, the fires at "recycling" facilities may, incidentally be insurance scams.
But the main scam is that they contract (at a high price) to take in "recyclate" (motor tyres, chicken shit, plastic, whatever) to avoid the waste producer having to pay the normal disposal cost plus landfill and other green taxes. The plant then 'processes' the waste to make something useful which can be sold on.
However, although our Green chums are always delighted to spout about "zero-waste" and suggest that even kipper skins, used nappies and chicken bones can be used or recycled, the reality is that the "recycling plant" always takes in enormously more stuff 'to recycle' than it manages to process and sell.
So despite the terms of the EA licence, soon the available land is chock full. At that point, 'who'd of thought it?', there will mysteriously be a fire,
I bet the greenery didn't chant "But think of the seagulls!" when banning landfills.
The simplest solution is sort out the paper and hydrocarbons (plastic,tires) and burn them with coal. Burying these fuels is wasting energy. All the schemes to turn plastic into liquid fuels or other plastics are stupid, most plastic is made from refinery byproducts.
If only these Green recycling plants were subject to proper environmental risk assessments prior to applying for Planning Permission. You would have thought proper Green groups would shred them to pieces, for alleged recycling.
But where there is allegedly muck, there is a Green paid to throw it, and another Green, paid to allegedly clean it up.
All of this is fully sustainable, provided somebody else is paying.
Martin Brumby, Flytipping.
Flytipping, the unauthorised dumping of rubbish on someone elses land, has always been a problem.
The more hazardous the rubbish, the more it costs to dispose of it. This increases the profits for those paid to remove it from one place, and dump it illegally somewhere else. Amazingly, as costs for legitimate waste disposal have been increased by Government Legislation, the profits from flytipping have risen to match.
Recycling plants earn money from accepting waste. It then costs them money to do something with it. Obviously no one with Green credentials would possibly seek to profit out of being paid to accept others waste, and then simply let it pile up, until an Act of God causes it to combust, causing someone else to pay for the clean up.
If Big Green Blob 'polices' fracking regulations made up by Big Green Blob, why shouldn't Big Frack police Big Green Scam recycling? It seems only fair. Why are their no groundwater contamination surveys prior to, during and after the fires at recycling plants?
In conclusion, the Big Green Blob makes up the rules, and polices them, but only when they decide it is in their interest. Green poachers ARE the gamekeepers, police, Crown Prosecution, judge and jury. Courtesy of the Grauniad, BBC etc, they never end up smeared in the muck they spread on others.
Martin Brumby
I think most of what you say is correct but I'm not sure about waste ash. Wasn't there some EU muttering (or perhaps even more than muttering) about safe disposal and a ban on its use? For what I don't know; not something I know all that much about.
One possible use for old tyres and cullet is, as I understand it, road construction. Quieter and safer than traditional methods. Again, others would know better than me.
I think Cees has got the wrong end of the stick when he talks about creating landfill sites. The whole point is you don't create them; you use existing worked-out quarries and opencast. Where that is not a viable option the preferred method ought to be incineration which in itself is a form of recycling since it means the "product" has two useful lives.
Shame the greenies cannot see it that way.
I just wonder what "end-to-end" recycling costs. All we get told is something like "less energy is involved using re-cycled glass than in producing new glass" and similar phrases. But does this count the cost of a separate collection and all the sorting? I suppose I pay for that through my council tax, and thus subsidising the glass makers.
I have a small bin for kitchen waste, a special truck comes round to collect it each week and we are told it is used to produce electricity. I don't know about other people's waste, but I would be surprised if the amount of waste in our bin would provide enough energy to get the vehicle to the next house! If this waste can be used to generate electricity, why don't they want my garden waste, after all, that from my vegetable patch is the same as that from the kitchen.
We have more than enough landfill in this country, we are digging out our countryside for the construction industry faster than we could generate waste to fill it. We should use it for all waste unless there is some real saving in the "end-to-end" use of the recycled material.
Do green recycling plants operate as many wind farm operators do i.e. under shell company status? Passing profits up to the holding company but avoiding any liabilities re clean-up etc??? Might be worth checking......
David Cobb writes-
"There is a third way...Check out the CWT plant in Carthage MO, USA. It failed due to some poor business decisions, but the technology is promising."
The Turkey Offal to oil plant in Carthage was part of the Anything-to-Oil frenzy of a decade ago. All-in energy balance shows that it is a net energy sink. It never made sense.
There is a fourth way that actually generates revenues for those who have made the investment- Waste to Energy plants that burn all residential and commercial solid waste. Florida has operated these for more than 30 years, with 11 currently in service. Non-combustible recyclables are recovered from the ash stream and sold. This extends landfill life by a factor of 5 to 10, generates electricity for sale to the local grid, and when appropriately sized to the waste stream available within a reasonable drive time, minimizes the time garbage is sitting in the open air, which reduces noxious garbage smells. The ash stream is placed in the landfill.
Mike Jackson writes-
"I think most of what you say is correct but I'm not sure about waste ash."
The Florida Dept of Environmental Protection says this regarding Waste To Energy (WTE) ash-
"Ash is required to be disposed in a lined MSW landfill or a lined ash monofill, since an Environmental Protection Agency study showed that ash from WTE facilities should not be classified as hazardous waste."
I've always said that landfill must be the more environmentally friendly disposal method - you fill a big hole up with waste (having taken aggregates out first), you use the methane to produce electricity, and finally in the year dot when plastics are in short supply you dig up the whole thing and extract the plastic for recycling. Nothing wasted, no-one pays over the odds, no State intervention or subsidy needed.
I've been watching our local town hall Taleban for some sort of reaction and so far all we hear is the noise of embarrassed silence. Indeed, the market for recycling plastic, milk cartons and Aluminium cans etc has dropped so far as for it to be now described as non existent.
So what do they do..................watching the bin men, they come round and empty the green bins [bottles etc] and blue bins [paper/cardboard] into the landfill refuse trucks.
I'd say landfill forever - well nigh on forever and if, a certain amount of separation is economically 'doable' then plastics whatever in some regions [south east] where land is more at a premium = burn some of it - why not?
Recycling, in certain cases - gold, silver, platinum, [rare earths from whirlygig bearings???] can be economic maybe cars and their engine blocks etc old hulks but most of it is eco window dressing to assuage the wankeratti - for the shit birds of green and for politicians to demonstrate their faux guardianship of the poley bears and various other stuffed panda eyed toys.
Recycling junk and food waste et bloody cetera...... keeps an awful lot of pen pushers in recreational drugs and non jobs - telling the world what to bloody do - it's small wonder the green libtards love "£recycling" and are devoted and determined to promoting and to serving the beast.
Lastly, for crying out load, ALL food waste should go to landfill and to allow Gaia's natural digestive system to break down all sorts fo bad sh*7 - really.
@johanna
I will readily accept that there is enough space in Australia for all of Europe's waste, but it would not make sense. There is just too much money to be made from regular waste, so it makes no sense to pay to have it dumped somewhere. But there is still an amount of toxic waste that cannot be recycled; maybe that can be brought over if it does not cost too much.
I must disagree. Every waste can be recycled. The technology exists, but it is a matter of cost. Cheaper energy makes the recycling of low-level wastes more affordable.
English Pensioner, 6:03pm:
The whole recycling scam is a complete lottery and a farce.
We live literally on the border between Wales and England. Because we are in Powys, all kitchen waste (including left-overs and plate scrapings (but not large bones)) has to go in to the kitchen waste bin for recycling, but not garden waste - you have to take that to a recycling centre yourself.
However, in Shropshire (on the other side on our eastern fence) kitchen waste is is not recycled, but garden waste is, but you can't put kitchen waste in the garden waste recycling bin, or they won't take it away. And neither councils will collect old batteries or light bulbs, you have to take them to a recycling centre, and the nearest one that accepts batteries and bulbs is a 28 mile round-trip away.
Martin Brumby and Golf Charlie are bang on the money. In our area we had a fire that lasted three months and closed the M1 at a "recycling" site that was really just a giant woodpile with assorted plastics and other rubbish mixed in. The operators were charging local councils a fortune for supposedly recycling the stuff but in reality had no clue what to do with it. All in the name of Green.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-21895772
Oh, don't get me started on this one! In no small measure thanks to the provisions of BC's equivalent of your Climate Change Act, a few years ago I became aware that one of these "recycling" conglomerates would be dictating what I could (and could not) do in order to comply with all the rules and regulations that would be brought into force this year.
Very long and winding story short, the only beneficiaries I could find at the end of my investigative trail were Al Gore and his buddies. For all the ... uh ... gorey details, see: Wastelandia: Andrew Weaver et al‘s big green choru$ and $ymphony … in the key of Gore.
Not aware of any related fires, yet. Merely an apparent increase in the rat population in some affected neighbourhoods of the Lower Mainland of this once beautiful province, as I had noted in an update some months later.
Oh, and a 300% increase in business for a bin-cleaning franchise holder. For these particular gorey details, pls see: Wastelandia: a brief update from downwind.
English P at 6:03
Do an 'Images' search on cullett glass.
There is so much of this that in places it is crushed and used to cover landfills to prevent things from blowing around.
It can also be used in road construction and related projects.
Recycling centre fires : A table lists the fire stats to 2013..they reference "The latest statistics, from the Environment Agency", but I have yet to find a newer list on the EA website. The pdf "Digest of Waste and Resource Statistics 2015 Edition" doesn't mention them
..You'd think the insurance corps would be collecting info.
- Environment Agency finds 80 sites at ‘very high’ fire risk 4 September 2014
Why doesn't it go to Landfill ? cos the UK gets fined if it doesn't obey the EU Directive targets as BH mentioned in 2013
@Salopian I think anywhere that sells batteries has to have a recycling box
Yep, "From February 2010, shops selling more than 32kg of batteries a year (approx 345 x four-packs of AA batteries) have to provide battery recycling collection facilities in-store. "
meanwhile on the radio shortly 0655 BBC Radio4 Today Prog
"About 90% of seabirds have eaten plastic and are likely to retain some in their gut, a new analysis estimates. Dr Erik Van Sebille is the co-author of the research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal."
If oil refineries caught fire with such frequency there would be howls of outrage from the environmentalist camp.
They seem to be fairly quiet on these burns.
stewgreen
Every retail outlet in France has a dry cell recycling box, the local Citroën dealer has a small box for the cells from key fobs. Lead Acid and large rechargeables are déchetterie items. It's been like this for quite a few years. Recycling is up to the individual in Haute Vienne, it varies department to department our bin collection take whatever is in the bin, and there are recycling points in most villages. What happens after that I have no idea.
I have heard that all the UK's landfill requirement could be satisfied by using the GlenSanda superquarry just down from Fort William, all by itself.
Of course getting the stuff there might be an issue, but hardly more of an issue than the utter nonsense that goes on every day of the year around the country anyway (how much of this stuff really gets usefully recycled, and how economical is it?)
And of course the SNP would no doubt be "outraged"; but then they're always outraged about something, it's just what they do.
Aug 31, 2015 at 3:12 PM | Unregistered CommenterMartin Brumby et al
Whilst on the subject of "Fires", you might take a look at BioFuel pellet fires. There was one here on Teesside a couple of years ago that burned for weeks and left huge residential areas smelling of smoke.
Now that Drax is 25% BioFuel, you can see how precarious is our electricity supply. A number of generating plants have had fires in the generating equipment, taking out production. All it take is a Drax problem and the UK loses 2% of its' supply, just like that.
Prince Charles ,Greenpeace ,Friends of the Earth ,Guardian readers and Kevin McCloud presenter of Grand Designs say scavenging around on Third World Landfill sites for 16 hours a day for 10 pence an hour is an honorable and sustainable way to live.
Difference is in the technologically advanced capitalist western world we get machines to recycle our our rubbish not children in bare feet.