The promotion of turning wastes-to-energy, under the slogan “From wastes to energy”, as a source of green or renewable energy, and which limits the amount of wastes that end up in dumps or landfills, is a misleading widespread subject these days.
While it seems tempting and attractive to be able to convert household wastes into energy, but in fact, many of the proposed techniques for this goal involve the burning of wastes, which leads to toxic emissions, and high toxicity in the atmosphere, along with ash remnants, which are classified as hazardous wastes , according to international agreements which Lebanon is a party in, such as the Basel Convention on hazardous wastes, in order to generate an amount of energy whose importance is doubted.
We know very well that waste incinerators generate highly toxic air pollutants, including dioxins and furans, hex chlorobenzene HCB, and polychlorinated biphenyls PCBs and dioxins Bromine. These high-risk pollutants on the environment and public health, are the subject of interest and follow-up of international conventions, in particular the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and Lebanon is a party in it since many years ago.
The incinerators, which include, the so-called “wastes to energy”, also launch Nano-particles, toxic heavy metals, and acid gases. According to data issued by the incinerators industry, most incinerators produce one ton of contaminated and dangerous ash for every four tons of burned wastes. This includes the amounts of “highly toxic flying ash”, and larger amounts of residual less toxic ash. There isn’t a market for incinerators’ ashes, as the incinerators’ promoters like to pretend, but their inevitable fate, is to get rid of them in landfills, that are specialized for receiving hazardous wastes.
The Paris Conference on climate change will be held in the upcoming period, and there are high hopes for the possibility of reaching an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
It is useful to recall, that wastes incineration plants produce amounts far more than carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas model) to produce an energy unit, compared to that which is produced by power plants operating on coal, which is the worst and most polluting of fossil fuels, as well as also those working on fuel oil or gas.
On this basis, we request of the Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Energy, and the Ministry of Health, and all the Lebanese Government, to stay entirely away from thinking about the lie of “wastes to energy”, in their search for a national strategy for the management of household wastes in Lebanon.
