Is Incineration the Solution to the Massive Waste Crisis?

The Culture of Consumption; Waste More Want More. Then What Do You Do With-it? Moving it all from one place to another away down yonder. Purple smoke we can see; but what can’t we see? Is Incineration the solution?

Today on Facebook saw the article; A Garbage Incinerator in Newark is Releasing Pink Emissions (Again), Activists Say, by M.E. Cagnassola. The Pink smoke is suspected to be coming from “medical waste” due to iodine. Covanta, an international corporation, like Halliburton, denies that medical waste is being incinerated; and made this statement:

"It's not illegal to have iodine in the waste, iodine can come from a variety of sources. Things like commercial printers, food manufacturers, even some photography studios and other manufacturing. The assertion that we're processing medical waste is just flat wrong," Regan said. "There's a certain amount of dispersion that happens at the facility. Ground modeling and modeling has been done over these events, the smallest amount of iodine in waste will show a visible color when it's combusted."

Obvious Main Substances being burned are plastics

Ok, it could be medical waste because our society lacks discipline; and profit is the bottom line for business; but what is in fact the constant substance that would enter any incinerator in our culture of waste? The answer is obvious; plastics.

Chlorine, Mercury, Plastic.

How many know/realize plastic productions require mercury and chlorine; most plastics/Styrofoam if burned incorrectly produce dioxin? Plastic a petroleum product which accelerated in production after world war 2, as part of the Chemistry Makes for better life craze; as technology through industrial chemistry was somehow to replace nature, with no real foresight as to the impacts to be incurred on nature itself; the age of synthetic detergents, pesticides, and plastics took off like a rocket.

Chlorine became the main ingredient in detergent and plastic production. Mercury is necessary in the production of chlorine. (Detergents replaced soap). This is why eating fish became a health risks concerning mercury; and wastewater treatment became complicated, expensive and perhaps ineffective; stormwater runoff added to the water pollution crisis. These new manmade chemicals were not biodegradable; and are now evident as a disgrace in all places.

US Navy Super Furnace

Surely we cannot go on forever filling and trashing our home Mother Earth. Incineration can be a solution; only if we apply the same sense of science and technology we did in producing these chemicals; and such a furnace does exist!

The US Navy presently has in its infrastructure a super state of the art technology; a furnace paid for with taxpayers money, that burns at such a temperature it can convert any matter be it organic inorganic into a harmless powder.

Please explain why this technology cannot be deployed for civilian use? The present Department of Defense (Military Industrial Complex) spends on average $2-billion a day. This absurd spending supports war as economy; but in defense of what?

This State of the Art Technology Furnace can be seen, in the documentary “ A Plastic Ocean”. Letters to Congress and Senate have brought no specific answer or reply. Please explain how defending our health and wellbeing is not an inalienable right; or how free market technology is allowed to create pollution, waste ignoring impacts on humans and nature, with no mandate for producer responsibility?

Health Care is Stopping Pollution: All we need is the air we breathe and water we drink.

All the difference in truly caring, is the difference between burning and incineration, between cutting costs and profits over hurting others. This is the job of good government not business. When business got into government, government became business. Not a public trust or a common good as intended. Tax avoidance by the wealthy became legal loopholes legislated by business lobbyist bribing officials they sponsored.

What good was the age of chemistry and technology if only for corporate profit alone; now more than ever unregulated, irresponsible, and uncaring.

Freedom without responsibility is meaningless; and even criminal.

A myth that perpetuates this; everybody has a right to make a buck as long as they don’t harm another. Oh well what happened? Finally if recycle really worked; which it doesn't we would not need to continue and increase plastic production. Recycle was a ploy from day one and never setup as any sensible institution to retrieve the waste; a clear case of freedom without responsibility; a crime against nature.