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Waste to Energy
Waste to Energy
About:
Definition:
Waste to Energy
- The black sheep of the renewable energy market place, waste to energy projects like the West London waste centre had a poor reputation due to their toxic emissions.
- Domestic rubbish is used as a fuel by burning it at very high temperatures.
- Such systems require careful engineering to ensure that the toxins in the fuel gases do not escape into the atmosphere.
- However if properly engineered waste to energy is a highly sustainable solution to the nations domestic waste burden, even more so with the yearly reduction of land fill sites which by 2013 will have virtually disappeared.
- Several schemes by a number of local government and public bodies are presently being considered in terms of both a renewable energy solution for community CHP plants and as a long term answer to managing waste.
(Building Magazine Steve Piltz, Turner & Townsend ’08)
- The film TRASHED shows that burning waste to energy is far more expensive and polluting, than the alternatives than what we are led to believe.
- Waste to energy generates toxins and dioxins which are diluted in the atmosphere and then concentrated in the oceans by adsorption onto surface of degrading plastics, enter the marine food chain and untimately into humans.
- Engineers are responsible for designing waste to energy plants because that’s what they do and what they understand.
(NGS BRM ’13)
- TRASHED by Candida Brady
- Waste, pollution, expensive infrastructure incineration, more and worse pollution to environment,
- alleged dilution into sky, land & oceans, reality concentrations around plastics,
- into food chains, to humans via fish, mammals, animals.
- Alternatives: segregation for reuse and recycling, composting, anaerobic digestions, etc.
- soil enrichment, employment, lower costs, low or zero pollution, etc.
Relevance to Sustainable Construction:
Opinion:
Examples:
Notes:
© GBE NGS ASwS BrianSpecMan aka Brian Murphy
30th November 2013 – 21st October 2016
Waste to Energy
Images:
© GBE NGS ASWS BrianSpecMan aka Brian Murphy
30th November 2013 – 21st October 2016
Waste to Energy
See also:
GBE Links
Wikipedia Environment Agency
GBE Jargon Buster
- AD
- SWMP
- Adsorption
- Anearobic Digestion (AD)
- Compustion
- Incineration
- Recyclables
- Reusables
- Resource
- Resource Efficiency
- Surplus to Requirements
- Site Waste Management Plan (SWMP)
- SWMP Checklist
- SWMP Workshops
- Take Back
- Trashed
- Waste Champion
- Waste Class
- Waste Hierarchy
- Waste to Energy (this page)
GBE Video
GBE Future Events
GBE CPD
GBE Checklist
- A38
- A39
- C20
- D20
- Q29
GBE Calculator
GBE Projects
- Building with Reclaimed Components and Materials, A Design Handbook for Reuse and Recycling
- DTI Partners In Innovation Waste & Recycling
- Envirowise Packaging Waste Guide
- Resource Efficiency Flooring Skills Project
- WRAP Demolition Module and ICE Demolition Protocol
GBE Green Building Specification
- Robust Specification Clause
- Robust Specification Work Section
- A38
- A39
- C20
- D20
- Q29
© GBE NGS ASWS BrianSpecMan aka Brian Murphy
30th November 2013 – 21st October 2016