The Green Party and garbage, but in a good way
Stop making garbage, Green party leader says
Better product design will help reduce need for landfill sites, he says
By Dave Rogers , ottawa citizen
Published: Friday, September 21, 2007
Ontario should aim to eliminate garbage through better product design, instead of expanding landfills and using waste to generate electricity, Ontario Green party leader, Frank de Jong, said Friday.
Speaking to the Citizen editorial board yesterday, Mr. de Jong said Ontario should aim to eliminate not be a consumer society that generates more waste than it can handle.
Mr. de Jong said plasma gasification – the heating of garbage to produce gas for generating electricity – is really garbage incineration that requires government subsidies and causes air pollution.
“We will always need clothing, household items and manufacturing tools, but the challenge is to make it as sustainable as possible,” Mr. de Jong said. “But we don’t have a garbage crisis – we have a design crisis.
“Every product sold in Ontario should be designed from the outset to be repairable, recyclable, recoverable and compostable. With proper stewardship, we wouldn’t produce anything that needs to be gasified. We could probably get to zero garbage in Ontario in a dozen years.
“Everyone knows that incinerators always produce toxic emissions and even when you scrub it, you end up with 30 per cent of the volume with more toxic materials than the original waste,” Mr. de Jong said. “It has to be disposed of with even more complicated and expensive systems.
“Landfilling to date is half the price of incineration, but we shouldn’t use landfills, either. There should be no such thing as garbage, because that is like throwing resources into a hole in the ground. It is like burying money.”
Mr. de Jong said he opposes plasma gasification because it requires large amounts of energy and produces concentrated waste.
Ottawa is experimenting with generating electricity from garbage. Plasco Energy Group has a $32-million Ottawa plant that will be used to test area generation technology.
The gasification process uses a sealed system that breaks down solid waste at an intense heat without burning it. The plant does not have a smokestack because no combustion takes place. The gas produced is refined to remove most impurities.
Plasco Energy president Rod Bryden said yesterday he opposes earlier forms of plasma gasification because they require heavy government subsidies and produces little electricity.
Mr. Bryden said current technology to be tested in Ottawa will convert 46 per cent of the waste into electricity, compared to 18 per cent in older systems.
