�…helping communities protect themselves from polluting energy and waste technologies�

Zero Waste New York is made up of �grassroots, regional and statewide groups working to address polluting landfills, incinerators, sewage sludge and other solid waste problems, as well as groups working on waste prevention, reuse, recycling, composting and other zero waste programs.��www.ZeroWasteNY.org��www.facebook.com/zerowasteny

Trash Incineration

www.EnergyJustice.net/incineration/

• Trash-to-steam
• Resource Recovery Facility (RRF)
• Waste-to-energy (WTE)
• Energy from Waste (EfW)
• Thermomechanical Treatment�Facility (TTF)
• Energy Recovery
• Conversion technologies
• Waste to Fuel (WTF?)
• Pyrolysis / Biochar / Gasification / Plasma Arc
• Policy buzzwords: “integrated” or “sustainable materials management”

Incinerators: Names Used

What are they�even asking for??

Page 5

Page 10

• Cannot run continuously
• Cannot run effectively at�commercial scale
• Can’t process heterogenous�feedstocks like trash
• Companies with no real history bamboozle local officials into subsidizing projects that fail, technically and financially
• The companies usually lie about their emissions, claiming zero emissions or “no smokestack”

Plastics Pyrolysis is a Failed Technology

40 CFR 60.51a:

• Municipal waste combustor, MWC, or municipal waste combustor unit: (1) Means any setting or equipment that combusts solid, liquid, or gasified MSW including, but not limited to, field-erected incinerators (with or without heat recovery), modular incinerators (starved-air or excess-air), boilers (i.e., steam-generating units), furnaces (whether suspension-fired, grate-fired, mass-fired, air curtain incinerators, or fluidized bed-fired), and pyrolysis/combustion units.
• Pyrolysis/combustion unit means a unit that produces gases, liquids, or solids through the heating of MSW, and the gases, liquids, or solids produced are combusted and emissions vented to the atmosphere.

​

“A municipal waste incinerator 'combusts' solid waste and thus is functionally synonymous with municipal waste combustor.”

​

June 2023: EPA chooses to keep regulating pyrolysis and gasification as municipal waste combustors, dropping Trump admin proposal to stop doing so.

EPA says pyrolysis/gasification = incineration

www.EJmap.org

Where are Trash Incinerators?

New York Waste Incinerators:

#1 state for number of trash burners (10)

New York Municipal Solid Waste Landfills

Pennsylvania is New York’s backyard. PA has 43 landfills and 6 incinerators while NYS has just 25 landfills, but 10 incinerators. PA’s incinerators are larger and burn nearly as much as NY’s.

New York = #1 waste exporter

Number of Commercial Operating Trash Incinerators in the U.S.

Source: www.energyjustice.net/incineration/closures.pdf

• Average lifespan of the 54 trash incinerators that have closed from 2000 through May 2025 was just 26 years.

​

• Only eight trash incinerators have made it past 40; one burned down in 2023.

​

• 50-year old trash incinerator in Iowa (oldest in U.S.) just announced plans to close.

​

• Due to their huge expense plus community opposition, no commercial-scale trash incinerator has been built in the U.S. at a new site since 1995, despite hundreds of attempts.

Incinerator Life Spans

Source: www.energyjustice.net/incineration/closures.pdf

Incineration Worse than Coal

www.energyjustice.net/incineration/worsethancoal

New York DEC found the same…

Landfilling vs. Incineration

…and Ash Landfilling

• Incinerators still require landfills for their toxic ash
• Choice is NOT landfill vs. incinerator, but:

Incineration Worse than Landfills

landfill��vs. ��incinerator AND a smaller, more toxic landfill

OR…

​

Zero Waste and minimal landfilling

​

• Global warming
• Human health impacts
• Nitrogen Oxide emissions (asthma)
• Particulate emissions
• Toxic and Cancer-causing emissions
• Smog formation
• Acidification (acid rain…)
• Eutrophication
• Ozone depletion
• Ecosystem toxicity

​

How to Compare?

Should also look at…

• Cost
• Jobs
• Population impacted
• Environmental justice

Montgomery County, MD has a trash and construction & demolition waste incinerator, which is the county’s #1 industrial air polluter.

​

This report was done at the request of County Executive Marc Elrich, and includes a comprehensive life cycle analysis (LCA) of incineration vs. landfilling for the county’s waste.

​

Find the plan here.

​

Results on the next two slides.

Montgomery County Resource Recovery Facility (MCRRF) trash incinerator is 3.2 times as harmful for health and environment as landfills in the region (a composite of 10 regional landfills in PA, VA & OH).

​

Source: Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) from 2021 report,

“Beyond Incineration: Best Waste Management Strategies for Montgomery County, Maryland”

www.energyjustice.net/md/moco

Similar results found in analyses of Covanta incinerators in Delaware County, PA, Fairfax County, VA, and Honolulu, HI

Incineration vs. Landfilling

Transportation climate impacts (blue/black) are minor compared to incineration (red) or landfilling (yellow), and no realistic transportation distance can justify incinerating in-county over hauling waste to distant landfills.

Source: Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) from 2021 report,

“Beyond Incineration: Best Waste Management Strategies for Montgomery County, Maryland”

www.energyjustice.net/md/moco

Transportation Impacts Insignificant

Health effects

• All types of cancer, including:
• Stomach
• Colorectal
• Liver
• Renal
• Lung & pleural
• Gallbladder
• Bladder
• Non-Hodgkin lymphoma
• Leukemia
• Soft-tissue sarcoma
• Immune system suppression
• Birth defects, pre-term births, miscarriage, developmental delay
• Respiratory diseases & symptoms
• Cardiovascular diseases & premature death
• Urinary diseases

People living near incinerators have an increased risk of…

Sources: www.energyjustice.net/incineration/healthstudies.pdf & www.energyjustice.net/fl/health.pdf

Dioxins & Furans

• Most toxic chemicals known to science: 140,000 times more toxic than mercury.
• Cause infertility, learning disabilities, endometriosis, birth defects, sexual reproductive disorders, damage to the immune system, cancer and more.
• 93% of dioxin exposure is from eating meat and dairy products.
• It takes 14 years for a human to �inhale as much dioxin as a grazing �cow will ingest in one day.
• Highest exposure is during infancy.

www.ejnet.org/dioxin/

Exposure to Dioxins

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Estimating Exposure to Dioxin-Like Compounds – Volume 1: Executive Summary,” June 1994.

Are Smokestacks Properly Regulated?

Need…

​

• Strong, protective standards

​

• Continuous Emissions Monitoring

​

• Aggressive enforcement

Covanta: “We monitor continuously for all of our CEM parameters…”

The Smokestack Story

• Continuous Emissions Monitors (CEMs) tell all
• Rigorous enforcement by the state
• Emissions limits = health & safety

The Smokestack Story

1. They’re not always within permit limits. Fines not enough.
2. Cannot meet modern limits, at least for NOx.
• Emissions limits are stricter for new facilities and for those in other countries.
• EPA is supposed to update standards every 5 years. New standards not in effect until 2028-2029 (23 year gap).
3. Permit limits are not based on health and safety, but are technology-based.

The Smokestack Story

4. Permit limits are concentration-based. Bigger plants can be dirtier.
5. Covanta has rigged stack tests AND continuous monitoring.
6. No safe dose of lead, mercury, dioxins, radiation, fine particulate matter, etc.
7. Only 3 pollutants monitored continuously. Emissions underestimated when tested once a year by their own contractor.

www.ejnet.org/toxics/cems

Continuous Emissions Monitors

​

• Only generally used for 3 local pollutants: sulfur oxides (SOx), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO), plus carbon dioxide (CO₂), opacity, oxygen and temperature.
• Hydrochloric acid emissions: actually 62% higher
• Dioxin/furan emissions: actually 32-52; 460-1,290 times higher
• Technology now exists to continuously monitor:

​

Ammonia (NH₄)

​

Hydrogen Sulfide (H₂S)

​

Acid Gases:

Sulfuric Acid (H₂SO₄)

Hydrofluoric Acid (HF)

Hydrochloric Acid (HCl)

​

Products of Incomplete Combustion (PICs):

Dioxins & Furans

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

​

Particulate Matter (PM)

​

Metals:

Antimony (Sb)

Arsenic (As)

Barium (Ba)

Cadmium (Cd)

Chromium (Cr)

Lead (Pb)

Manganese (Mn)

Mercury (Hg)

Silver (Ag)

Nickel (Ni)

Zinc (Zn)

…and more

​

Continuous Emissions Monitors

www.ejnet.org/toxics/cems

What Monitoring?

Energy Justice Network and our Oregon-based member groups, Beyond Toxics and Clean Air Now Coalition won the passage of SB 488 in 2023, requiring the state’s only incinerator to continuously monitor dioxins/furans, PCBs, and nine toxic metals. This is one of the top reasons Reworld (Covanta) cited for their closure.

A 2024 study of moss downwind of the incinerator showed higher levels of toxic metals closer to the incinerator.

• Incinerators still require landfills for their toxic ash
• ~30 tons of ash produced for every 100 tons burned
• Ash leaches more readily, can blow off of trucks, and off of landfills where it’s often used as cover
• Ash testing is chemically rigged to be non-hazardous; inhalation/ingestion not considered

Incinerator Ash

Trash Incinerators & Environmental Racism

• 63% of the 62 commercial-scale trash incinerators still operating in the U.S. as of September 2025 sit in majority white communities, but…

​

• The largest incinerators are in more urban communities, causing the whole industry to be disproportionately impacting people of color

​

• 14 of 20 largest incinerators are located in communities of color

​

• Black people most disproportionately impacted

​

• Trash incinerators in communities of color are surrounded by 2.5 times as many people and are twice as large as those in majority white communities

Trash Incineration & Environmental Racism

www.energyjustice.net/incineration/ej

Who Lives Near Trash Incinerators?

Source: www.spatialjusticetest.org/test/14.html

Disadvantaged Communities (DACs)

www.nyserda.ny.gov/ny/Disadvantaged-Communities

Disadvantaged Communities (DACs)

Does this protect us??

Maybe…

The law protects against new air polluting facilities and solid waste facilities, but the NY Department of Environmental Conservation can still allow it if it finds the impacts minimal or finds that the facility is needed.

Most Expensive Way to Manage Waste

“Waste-to-energy is an additional capital cost.  That is not in dispute, compared to a landfill... compared to a landfill, which is a less capital-intense structure – it is more expensive.  If you had a landfill next to a waste-to-energy facility, then almost in every case, you would think the landfill is going to be cheaper.”

Ted Michaels, President, Energy Recovery Council, March 18, 2013 testimony before Washington, DC City Council

Most Expensive Way to Manage Waste

Source: National Solid Waste Management Association 2005 Tip Fee Survey, p4. www.environmentalistseveryday.org/docs/Tipping-Fee-Bulletin-2005.pdf

Most Expensive Way to Make Energy

Source: "Updated Capital Cost Estimates for Utility Scale Electricity Generating Plants," Energy Information Administration, April 2013, p.6, Table 1. Full report here: www.eia.gov/forecasts/capitalcost/pdf/updated_capcost.pdf

Incinerator Economics

• Capital Intensive (Expensive)

​

• Requires long-term monopoly contracts "Put-or-Pay" contracts including “put or pay” clauses that punish local governments if they recycle / compost

​

• Competes with zero waste AND energy alternatives
• Competes with wind and solar in Renewable Portfolio Standards*

​

• Economic incentives encourage burning more dangerous wastes (getting paid to take waste vs. paying for fuels)

​

• Can’t compete with cheap electricity. Steam sales more lucrative.

​

* Currently, trash incineration is only in direct competition with wind and solar in Maryland’s RPS law, but this affects many other states, and biomass incineration and landfill gas burning competes directly with wind and solar in most RPS laws.

Incinerators Burn Money

• Harrisburg, PA: incinerator primarily responsible for bankrupting Pennsylvania’s capital city
• Claremont, NH: 20-year “put-or-pay” contracts caused 29 towns to file for bankruptcy in 1993, which the court denied, requiring that taxes be raised to pay back the incinerator for waste the towns did not even produce
• Hudson Falls, NY and Lake County, FL: deep incinerator debt due to long-term contracts favorable to the industry
• Poughkeepsie, NY: incinerator fails to bring in enough revenue from tipping fees and electric sales to operate �without millions in annual subsidies from the county
• Detroit, MI: largest single creditor in city bankruptcy,�costing the city $1.2 billion in debt payments
• New Jersey’s five incinerators: $1.5 Billion state �bail out because they could not attract enough waste �to operate at capacity.

The private sector will NOT be funding this…

HOW TO WIN!

• LOCAL (easiest)
• Get Town of Thompson to pass a local law
• 3 of 5 local officials up for election this November:
• William Rieber, Jr. (Supervisor)
• John Pavese (Board member)
• Melinda Meddaugh (Board member)
• Can run as write-in candidates and take over town by January

​

• COUNTY
• Convince Sullivan County Legislature to�stop pursuing incineration

​

• STATE (hardest)
• Get DEC to determine that it’s an�unacceptable harm to a �disadvantaged community
• Get DEC to reject air & waste permits

Mike Ewall, Esq.�Founder & Director�215-436-9511

“The conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of all products, packaging, and materials, without burning them, and without discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.”

What is Zero Waste?

Source: Zero Waste International Alliance, www.zwia.org

Zero Waste means zero incineration and achieving 90% or greater diversion from landfills and other forms of destructive disposal.

​

The goal is to get as close to zero as possible, without getting caught up on the impossibility of actually hitting zero.

​

“Zero waste” is like “zero drug tolerance” or “zero accidents in the workplace” standards. Zero is the goal, and the right policies will get you as close as you can get.

If you’re not for Zero Waste, how much waste are you for?

Getting to Zero Waste

• Unit-based pricing – a.k.a. “Pay/Save as You Throw”
• reduces waste by 44% on average right away; most cost-effective strategy*
• Curbside composting collection
• Provide right-sized bins
• Deconstruction

San Francisco’s bin system:

64-gal blue recycling bin

32-gal green compost bin

16-gal black trash bin

Deconstruction Crew, Second Chance, Baltimore, MD.�Photo Credit: C. Seldman

* For good resources on unit-based pricing, see resources cited on pages 16-17 in the Beyond Incineration report. On deconstruction, see Reclamation Administration.

www.zwia.org/zwh

Zero Waste Hierarchy

• Rethink / Redesign
• Reduce
• Source Separate:
• Reusables
• Recycle (multi-stream)
• Compost
• Waste
• Research to see what is left, and encourage redesign
• Recovery: mechanically remove additional recyclables
• Anaerobically digest, then aerobically compost residuals
• Stabilized (digested) residuals to landfill

www.energyjustice.net/zerowaste

1. Direct landfilling�(bad, but better than incineration)
• leachate (toxics)
• air emissions (toxics, methane, odors)�
2. Incineration 🡪 toxic ash to landfill�(most polluting and expensive option)
• leachate (even more toxics)
• air emissions from ash blowing off site (toxics)
3. Anaerobic digestion 🡪 landfill�(best option; avoids gassy, stinky landfills)
• odor, leachate and air emissions highly minimized

The back end is still a landfill…

Results: MSW Reduction of 44% on Average

62

SMART / ‘Unit Based Pricing’ is a science. The data spans over decades across hundreds of municipalities with diverse demographics.

62

63

43%

(198,447 tons)

MSW

80%

(469,620 tons)

MSW

57%

(262,919 tons)

Expected Waste Shift from SMART (40 DEEP Dive Participants)

21%

Less Generation

Overall waste generation is expected to decrease by about 21% due to source reduction and reuse.

Prepared by WasteZero, Inc. for the CT Dept. of Energy & Environmental Protection, 2019

Why Local Ordinances?

• smaller level more easily influenced
• best in municipalities (esp. in New York!)
• keeps the fight where the community people power is
• keeps it political
• play by own rules
• inexpensive
• legal bills socialized

Clean Air Act and State/Local Government Authority

§ 7416. Retention of State authority

Except as otherwise provided in sections 119(c), (e), and (f) (as in effect before the date of the enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977), 209, 211(c)(4), and 233 (preempting certain State regulation of moving sources) nothing in this Act shall preclude or deny the right of any State or political subdivision thereof to adopt or enforce (1) any standard or limitation respecting emissions of air pollutants or (2) any requirement respecting control or abatement of air pollution; except that if an emission standard or limitation is in effect under an applicable implementation plan or under section 111 or 112, such State or political subdivision may not adopt or enforce any emission standard or limitation which is less stringent than the standard or limitation under such plan or section.

Clean Air Act and State/Local Government Authority

U.S. District Court, in Rhode Island Cogeneration Associates v. East Providence, 728 F. Supp. 828, 833 n.11 (1990):

[T]he congressional finding that state and local governments should have primary responsibility for controlling air pollution (42 U.S.C. § 7401(a)), is not a grant of power to local governments. Local governments are subordinate to the states; any grants of authority must come from the state legislatures, not from Congress. Thus, this Court does not need to examine the federal law for the purposes of this decision, and will concentrate on Rhode Island’s laws and regulations governing air pollution. If the state has preempted East Providence’s Ordinance, its validity cannot be saved by a grant of authority from Congress.

​

This unfortunate conclusion was reaffirmed in the 6th Circuit in 1993, when they stated that “nowhere does the CAA affirmatively grant local governments the independent power to regulate air pollution.”

• Southeastern Oakland County Resource Recovery Auth. v. City of Madison Heights, 5 F.3d 166, 169 (1993).

State-to-Local Air Pollution Savings Clauses

Green = Local laws allowed

Yellow = In-between (allowed only in certain areas or subject to state approval)

Red = Local laws preempted

Blue = Local air regulation programs allowed

State-to-Local�Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) Savings Clauses

Green = Local laws allowed

Yellow = In-between (allowed only in certain areas or subject to state approval)

Red = Local laws preempted

New York: Local Authority for Air Laws

New York’s Environmental Conservation Law § 19-0709, expressly authorizes local air pollution laws:

§ 19-0709. Local laws, ordinances and regulations.��Any local laws, ordinances or regulations of any governing body of a county, city, town or village which are not inconsistent with this article or with any code, rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this article shall not be superseded by it, and nothing in this article or in any code, rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this article shall preclude the right of any governing body of a county, city, town or village to adopt local laws, ordinances or regulations which are not inconsistent with this article or with any code, rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this article provided, however, that the exercise of such right by a county shall relate only to the area thereof outside any city, village or area of any town outside the village or villages therein during such time as such city, village or town has local laws, ordinances or regulations consistent with this article or with any code, rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this article. Any local laws, ordinances or regulations of a county, city, town or village which comply with at least the minimum applicable requirements set forth in any code, rule or regulation promulgated pursuant to this article shall be deemed consistent with this article or with any such code, rule or regulation.

New York: Local Authority for Waste Laws

New York’s Environmental Conservation Law § 27-0711, also expressly authorizes local waste laws:

​

§ 27-0711. Local laws, ordinances and regulations.��Any local laws, ordinances or regulations of any governing body of a county, city, town or village which are not inconsistent with this title or with any rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this title shall not be superseded by it, and nothing in this title or in any rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this title shall preclude the right of any governing body of a county, city, town or village to adopt local laws, ordinances or regulations which are not inconsistent with this title or with any rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this title provided, however, that the exercise of such right by a county shall relate only to the area thereof outside any city, village or area of any town outside the village or villages therein during such time as such city, village or town has local laws, ordinances or regulations consistent with this title or with any rule or regulation which shall be promulgated pursuant to this title. Any local laws, ordinances or regulations of a county, city, town or village which comply with at least the minimum applicable requirements set forth in any rule or regulation promulgated pursuant to this title shall be deemed consistent with this title or with any such rule or regulation.

2019: Clean Air Law passed in Town of Coeymans, NY: World’s Largest Cement Corporation Prohibited from Burning Waste or Biomass���2020: Albany Clean Air Law bans waste incineration county-wide

www.energyjustice.net/incineration/2022CEQletter.pdf

www.energyjustice.net/incineration/2022CEQletter.pdf

Specifically, we ask CEQ’s support for the following changes at EPA:

​

1. Bring all incinerators up to modern standards
2. Stop the promotion of burning trash as renewable energy or that trash incineration (and landfilling ash) is preferable to direct use of landfills
3. Close the loopholes
4. Improve disclosure (313 groups in support of April 2023 petition to EPA to make incinerators report to the Toxics Release Inventory)
5. Complete the long-abandoned dioxin reassessment
6. Protect local clean air laws
7. Regulate incinerator ash as hazardous waste and disallow its use as landfill cover material and other “beneficial” uses

Oct 2022: 274 Groups called on the White House…

www.wastedive.com/news/epa-waste-hierarchy-incineration-landfill-warm/634166/

www.energyjustice.net/trivictory/

https://www.epa.gov/smm/energy-recovery-combustion-municipal-solid-waste-msw#faq6

https://www.epa.gov/smm/sustainable-materials-management-non-hazardous-materials-and-waste-management-hierarchy

EPA’s Waste Management Hierarchy

Disclaimer as of�July 2022…��EPA is now in the process of reviewing the waste hierarchy to determine if potential changes should be made based on the latest available data and information.

Zero Waste is a Two-Track Process

1. End incineration and waste-to-fuels schemes as soon as possible

​

• Reduce waste, prioritizing highest and best use and the top parts of the Zero Waste Hierarchy

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#1 should never wait for #2 or incineration contracts get locked in or extended (perpetuating the worst harms) and often compete with Zero Waste solutions.

FALSE SOLUTIONS:�“Zero Waste to Landfill”

Fake “Zero Waste” promoted by…

​

• Industry:
• Disney
• Subaru
• General Motors
• Boeing
• U.S. Zero Waste �Business Council
• Canada’s National�Zero Waste Council

• Honda
• Toyota

FALSE SOLUTIONS:�Technologies

The solution is less about engineering and more about social engineering.�

These “new technologies” are false solutions:

​

• Pyrolysis / “biochar”
• Gasification
• Plasma arc
• Waste-to-fuels tech.
• Mixed waste�processing

Zero Waste Plan & Consultants

1. Build a strong anti-incineration movement that gets county legislators bought into it and, if possible, executive branch officials.
2. If getting money allocated in a county budget, make sure that the language is explicit about it being for a Zero Waste transition plan away from incineration. NOT just a “waste reduction plan” or “Zero Waste” plan that doesn’t touch disposal. Do not allow “zero waste with incineration” or “zero waste to landfill” approach.
3. Reference “internationally peer-reviewed definition of Zero Waste and the Zero Waste Hierarchy, as codified by the Zero Waste International Alliance.”
4. Be very not to mention other communities that aren’t what we want or where we want them to be. Local officials will call up other local officials and it can backfire.
5. Don't make the mistake of linking zero waste efforts to incinerator closure.
6. Get officials to understand the science showing that incineration (and landfilling ash) is far more harmful than landfilling waste directly, even if trucking waste hundreds of miles to a landfill. Get a life cycle analysis (LCA) done with specific language ensuring the correct model (not WARM), avoiding biogenic carbon neutrality flaws and looking at all pollutants, not just GHGs.

How to make dioxin

• Dioxins are created by burning hydrocarbons with chlorine in the presence of oxygen.
• Dioxin emissions increase when:
• More chlorine is in the fuel/waste stream
• Certain metal catalysts are present (Copper, Iron, Zinc…)
• The gases stay in a low temperature range�(200-450^o C)
• Much is formed on the ash as it cools.
• Carbon injection used to reduce dioxin �air emissions increases dioxins, but �transfers them to the ash.

Incinerator ash is toxic, but the U.S. EPA allows a special test that enables it to test as non-hazardous, saving the industry a lot of money

Incinerator Ash = Hazardous Waste

Despite Canada relying on the same test, Vancouver’s incinerator ash was found to be leaching toxic cadmium at levels about twice the province’s acceptable limits. They’ve had to ship the hazardous ash to a hazardous waste landfill in Alberta.

City of Chicago v. Environmental Defense Fund, 511 U.S. 328 (1994).

​

May 2, 1994: U.S. Supreme Court rules that incinerator ash which tests hazardous for toxic heavy metals such as lead and cadmium must be disposed of in hazardous waste landfills rather than in municipal solid waste landfills.

​

If incinerators were made to pay for the expense of disposing of their ash as hazardous waste, they'd be out of business overnight.

How Incinerator Ash Escapes being Hazardous Waste

1. Switching the test. EPA allowed the industry to switch from the EP Tox test to the TCLP test.
• EP Tox Test used to find fly ash hazardous 94% percent of the time, bottom ash 36% of the time, and combined ash 40% of the time
• Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) test uses different pH requirements that allow the test to be conducted at a neutral pH where lead doesn't leach out, saving the industry from a hazardous waste designation.  Lead and cadmium were the leading causes of ash failing the EP Tox test.
• Neither test looks at what’s in the ash. They look just at what leaches out under short-term pH-manipulated lab conditions.

How Incinerator Ash Escapes being Hazardous Waste

2) Mixing of fly ash and bottom ash prior to testing.

• Dilutes the toxicity of the fly ash.
• Lime injection in scrubbers (air pollution controls) makes the ash very basic (around pH 12), where lead will leach if tested with water, but the TCLP test uses acid to lower the pH just enough so that lead won't leach – but not to the fixed pH of 5 that the EP Tox test required, where lead leaches again.
• Mixing of the ash prior to testing enables the lime in the fly ash to also protect the bottom ash from failing the test.
• Most of the metals have a U-shaped solubility curve (so it leaches at high and low pH, but not so much in the middle, at a neutral pH). The test can make it look like certain metals won't leach out, though in real-life disposal conditions, over time, the shifting pH will cause it to leach.

How Incinerator Ash Escapes being Hazardous Waste

3) Allowing incinerators to store ash on-site for months so they can keep treating or diluting it until it passes the test.  Some incinerators have been known to send many ash samples to a lab until one passes, then they use the good results to report to the state.

• One trick used by incinerator operators to pass the TCLP test is to treat the fly ash with phosphoric acid prior to testing.  Phosphoric acid converts the soluble lead into the highly insoluble substance lead phosphate, fixing the lead in the ash long enough to pass the test. However, lead phosphate may not tie up lead indefinitely in the landfill, since phosphate is a nutrient for all living things, including microorganisms.

​

4) Incinerator ash only has to be tested 4 times a year. The waste stream is highly variable and ash composition can change frequently.

How Incinerator Ash Escapes being Hazardous Waste

• Fossil fuel displacement assumption
• 2/3rds of incinerators are subject to state Renewable Portfolio Standard laws that put incineration on par with renewables
• If these incinerators were not operating, utilities would be required to replace the power with another renewable electricity source, not fossil fuels
• Outdated fuel mix data

​

• Biogenic carbon assumptions
• Actual GHG emissions from trash incinerators are higher than landfills
• Carbon neutrality assumptions have been scientifically debunked as double-counting with climate models
• Fails to account for short-term vs. long-term impacts

​

• Model was never peer reviewed
• 15 versions, but never peer reviewed until 2023 after we requested it. Peer review process was flawed & inadequate.

Biases in EPA’s Waste Reduction Model (WARM)

Who Promotes Incineration?

The main waste incineration companies�(formerly named Covanta and Wheelabrator)

Their national & state trade associations (WTEA was formerly Institute for Resource Recovery 🡪 Integrated Waste Services Association 🡪 Energy Recovery Council)

Industry-funded academics�(Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council based in City College of New York & Columbia University)

Industry-funded�non-profit organizations

Engineering / consulting firms�(Some are members of trade associations & WTERT)

Delaware County, PA is home to the nation’s largest waste incinerator, in the City of Chester. It is the largest industrial air polluter in the county, and the county is now moving away from incineration.

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The county’s Zero Waste Plan includes a comprehensive life cycle analysis (LCA) of incineration vs. landfilling vs. zero waste.

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Find the draft plan here and the LCA summary and full writeup here.

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Results on the next few slides.

Delaware County municipalities pay around $83/ton to disposal of trash, but these externalized health and environmental costs are on top of that amount, paid in medical bills and consequences of climate change.

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Incinerating trash�and landfilling ash�is 2.3 times as�harmful as directly�landfilling trash.

Incineration vs. Landfilling

While the last chart looked at externalized health and environmental costs per ton, this looks at the entire impact of Delaware County’s waste system (all tons in a year), showing $104 million dollars of health and environmental costs per year.

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Adopting the Zero Waste Plan (ending incineration and reducing waste) cuts those harms by 85%, while the benefits (avoided harms) that already happen from current recycling efforts (about $400 million a year) would be doubled.

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Examples of these avoided harms are not needing to log or mine new raw materials because we’re now consuming less, reusing/repairing, recycling and composting.

Transportation Impacts Insignificant�Yellow lines show difference between hauling from two transfer stations 3 and 13 miles from the incinerator (last bar) vs. trucking all trash to landfill 60 miles away (first 3 bars)

Collection trucks from

homes to transfer stations (TS)

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Hauling from TS to disposal site

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Other health/enviro impacts

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Climate impacts

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NOTE: The last bar is the incinerator. The first three bars represent the same landfill with 70%, 30% and no landfill gas capture. A 75% gas capture rate is typically assumed at landfills with gas collection systems.