We have been reducing, reusing and recycling, but it just isn't enough. Americans produce 4.4 pounds of garbage per person per day, according to The New York Times, and we may have to raise the recycled, biodegradable white flag.
The United States is about to fire up the first new commercial garbage incinerator for the first time in 20 years. The West Palm Beach incinerator will convert 3,000 tons of rubbish per day into electricity for thousands of houses in Florida.
Move over, New Jersey - there is a new trash capital of the nation.
Incinerators like the $670 million trash burner about to open are common in Europe, and states like Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin are stroking their chins.
"People said 30 years ago there wouldn't be a need to have waste-to-energy sites," Ted Michaels, president of the Energy Recovery Council, told The New York Times.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified the facilities as renewable energy, so they have the same green light as solar power and wind energy, but is the heavy price tag on our health?
The new incinerators are cleaner than their forefathers, but environmental activists say mercury, lead, dioxins and other toxins will still be emitted.
A $1 million waste-to-energy plant is under construction in the Curtis Bay area of Maryland - an area that already ranks as one of the zip codes with the highest toxic emissions in the nation (21st spot out of 100, according to the EPA).
Curtis Bay already boasts a 200-acre coal pier, to a fertilizer plant, one of the largest medical waste incinerators in the U.S., chemical plants, fuel depots and an open air composting site, according to The New York Times.
Despite the current high rates of cancer and asthma, some Curtis Bay residents are excited about jobs that will be created by Energy Answers, plus $50,000 annual spending on job training, low-interest home loans and other promised perks. Also, Energy Answers will have to directly pay the community should emission standards be exceeded.
"We've been building plants around the world, so the technology is there," Larry A. Hiner, a manager with Babcock & Wilcox, the North Carolina-based company building the Florida plant, told The New York Times. "I think with education the public's perception of waste-to-energy will change. Time is on our side."
