To the editors:
Under Alternative II, which represents the CRC proposal somewhat, the city will gradually phase out existing capacity (at Northwest) with no consideration given to expanding incinerator capacity. Only under Alternative III is waste incineration proposed as a principal means of waste disposal or as “a major option for Chicago.” And should co-collection turn into no more than a failed experiment, it hardly follows that building new incinerators is the only alternative. The city could select Alternative II or perhaps try collecting blue-bagged recyclables without the trash, using only compactor trucks. Results from demonstrations of the latter technique in Concord, New Hampshire; Madison, Wisconsin; and Pittsburgh have so far been positive–with high rates of bag recovery and minimal contamination from broken glass. In any event, because of severe problems involving siting, permitting, community support, and enormous capital costs, it is unlikely that any major city in the U.S., including Chicago, will even consider developing new incinerator capacity in the near future.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Finally, Moberg’s emphasis on the importance of quality is misplaced. The real issue for the next decade is oversupply. Why? Because, at some point, the quantity of collected post-consumer materials will reach a level where it will not make much difference how pristine one’s recyclables are. There will simply be too much of the stuff for end users to absorb, regardless of quality. The solution must lie in efforts by government, industry, and recycling activists like CRC to increase end users’ (i.e., paper mills, plastic resin and glass container manufacturers, etc) capacity to use secondary materials. This may mean using a combination of financial incentives, recycled content laws, procurement policies, or other techniques yet to be devised.
David Moberg replies:
(5) I clearly stated that the city plans to both sort the recyclables retrieved from the blue bags and pick through the waste stream for any salvageable materials (mixed-waste processing). But even the best mixed-waste-processing systems retrieve only about one-fourth of the waste stream, much of it of such low value that it is used only as landfill cover. Mixed-waste processing has been used in Europe to prepare waste for incinerators.
Melvin’s assumption that cocollection is cheaper is in doubt. But even if it were a bargain, without a market for the contaminated recyclable material, Chicago won’t get a good deal on storing and disposing the oversupply. Instead, the city will pay twice–first to collect and process the unusable recyclables, then to pay the MRRF operator to dump that material in a landfill (while counting the dumped materials as “recycled”). That would hardly be good management. It would be a very expensive fraud.
