Contracts for Burning Trash in Incinerators Should Not be Awarded

There is no good business case for trash incineration. Burning trash is the most expensive form of electricity generation, creates pollution that raises health costs to the public, destroys valuable resources, and produces the fewer jobs than comparable capital projects. The trash incineration industry markets themselves as “energy from waste” or “waste-to-energy” as if they’re primarily power plants, buy no one builds trash incinerators to produce energy. They are primarily waste disposal facilities with energy generation as a “secondary function,” as the industry has admitted on the record Incineration is the most expensive way to produce electricity. It increases health care costs for people and is not an efficient producer of jobs.