Residual waste //
Residual waste – a differing point of view By Sam Bateman THERE have been a few pieces in Inside Waste in the last year, which continue the rent seeking tradition of the alternatives to landfill in Australia. Mike Ritchie’s critique on the basis of carbon storage is typical. Of course, landfill remains as the only waste disposal option that actually stores carbon. But reading Marc Stammbach’s piece in the current edition of Inside Waste really takes the cake. He starts with a grab bag of information from various sources and concludes that continuing landfilling of organic waste will make the commitment to net zero by 2050 doomed to failure because of fugitive landfill methane emissions. He doesn’t mention that cattle and LNG development are the really serious
The carbon dioxide emitted by landfills is short-cycle biogenic carbon dioxide.
emitters of fugitive methane. Proponents of incinerator technology like to take a view on landfill based on the lowest average performance they can find from various data sources. This is ridiculous and I’m sure Marc
would not like the performance of his company’s MSW incinerators judged on some database of industry averages. The performance of the landfill you seek to replace with an incinerator must be used instead.
Landfills are all different and so is the performance. The overall methane emissions of a landfill have been managed to such a low level that the carbon storage inherent in burying organic waste in an anaerobic environment leads to a net carbon sink. Rapid cell construction, early gas collection, electricity generation and methane oxidation in the final cap can all be realistically managed to achieve this, as I have proven by direct measurements at the Wollert Landfill over 10 years ago. How will Marc manage the waste inputs to his MSW incinerator so that plastics that contain fossil carbon are not burned and greenhouse CO2 released? How will he manage the Incinerator Bottom Ash that is 25 per cent of the waste input and will contain levels of heavy metals that
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