Emerging Waste-to-Energy Technologies: Solid Waste Solution or Dead End?

Incineration is a dirty word in the United States, at least where trash is involved. We’ve been burning municipal solid waste (MSW) since the 1880s. But the dawning of the environmental movement eight decades later cast new light on the nitrous oxides, dioxins, and other chemicals emitted from as many as 600 massburn incinerators nationwide, which meanwhile had also grown in size. 2 The ecological merits of resource conservation and recycling became another area of growing interest.