Activists question need for incinerators

The eagerness of the government to burn garbage as a solution to the shortage of landfill sites has left it with an unusual problem: there is not enough garbage to burn.

According to the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), by the time 36 new incinerators have been completed in 2003, about 90 percent of the garbage generated in Taiwan will be burnt.

Anti-incinerator activists, however, say that the proliferation of recycling programs has resulted in a dramatic drop in in the amount of waste generated in recent years, making the policy of building so many incinerators absurd.

The Green Citizens' Action Alliance says that by 2003, Taiwan will have incinerators capable of burning 30,400 tonnes of household waste per day. However, last year the country generated only 21,000 tonnes of waste per day.

"The amount of waste generated in Taiwan is still in decline due to the promotion of recycling. So, what are we going to burn?" said Chen Jian-zhi (陳建志), director of the waste policy committee of the alliance.

The success of the EPA's recycling program means that 7.3 percent of household waste was recycled this year, up from 5.1 percent last year.

Until the 1990s, landfills were the usual destination for garbage. By the end of 1993, 90 percent of household waste was dumped in landfills.

Small and densely populated, Taiwan quickly ran out of landfill sites to dump garbage. By the mid-1990s, large waste incinerators in urban areas began operation to take the pressure off landfills.

But by the end of 1998, 75.3 percent of waste was still sent to landfills, while 19.6 percentage was burnt. Another 5.1 percent was disposed of in other ways, such as outdoor burning and dumping.

So the EPA set a target of burning 90 percent of waste by 2003, and started construction of public and private incinerators to meet that goal. If it succeeds, Taiwan will burn proportionately more garbage than any other country.

At a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan last week, Chen said that the country has unnecessarily been building waste incinerators everywhere.

He offered the example of an incinerator which is planned for Linnei township (林內鄉), Yunlin County, which will be able to burn 600 tonnes of waste a day.

Chen argued that the EPA's own statistics imply that the county doesn't need the incinerator. Chen said the entire county generated only 647 tonnes of waste per day last year, down from 762 tonnes per day the previous year.

"In the future, as more and more waste is recycled, the amount of waste will drop dramatically," Chen said.

Chang Tsui-ping (張翠屏), head of the Self-help Association of Wutu village (烏塗村) in Linnei township, told the Taipei Times that she had organized 300 families to recycle waste to show that they don't need an incinerator.

"In our village, more than 30 percent of the waste can be recycled," Chang said.

The recycling rate in Wutu is much higher than the national average, where the recycling rate rose to 4.8 percent last year from 0.6 percent in 1998.

Many residents of Linnei township believe that the planned incinerator will pollute their water supply because the proposed incinerator is just 1.8km from an area earmarked for a new water-treatment plant.

Changhua County faces the same problem. Residents near the site of the planned Changpei waste incinerator, which would have the capacity to treat 800 tonnes of household waste a day, fear it will pollute cattle and dairy farms 1.5km away and say the waste produced in the area does not justify an incinerator.