The Dirty Truth about China’s Incinerators (Excerpt)

AuthorJosh Rudolph

A heated debate burns around the topic of waste incineration, the flames of which are stoked when the practice turns mountains of trash into usable energy through a toxic transformation. An article from China Dialogue outlines the practice and politics of garbage-incineration and the use of waste-to-energy technology in China, and how it will continue through the 12th five-year-plan:

Most of China’s garbage meets with one of three fates: around half is placed in landfill, 12% is burned and a little under 10% is used for fertiliser. The rest is mostly left untreated, much of it simply dumped. However, plants that burn waste – and in the process generate electricity –are on their way to playing a significant role in the disposal of Chinese refuse.

[...]China is set to increase its daily waste-processing capacity by 400,000 tons over that five-year period. New investment of 140 billion yuan (US$22 billion) will be pumped into the sector, bringing total spending on waste-disposal to 260 billion yuan (US$41 billion).
[...]Evidently, China is gearing up for a Great Leap Forward in garbage incineration.
The path China has chosen will not be smooth. Local governments find themselves squeezed between mountains of rubbish piled around their cities on one side, and residents’ objections to incinerators on the other.
Xie Yong was the plaintiff in China’s first health-related lawsuit against a waste-to-energy incinerator. While pregnant with their son Yongkang, Xie and his wife lived very close to an incinerator. After his birth, doctors diagnosed Yongkang with cerebral palsy, and determined environmental factors to be the cause. Thus began Xie’s long climb up China’s legal hierarchy. A brief from the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, a Chinese NGO, provides details of the case from inside the local courtroom after introducing the Xie family, their situation, and their neighborhood incinerator:
The Hai’an incinerator began test operating in June, 2006, and at the time it was the only incinerator in the vicinity of Nantong city. A total of $4,360,000 was invested in the project, which incinerated over 100 tons of garbage per day. It was owned by Saite Environmental Protection Enterprises Co., Ltd. of Hai’an county (later Tianying Saite Environmentally Friendly Energy Group of Jiangsu province).
Xie Yong calculated roughly that at all times during his wife’s pregnancy, the incinerator was in operation and at a distance of only 190 meters. He...

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