Unless you pay for the services of The South Side Landfill,
the Harding Street Incinerator
is the only option for municipal solid waste removal for the city of Indianapolis. Also known as The Indianapolis Resource Recovery Facility, the incinerator is managed by Covanta Indianapolis, Inc. As one of the largest incinerators in the nation, the facility processes 2,175 tons of solid waste per day, which in turn produces 4,500 pounds of steam. Citizens Thermal Energy (CTE) purchases around 70 percent of the steam to power 40 percent of the downtown heating loop. The heating loop is made up of almost all of downtown Indy’s businesses and institutions, including IUPUI and Eli Lilly (Covanta Energy 2012).
It is understandable that Indianapolis-Marion County would support this form of waste management given its win-win, short-term benefits of ridding almost all citywide waste and ostensibly powering its urban center with “renewable energy.” Unfortunately, that steam energy is not renewable in the traditional sense. It might lessen the city’s dependence on fossil fuels to provide electricity to the downtown area, though incineration is accompanied by its own set of harmful emissions: carbon monoxide, sulfur and nitrogen dioxides, dioxin, and metal. Its operations even produce CO2 emissions. The copious amounts of ash residue that is produced by these facilities still end up in landfills. Incineration or the euphemized “recovery” of energy is a seemingly better choice than completely fostering landfills, but it is evil (to sustainability) nonetheless.
Indianapolis currently does not have a sustainable countywide waste management system for municipal solid waste. Residents who opt out of composting at home throw food scraps and other biodegradable matter into the garbage and is burned on the side of State Road 37. While the Office of Sustainability
only promotes non-mandated curbside recycling
and periodic toxic product drop-off services
and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM)
lawfully prohibits throwing away yard waste, there is no municipal or state effort to promote the broader possibilities of composting.
Considering that waste management is largely a municipal function, could it be that a publicly sponsored composting effort would counter the interests of Covanta Indianapolis, Inc. and the entire downtown region? Or is the city just behind the times of sustainable waste management? It is likely that the city could fall under both categories given that general recycling is not publicly mandated. If Indianapolis-Marion County adopted a policy similar to Bloomington’s recycling ordinance
or Ann Arbor’s compost curbside pickup,
it would likely lessen the amount of waste needed to produce adequate electricity for downtown.
The video below gives a snapshot of how the facility operates and the supposed benefits of trash incineration:
Indianapolis is missing out on an opportunity to better the city’s air and natural environment by implementing some of the recycling and composting regulatory tools outlined by Roseland. Many European cities that previously depended on incinerators to manage waste have chose to instead invest in new recycling and composting facilities. Perhaps Indianapolis might someday find a window of opportunity to close the expensive incinerator and rather provide city sponsored curbside recycling and composting? Recycling has been proved to be three to six times more energy efficient than incineration (Girardet 1999). Composting makes use of what many regard as waste. Both of these efforts can narrow the cycle of production and consumption. The questions are whether the city is willing to make the decision, and whether an alliance of citizens is willing to demand it.
Lyle, John T. (1994). Waste as a Resource. Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development.
Girardet, Herbert. (1999). The Metabolism of Cities. Creating Sustainable Cities.
http://www.covantaenergy.com/facilities/facility-by-location/indianapolis/about.aspx
Very interesting. I would love to see a comparative analysis of emissions from the incinerator vs the similar amount of coal or gas needed to power the downtown. It seems to me like the kind of thinking that inspires the reuse of incineration steam is basically in the right direction, but only if it could be redirected in creating energy loops with a much lower environmental footprint and similar creative technology.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that the video mentions some of the material survives incineration, and only talks about how a select portion of that material can be recycled (aluminum). Not mentioning where the ash residue goes, or its environmental impact, seems like a pretty large omission. Covanta probably doesn't want to get into that though. I would love to see the same video but from an environmentalist perspective.
ReplyDeleteAddison, thanks for sharing as I did not know much about what our capital does with its waste. At least from what I could tell (in a very brief browse of) the City of Indy's websites, there is no mention of service/pick-up fees for curbside trash collection. Yet when you visit the recycling page (which has a lot less information compared to the trash page) there is an immediate mention of a $6/month curbside recycling pick up fee and some type of registration required. This (again, VERY brief) look at what the City of Indianapolis is doing, appears completely backwards. It appears they are giving incentives for throwing away trash (and lack any pay-as-you-throw program) and creating barriers for those who want to recycle. Unless, that is exactly what they want, more fuel for the incinerator... A shame for the 12th most populated US city.
ReplyDeleteAs an Indianapolis native myself (well Greenwood, but close enough), I always wondered what that big building with the large billowing plume of steam was. I come really close to the facility on my way home from Bloomington. The steam can be seen from miles away. I also know several people that live within a few miles from the incinerator, which makes me wonder about the health effects of the emissions on nearby residences. Since Indianapolis has been trying to become more sustainable lately (particularly with the addition of more bike lanes), perhaps composting may become a topic of interest as other sustainable practices become more visible throughout the city. At least we can hope.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, Addison. Unfortunately, I could not find an emissions report for the Harding Street facility using the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory or NPR's Poisoned Place Map, although it's surrounded by some real doozies:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2011/10/toxic-air/#12.00/39.7419/-86.1439
As expected, Covanta's website is useless in terms of data and full of pictures of grass and fluffy clouds:
http://www.covantaenergy.com/what-we-do/sustainability/environmental-overview/environmental-policy.aspx
The Indy facility did, however, participate in the EPA’s National Environmental Performance Track, a voluntary compliance measurement program.
Some blurbs I found from their 2009/2010 Corporate Sustainability Report:
http://www.covantaenergy.com/pdf/Covanta_CSR.pdf
Page 16 addresses the fact that "some stakeholders have expressed concern that EfW hinders recycling from two perspectives..."
"In Europe and other locations outside the United States, bottom ash is reused in civil projects such as road construction or fabrication of blocks. Currently in the United States, however, approximately one-third of combined ash is used as landfill cover in lieu of soil or synthetic materials; the rest is sent for co-landfilling with MSW or to a monofill (a landfill containing only combined ash)." (Page 17)
"Covanta’s net GHG emissions for operation of EfW in the United States for 2009 were approximately a negative 17 million tons." (Page 24) - but they're counting emissions from electricity that would have had to be created in place of its EfW operations.
"Facilities operate below emission limits" (Page 25)
An important point to note is that in order for these incinerator plants to maintain operations they must have a constant inflow of waste. These people’s jobs depend on large amounts of waste production. This is not sustainable!
ReplyDeleteIt’s nice to see that the plant is at least creating some useful energy. It’s always interesting to think about whether the inputs yield a greater return. In other words, does burning the trash result in a greater energy output? And the answer in this case is probably not. Not only is the plant not producing enough energy output units but they are using resources to power the plant itself while creating solid and gaseous pollutants, some of which are hazardous/toxic.
I love how the video starts out by greenwashing. “For every ton of waste burned Covanta eliminates the need for a barrel of oil or 500 lbs of coal.” But they fail to mention what resources and how much of those resources are utilized to run the facility and what harmful byproducts are created and how their operations negatively affect the environment or nearby residents. When they say they “inspect” the waste, what does that mean? To what degree do they execute presorting? And how efficient are they at extracting recyclables or hazardous waste? What are they doing with the metals that are not combusted? You need to trust but verify. Because a company says they are doing something doesn’t mean they are. One must verify that they are doing what they say they are doing.
Despite being from Indianapolis, I did not know that my trash is incinerated. You're right, Addison: this is a disguised evil. It may be more beneficial to keep solid waste out of a landfill, but the CO2 emissions are definitely not a good thing. Only recently did Hamilton County, where both my mom and dad live, institute a recycling program. We are WAY behind the times. Many cities have composting programs as well as recycling ones.
ReplyDeleteI've been to that South Side Landfill. It was awful. Just awful. The smell almost made me pass out, the staff was careless and frankly ignorant (although they did say that styrofoam never degrades so they charge more for it). Having that experience, I have to say I like the idea of an incinerator. But, why not shoot for an even better waste management program and catch up with the times? Consumers have to start demanding this action.
I like how you frame this issue in your title, because barring some huge changes in design/production/consumption norms, even if we implement the best recycling and composting systems we will still have some things that we need to throw away. So how do we choose which waste management technique is the 'lesser evil'? This got me thinking about which metrics are appropriate to determine what is best--emissions, air/water contamination, energy production, land use... The different techniques (landfill, incineration, and the newer technology of gasification-pyrolysis) measure up differently depending on which metrics are emphasized. For an example, look at this life cycle analysis conducted on the three technologies. http://unisouthafr.academia.edu/AtiqUZaman/Papers/152193/Comparative_study_of_municipal_solid_waste_treatment_technologies_using_life_cycle_assessment_method
ReplyDeleteBasically, this just reinforces to me the wisdom of Bill McDonough when he said we need to start with values and principles, and appropriate metrics will follow.
Interesting video! It's sad to see how people are content and even boast about choosing a "better option" as compared to landfills, and at the same time are not really helping the environment. I believe that curbside composting should be implemented in cities to atleast encourage people to use the composting systems, as we should be moving to a more sustainable future.
ReplyDeleteTo Calley's point above, I likewise think it's constructive to point out that something is better than nothing. But of course, is that something more or less harmful than the nothing? I brought this up on another post last week about bottled water consumption trends and is it really all that bad that folks are switching from soda to bottled water? At least they are not buying soda. I digress. Back to Waste Management however, they do understand the atmospheric and emissions effects and have some useful insights here: http://www.wm.com/sustainability/innovative-projects.jsp. I am guessing to SPEA students, this might be elementary, but glad it's on a trusted source in the public domain. Lastly, in Ghana last year, I noticed that everyone burned their trash. As a result, not as much trash on the ground, but incredible health side effects and poor air quality.
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