The average European produces around 300 kilograms of waste annually. We often throw away objects that can be recycled or used to produce electricity and heat. Instead of going to landfill, they could go to a plant, where they are burned in strictly controlled conditions - as in Białystok. This process has nothing to do with burning rubbish in a household stove. Garbage is sorted and those that are suitable are burned in special chambers using modern burners, plasma and microwave technologies. The emitted gases are purified so that they are as little harmful as possible, and ashes and slag are used e.g. for road construction.
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In addition to landfill sites, where rubbish is collected, huge amounts of it are also diverted to the oceans via illegal routes, creating drifting "islands". This is a real ecological disaster. Are there any alternatives, then, to reduce the size of the problem? Firstly, we can live more consciously and try to generate less waste. Nevertheless, we will not succeed in reducing it to zero. Some people are trying to incinerate waste in domestic boilers - damaging the environment enormously. The highly toxic products of such waste incineration end up in the atmosphere, degrade the environment and poison us when we breathe in fumes from domestic boiler rooms. The penalties for this are very high.
Why, then, are waste incineration plants called ecological solutions? How is it possible that they are located close to large cities (and sometimes even in their centres, such as in Vienna) and do not cause problems with the unpleasant smell of smoke and ash?
The secret lies in strictly controlled parameters of the incineration process of properly sorted waste. Not everything is suitable for incineration. Garbage is sorted at the outset, separating non-flammable elements from those that are suitable for other processing. The rest is burned in special combustion chambers of boilers, using modern burners, plasma and microwave technologies. All this in order to burn waste as efficiently as possible. Combustion products are being purified more and more effectively so that the emitted gases are as little harmful as possible and the remaining ashes and slag can be used e.g. in road construction.
Waste incineration plants are not a panacea for the waste problem, but in addition to recycling and composting, they complement the possibilities of waste management. An additional advantage is the fact that it is possible to recover from them a lot of heat energy used to produce electricity or heat houses.