WEBSITE: Municipal Waste Incineration
Paul Connett discusses Toxic Emissions at the 4th Annual International Waste to Energy Conference.

PDF: Public Health Association Takes Stand Against Incineration Of Solid Waste
This statement overviews a number of the still current concerns with incineration as a solid waste management practice.

PDF: City of Detroit Future Solid Waste Plan 2007
Task Force recommendations and proposal to close down their incinerator.

ANIMATION: The Story of Stuff
The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

PDF: Study of Carroll County, MD Waste Stream and Possible Improvements
May 2007 Sierra Club Presentation, Carroll County Environmental Advisory Council: "In Carroll County, it is estimated that 15% of residential waste is being recycled, while 17% of commercial waste is being recycled (for a total of 32%)." How might we do better?

PDF: Friends of Frederick County (FoFC) Letter to the BOCC
This letter of provides ideas, suggestions and information on possible waste options for Frederick County.

PDF: Solid Waste in Frederick 1969 to 2007
A presentation to the BOCC on the Frederick's solid waste history, including legislation, landfill, the Beck report, and past and pending decisions.

PDF: Frederick County's Solid Waste Disposal Charge
Since July 2006, Frederick County citizens have been charged a Systems Benefit Charge. The charge is meant to pay for a portion of the reasonably anticipated capital costs and operating costs for the disposal of solid waste.

WEBSITE: 10 Top Reasons to Recycle

WEBSITE: Fortune Magazine: The end of garbage
Cities and towns across the world - and a surprising number of companies - have adopted that goal.

PDF: Urban Ore Story
The story of Urban Ore, a recycling company in California operates and designs zero waste disposal facilities.

WEBSITE: SRI's Notes about Recycling Markets
An economic discssion of the market for recyclables over time.

PDF: Kaiser Permanente: Waste Management & Healthcare
This Kaiser Permanente statement supports recycling, reuse and the end of incineration.

PDF: The New Gold Rush: Mining the Plastic Market
An RW Beck article on the demand and long term stability of the plastic and polymers market.

PDF: Studies of Resource Recovery Parks
A Model for Local Government Recycling and Waste Reduction. Prepared by the California Integrated Waste Management Board.

PDF: Resourceful Coummunities: A Guide to Resource Recovery Centres in New Zealand
This extensive guide on the operations of resource recovery centers includes information on siting and financing from the ZeroWaste New Zealand Trust

PDF: Cool Waste Management
A State-of-the-Art Alternative to Incineration for Residual Municipal Waste. A report on Mechanical Biological Treatment by Greenpeace.

PDF: Planning A Zero Waste Community using Resource Recovery Parks
Richard Anthony sites and designs resource recovery parks (his rule: he will only design landfills with on-site resource recovery parks). He could be a great help in Frederick County.

WEBSITE: Resource Recovery Parks
This site overviews what a "resource recovery park" is, looks at 5 operating parks, discusses tips for replication, and challenges that may be faced.

WEBSITE: EPA - Jobs Through Recycling
EPA's over view of an overview of three types of eco-industrial parks: Resource Recovery Parks, Zero-Emission Parks, and Virtual Eco-Parks.

PDF: Resourceful Coummunities: A Guide to Resource Recovery Centres in New Zealand
This extensive guide on the operations of resource recovery centers includes information on siting and financing from the ZeroWaste New Zealand Trust

PDF: The Macarthur Resource Recovery Park
5 FAQ sheets on a large scale fully integrated municipal waste management site in Australia.

WEBSITE: Innovations: Analysis of Successful Waste Reduction Programs
Analysis and video of 24 successful recycling and waste reduction programs developed by local and regional jurisdictions to achieve California's 50 percent waste diversion goals.

PDF: Variable Rate or "Pay-As-You-Throw" Waste Management
How to go about establishing pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) programs

PDF: Planning for Pay As You Throw
A discussion of options, barriers, illegal dumping, revenues, administrative needs, and implementation.

PDF: Delaware Resource Management Study
A market-based analysis on options for recycling and managing solid wastes for the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. The analysis includes input from more than 75 interviews with diverse stakeholders, including business and government representatives, citizen and environmental groups, recycling and composting enterprises and materials brokers. The analysis includes alternatives and methods to increase recycling and composting and the economic impacts on small businesses and jobs in the state.

PDF: Hong Kong Study On How To Move Towards Zero Waste
This waste study proposal that could result in reducing disposal needs to approximately 7,000 tonnes per day by the year 2011. This represents a greater disposal reduction than the Hong Kong Government proposed in its "Waste Reduction Framework Plan." Furthermore, these reductions would be achieved without relying on incineration.

PDF: Burn or Bury? A Social Cost Comparison
This paper uses private and environmental cost data from the Netherlands to evaluate the social cost of two final waste disposal methods, landfilling versus incineration using waste-to-energy (WTE) plants.

PDF: Franchising A Solid Waste Collection System for Fredrick County, Maryland
This presentation was given in January 2007 on Frederick County's proposal for solid waste franchising.

WEBSITE: Central Vermont Solid Waste Disposal District
Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District helps its 22 member communities work towards Zero Waste.

WEBSITE: Central Vermont Solid Waste Plan
The Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District developed a new Solid Waste Implementation Plan (SWIP) to comply with the state of Vermont's new plan. The SWIP expresses the District's vision for this region and will guide all solid waste programming and planning for the foreseeable future.

WEBSITE: Model community recycling: Berlin, New Jersey
Berlin, NJ (5,629 pop.) recovered 57% of its waste (32.2% recycling, 24.4% composting, with a 95% rate of participation in a program characterized by mandatory source separation, weekly curbside pick-up, 24-hour voluntary drop off center and containers provided - all operated by the Department of Public Works.

WEBSITE: Model community: San Francisco
Currently recycling at a 69% rate and striving for 75%. Video explanation on home page of site.

WEBSITE: Model community: King County, WA
King County, Washington, boasts a 51% residential recycling rate and a 45% rate overall. In 1987 the public's opposition deterred the county from building four incinerators.

PDF: 2007 Solid Waste Export Plan: King County, WA
Current county policy rejects alternatives to waste export, including development of a new landfill in King County or incinerating the county's waste, and Council has directed the division to begin planning for waste export.

PDF: 2001 Solid Waste Plan: King County, WA
Current county policy rejects alternatives to waste export, including development of a new landfill in King County or incinerating the county's waste, and Council has directed the division to begin planning for waste export.

PDF: Model community recycling: Buncombe County, NC

WEBSITE: Ecologist Online : The Lethal Consequences of Breathing Fire
This 2007 article overviews the problems with burning garbage.

PDF: 5 Incinerator Myths
Some common myths surrounding municipal solid waste incineration.

PDF: The Burning Issues with Biomass
March, 2000 "Waste incineration is the worst category of biomass. Providing increased waste disposal capacity worsens the waste problem by lowering the costs associated with waste generation. It also destroys resources (some of which are best recycled or composted), and turns them into toxic ash and toxic air emissions."

PDF: Energy and Incineration Fact Sheet

PDF: Solid Waste Incineration and its Impact on Global Warming Fact Sheet
This fact sheet aims to clarify questions relating to traditional and newer disposal methods for municipal solid waste and their impact on climate change in terms of the release of greenhouse gases (GHGs).

PDF: Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology
explains why incinerators are an unsustainable and obsolete method for dealing with waste. Waste incineration is unreliable and produces a secondary waste stream more dangerous than the original. As an energy production method, it is inefficient and wasteful of resources. As an economic development tool, it is a catastrophe, which drains money out of local communities and creates scarce and often dangerous jobs.

PDF: Incineration is not Renewable Electricity
More than half of the state Renewable Electricity Standards exclude municipal waste combustion as a renewable source of energy.

PDF: Resources Up in Flames
The economic Pitfalls of Incineration versus a Zero Waste Approach in the Global South

WEBSITE: US: Waste Incinerators Making a Comeback
Discussion of the financial costs involved with incineration.

WEBSITE: Competition Between Recycling and Incineration

PDF: Montgomery Trash Shortage Could Lay Waste to Budget
This news article illustrates how Montgomery County and other counties have suffered financially right from the start with their WTE facilities--and how WTE clearly competes with recycling.

PDF: Montgomery Solid Waste Financial Disclosure

PDF: Montgomery Solid Waste Services

PDF: Understanding the Costs and Financial Risks of Solid Waste Incinerators

PDF: Detroit studies shutting incinerator

PDF: Covanta seeking to build trash port is trying new type of venture
With a history of bankruptcy and casinos is Covanta a bad financial risk?

PDF: Mercury in the Mid-Atlantic
Incinerators and power plants are the top 10 producers of mercury emissions in 2002. Montgomery County's incinerator is #8. The incinerator in Montgomery County is the same size as is being proposed in Frederick County, MD.

PDF: The Health Effects of Waste Incinerators
This December 2005 British Society for Ecological Medicine report examines the literature concerning the health effects of incinerators.

PDF: Ultrafine Particles The Deadliest Air Pollution Isn't Being Regulated or Even Measured
July 12, 2007 Environmental Research Foundation: For 20 years, scientific and medical studies have shown that the tiniest particles of airborne soot are by far the most dangerous ones. But the government has consistently refused to regulate or even measure these invisible killers. Now there is evidence that "stricter" government regulations are allowing the numbers of these particles to increase.

WEBSITE: Emission-Watch incinerator monitoring results
records the mass of particles below PM10, below PM2.5 and also below PM1.
Humans and animals are capable of resisting particles of greater size than PM 10µm. But vaporized substances can re-condense into very small ultra-fine particles, with sizes below PM10, such as PM2.5 and PM1, and these can be absorbed into the human body through the lung wall.

PDF: Origin and Health Impacts of Emissions of Toxic By-Products and Fine Particles from Combustion and Thermal Treatment of Hazardous Wastes and Materials
Cormier and Dellinger's technical paper which reviews the science of fine/ultrafine particles from mechanisms of formation in combustion processes through to mechanisms of mortality and morbidity following exposure.

WEBSITE: Municipal waste incineration: Toxic Emissions
Paul Connett discusses Toxic Emissions at the 4th Annual International Waste to Energy Conference.

PDF: Greenpeace Research on Incinerators and Human Health
Management of municipal and industrial waste is a growing problem throughout the world. In the European Union, while waste output is continually increasing, new regulations are imposing more stringent restrictions on the amount of waste permitted to go to landfill. At the same time, many incinerators have been closed over the past few years because of stricter regulations on their atmospheric emissions.

VIDEO: Leachate Incinerator Spews Volatile Organic Carcinogens

When flames burn about the top of Casella's leachate incinerator, it is a violation of the Operating Permit from New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. A flame burning above the stack indicates that the incinerator temperature is too cold to destroy the carcinogens contained in the volatile organic compounds along with the heavy metals suspended in the leachate that are alternatively released into the atmosphere.

WEBSITE: Greenpeace discusses the problems of modern incineration
"Burning was once considered the most effective method for disposing of waste materials. However, since industrialization the nature of waste has changed dramatically. Mass production of chemicals and plastics means that burning or incinerating today's waste is a complex, costly and highly polluting method of disposal."

WEBSITE: Over 60% of PVC Packaging Violates Laws in 19 States
June 2007: Elevated Levels of Toxic Lead and Cadmium Commonly Found in PVC Packaging

PDF: Can Chemicals Emitted by A Modern Incinerator Damage Health?
October 2003; The report identifies studies that show the linkages of built up incinerator toxins on health in communities hosting incinerator facilities.

PDF: Fact Sheet on Pollution from Solid Waste Incineration

PDF: Health and Environmental Effects of Landfilling and Incineration of Waste
A Literature Review published by the Health Research Board Dublin, Ireland

PDF: Dioxins in Solid Waste Incinerator Ash
The following paper attempts to describe the current knowledge on PCDD/F (dioxins) and related compounds in bottom, boiler and filter ashes from the combustion of municipal solid waste in grate systems.
Concluding that boiler and filter ashes carry much higher loads of low volatile halogenated organic compounds. Only the level of PAH seems to be lower than that in bottom ashes. The safe final disposal of such materials is difficult and expensive and a treatment to destroy the organics is recommended.

PDF: Dioxin Fallout in the Great Lakes
Center for Biology of Natural Systems, CUNY, published this 57 page summary on how dioxins, primarily from solid waste incinerators, affect our environment.

PDF: Byker Ash Bottom Ash and Filter Ash Overview
2000 tons of mixed ash were before spread across the city.

PDF: Byker Ash Public Cover-up
An article about the lawsuit on the government's silence when they found out about the toxic ash.

PDF: Unintentional fire at Covanta's SEMASS trash burner this summer 2007.
Press articles covering the April 2007 explosion at the SEMASS WTE incinerator in Massachusetts. It was determined that the explosion was caused by a person accidentally throwing out a propane tank.

PDF: Montgomery County Ethics Decision
Arthur G. Balmer, Chief of the Montgomery County Solid Waste Services Division, seeks a waiver of this prohibition in order to pursue post-County employment with any of the following three major waste-to-energy companies or their subsidiaries: Covanta Holding Corporation (with 31 facilities), Waste Management, Inc. (with 17 facilities), and Veolia Environment (with 7 facilities).

WEBSITE: Detroit
Detroit is set to close down the country's largest incinerator and save themselves from pollution and financial debt.

WEBSITE: Michigan closes incinerator
Michigan's 25-year flirtation with incineration as a means of solid waste disposal has cost hundreds of millions more in taxpayer dollars than originally expected, stirred public indignation over the spewing of mercury, cadmium, dioxins and other toxic substances into air and water, and contributed little to solving the state's waste problems.

WEBSITE: Washington State and Massachusetts cities find themselves trapped
(excerpt from article): "By all indications, the economic deterioration of waste-to-energy is intensifying. For instance, the 23 towns using Wheelabrator's waste-to-energy incinerator outside Boston in North Andover, Mass., currently pay a $95 per ton tipping fee, twice the state disposal average. But that cost is expected to double - quadrupling the market rate - over the next eight years as the facility is retrofitted with expensive pollution control technology to meet new federal Clean Air Act regulations."

VIDEO: Harrisburg Incinerator Debt

January 24, 2007. Harrisburg County Commissioners discuss the possibility of a bankruptcy scenario for the city of Harrisburg, relating to debt incurred by the Harrisburg Authority, and guaranteed by the city of Harrisburg.

WEBSITE: Gambrills, MD drinking water poisoned by fly ash and Constellation's maleficence.