Enviroparks wins Planning Permission

I'm pleased to see that Enviroparks have been granted planning permission for their proposed waste treatment and energy plant in Hirwaun.

     £120m waste energy park for Rhondda approved

I wrote an article in March explaining why I thought this was a much better way of dealing with waste than any other process currently available. It's too long to repeat here, but this is a short extract which explains the basic technology:

The process is multifaceted, but involves recycling, the separation of food and non-food waste with food waste going to an anaerobic digester to produce gas to be used as fuel, the plasma gasification (as opposed to incineration) of other waste to again produce gas, and burning the gas from both sources to produce electricity. This animation shows how these processes work together:

The crucial difference between this and incineration is that burning the gas is clean, whereas burning waste directly gives rise to high emissions of dioxins, nitrous oxide, toxic metals and particulates. The plasma arc breaks these down into individual atomic elements.

The Wiki article is here, including a list of projects planned or already operational. Enviroparks own website is here.

Enviroparks ... a better way to deal with waste, 5 March 2010

There was quite a lively discussion in the comments section of the original post. But the way I see it, it is only by embracing this sort of technology that we can avoid the much more damaging effects of waste incineration to both the environment and public health.