On burning trash

On burning trash

08 Jan 2007

Got questions about the environment? Ask Umbra.

Dear Umbra,

We recycle and compost as best we can, but we are still left every week with some trash. Up to this point we've dutifully hauled it to the local dump, which then trucks it away to some landfill. My husband has recently discovered that, since we live outside of city limits, we are able to burn our trash. Thus my question -- between a landfill and burning, which is the lesser of two evils?

Lynn Titche
Bedford, Ind.

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Dearest Lynn,

The landfill. Burning is fairly evil, and has the added disincentive of being illegal in many places. It probably seems enticing because landfills are run by suspected pollutocrats such as corporations and the government, whereas we upstanding citizens can do our own burning. There's something about doing it yourself that makes it seem better for the environment. Sadly, this is yet another case (see: car wash) in which DIY is worse. While composting is a great DIY trash-disposal technique, burning is quite bad for air quality and the health of cute plants and animals, not to mention humans. Just like commercial car washes, I'm afraid commercial disposal companies are better equipped than we to mitigate the troubles with burning.

Friends don't let friends burn trash.

Photo: iStockphoto

Unlike industrial arsonists, we homeowners are not capable of making a backyard pile, or a burn barrel, or a wood stove, for that matter, hot enough to burn cleanly with the simple technology available to us at home. Neither do we have smokestack scrubbers or secondary incinerators or the other bits that make commercial incinerators cleaner. Often we light fires and then go about our merry way, leaving them to smolder dirtily. In so doing, we release an exciting variety of natural and industrial chemicals that are harmful to our health and the natural environment.

Dioxin, for example, is released and created when household trash is burned, even if all PVC plastic is removed. The U.S. EPA claims backyard burning as the No. 1 quantified source of dioxin release. Remember, dioxins are persistent, bioaccumulative, toxic pollutants that move up the food chain, then mess up our cells and give us brain and reproductive problems. I suppose a positive way to look at backyard burning would be as our own bioaccumulation experiment. Will the dioxins that land nearby eventually be ingested by our children? Only time will tell.

The other toxics often produced in a typical burn barrel are that same old boring list of vile nastiness: furans, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, carcinogenic hydrocarbons, smog-forming volatile organic compounds, arsenic, chromium, particulate matter, and so forth. Your backyard pile may produce more harmful chemicals than an entire commercial incinerator, according to one study. The kicker is that all these compounds, produced in one's very own backyard, are fantastically close to one's body, because the smoke is at ground level. It turns out to be an easy one-two method of poisoning oneself and one's entire neighborhood, causing lung problems and headaches for the whole family.

For these reasons and many more, the EPA and all its minions do not recommend burning your own trash. Given how dire burning appears to be, I think the EPA could work a little harder on burn-barrel education -- some of this is news to me, and it sounds like it will be news to you. We'll have to spread the word. By the way, don't make your own home landfill either. Just continue to dispose of as little as you can, and go with the large commercial company that tries to minimize the trash problem you create. And continue on with the good work of reducing your garbage output from the start.

Furanly,
Umbra

Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Please send Umbra any nagging question pertaining to the environment -- but first check out her FAQs!

The claims made in this column may not reflect the views of this magazine. Neither the magazine nor the author guarantees that any advice contained in this column is wise or safe. Please use this column at your own risk.

Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.

Comments: (7 comments)

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What is trash?

It might help if 'trash' was broken down into categories. Obviously there is a difference between burning empty cereal boxes and plastic milk jugs. It may well be that both are bad, but it might help if the people who are going to burn anyway could at least remove the most nasty combustibles.

In other words, for those will burn trash, what can they do to reduce the pollution?

by Pandu at 12:12 PM on 08 Jan 2007

Trash Discernment

Yeah, I think it would be helpful to categorize the types of trash. Here in our part of Japan, we have to divide our trash into a number of categories, one of which is "combustible," which is supposed to be composed mostly of food scraps and wood, small bits of paper (as most paper is recycled), that kind of thing. We don't burn it ourselves, though. I'd like to have a better understanding of what might be okay to burn and what definitely wouldn't (well--I know it's bad to burn any kind of plastic, but it's other things I'm not so sure about). I'm also curious about beach bonfires, where people seem blissfully unaware of what they throw on the wood to keep the fire burning.

by dianeinjapan at 5:29 PM on 08 Jan 2007

Fireologic dementia / coprophagia

A characteristic of Homo S Sapiens is that he lives in symbiosis with fire. A characteristic of the Late Homo S Sapiens is that he doesn´t have any clue of real (open) fire any more, for the many fires he uses are hidden in black boxes. This is one aspect of civilization dementia. Sometimes they sit at smoldering logs, call that a camp fire, happily inhale the smoke, and happily forbid you to have a cigarette there. I´ve seen dudes carrying "paper" (i.e. sheet stained with industrial waste) out in to the wild, to use it for lighting their stinky campfire. Before they barbecue their würstels, the plastic wrap needs to be burned, of course. This is coprophagia (eating shit), a typical symptom of dementia.

So, dear Homo S Sapiens, please forget about lighting open fires, unless you intend to use your brain. Yet, even if you manage to you refrain from insulting our species at the open fire, it is not so easy to avoid coprophagia: Seen as a whole, i.e. as species-in-ecosystem, the major business of the Late Homo S Sapiens is eating/feeding shit - the shit produced by the ecosystem over millions of years and dumped as hydrocarbons.

by 314159265 at 9:09 AM on 09 Jan 2007

Burning of trash in Indiana

It is illegal to burn trash in Indiana no matter where you live in the state.

by Snave at 9:42 AM on 09 Jan 2007

Burning Yard Waste

Umbra's comments seemed to be discussing mostly the burning of trash. What about yard waste? Each year I pull out tons of non-native and invasive honeysuckle. There is far too much to take to a landfill and it would take years to rot down if left in some kind of compost pile. I know the burn is giving off some CO2 but I honestly don't know what else I can do. Suggestions?

by Bruce at 9:48 AM on 11 Jan 2007

Burning Trash

My husband and I are going to build a new off-grid home, and are planning on using a masonry stove, specifically a Tulikivi, if we can afford it. My understanding is that these stoves burn very cleanly, emitting very few toxins. Wouldn't this work for cereal boxes, too?

Does anyone know out there know for sure?

by GaGa at 5:30 AM on 19 Jan 2007

Yard Waste

Even burning yard waste emits plenty of carbon monoxide, CO2, particulates and even some carcinogens. (I used to work with the USDA Forest Service and remember hearing how harmful the smoke from forest fires can be, though not as bad as a back-yard burn barrel.)

Some garbage haulers take "yard waste" in a separate "trash" container or at the curb and compost it or deliver it to farmers or gardeners who will compost it.

Another option is to rent a chipper once a year and run your twigs and branches through. The resulting small pieces can be used as a mulch, or add them to your compost pile. (They compost a whole lot quicker than the large woody pieces you start with.)

If neither of these work for you, you might contact your local garbage hauler and ask when they are going to start collecting yard waste!

by lisanne5 at 1:31 AM on 13 Mar 2007

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