Europe has built so many incinerators that they're holding "fire sales" to attract garbage from overseas, according to a November 5, 2009, news item from the International Solid Waste Association.Jeff Cooper wrote that Switzerland has incinerators capable of burning 105% of the waste actually produced in the country.
Germany built four million new tonnes of incinerator capacity in the past five years. Today there is overcapacity, exacerbated by the recession which is reducing waste generation. The market price for waste going to incinerators has declined throughout Germany. In the Eastern half of Germany incinerators are cutting prices down to a low of €50 per tonne (the wall still stands) while even in the south of Germany the lowest prices (around €80 per tonne) are half the market price of five years ago.
The Netherlands, like Germany, increased its incinerator capacity from 6 million tonnes to 8 million over the past two years ~ in the same period waste coming in to incineration facilities has declined from 7.5 million to 7 million tonnes, due partly to the recession.
Metro Vancouver (then GVRD) spent $4.5 million on a cattle ranch just before the BSE scare.
Now they propose 3/4 billion dollars in solid waste capital expenditures by 2019 to build shiny new facilities that we'll have to supply by importing trash from who knows where...
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