BY JOSE PALU-AY DACUDAO
BELOW is a simplified summary of the combustion of cellulose (which I will use as an example of biomass, although much of it is actually lignin, the carbon-rich material that makes wood woody) and fermentation that goes on in anaerobic conditions.
Combustion or burning:
C6H12O6 (cellulose biomass) + 6 O2 (oxygen) → 6 H2O (water) + 6 CO2 (carbon dioxide)
Anaerobic fermentation (happens when organic matter is buried in environments that lack oxygen, including landfills and garbage dumps):
C6H12O6 (cellulose biomass) → 3 CO2 (carbon dioxide) + 3 CH4 (methane)
Since methane is a more potent greenhouse gas that carbon dioxide, so-called environmentalists would like to see less of methane produced. In brief in the issue of greenhouse gases, one would rather have carbon dioxide than methane.
Thus, our country seems to be doing right by building geothermal and hydroelectric power plants, and combusting residue organics from the forestry, sugar, and coconut industries.
Unfortunately, we are NOT doing right by NOT incinerating another renewable, and quite unwanted, as of now, energy source, namely household garbage and commercial wastes.
The following section of the Republic Act No. 8749 (June 23, 1999) AN ACT PROVIDING FOR A COMPREHENSIVE AIR POLLUTION CONTROL POLICY AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES (the so-called clean-air act) is the main legal obstacle.
Section 20. Ban on Incineration. – Incineration, hereby defined as the burning of municipal, biomedical and hazardous waste, which process emits poisonous and toxic fumes is hereby prohibited; Provided, however, That the prohibition shall not apply to traditional small-scale method of community / neighborhood sanitation “siga”, traditional, agricultural, cultural, health, and food preparation and crematoria; Provided, Further, That existing incinerators dealing with a biomedical wastes shall be out within three (3) years after the effectivity of this Act; Provided, Finally, that in the interim, such units shall be limited to the burning of pathological and infectious wastes, and subject to close monitoring by the Department.
Local government units are hereby mandated to promote, encourage and implement in their respective jurisdiction a comprehensive ecological waste management that includes waste segregation, recycling and composting.
With due concern on the effects of climate change, the Department shall promote the use of state-of-the-art, environmentally-sound and safe non-burn technologies for the handling, treatment, thermal destruction, utilization, and disposal of sorted, unrecycled, uncomposted, biomedical and hazardous wastes.
In dire contrast, the following countries incinerate their household and commercial wastes (based on the 2020 research by the packaging supplier Raja):
Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Slovenia, Austria, Czechia, United Kingdom, Norway, Luxembourg, Hungary, France, Italy, Germany Lithuania, Slovakia, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Latvia, Denmark Netherlands, Turkey, Iceland, Greece, USA.
In some of these countries, more than half of their wastes are incinerated to produce energy. Note that most of these are first world countries that do much research on how wastes should be treated, and have concluded that incineration is a viable and economic way to dispose of waste.
The so-called clean-air have sections that are too rigid and so vague that they can be interpreted as a barrier to nearly all combustion processes. It is a typical example of a blueprint solution issued by a centralized entity that doesn’t account for local conditions, or if it fundamentally in error would spread its errors throughout the entire system in one fell swoop. It should be amended, or better yet just totally discarded in lieu of locally made anti-pollution legislation by LGUs that know their environment and issues better than the central government in Manila.
By refusing to incinerate our household and commercial wastes, we end up producing more greenhouse gas (methane) as discussed above, and allow toxic waste to accumulate in the soil, which can percolate through the water table and nearby areas, especially as we experience regular heavy rainfall as part of the tropical rainforest zone.
We will discuss more of this in future articles.
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