Killer Waste Management - to burn resources or create jobs?

The following was written exclusivley for MAC by a worker with the South African-based Earth Life Africa.

The global cement industry claims to be ridding us of toxic and other wastes which are acutely embarrassing to other industries. It does so through incineration and, over the past decade, a vast amount of such detritus has gone into cement kilns. More recently the burning of tyres as kiln fuel has been approved in several countries. Yet, as an authoritative British report points out [www.minesandcommunities.org/Mineral/cement02.htm], neither the health and environmental consequences of this, nor alternative benefits to be gained from recycling, have been properly measured. In this article, Muna Lakhani assesses the pros and cons of allowing tyre incineration in his home country of South Africa.

Killer Waste Management - to burn resources or create jobs?

Muna Lakhani, Earth Life Africa

28 May 2004

Our Honourable Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Ms. Rejoice Mabhudafasi, recently (May 2004) attended a function hosted by the cement producers in South Africa. According to reports, a key issue was the proposed use of scrap tyres as fuel for incinerators - an "alternative" fuel source.

As one would expect, some of the statements by the industry were extremely limited in their content. Saying that "only 1% of scrap tyres can be re-used for new tyres" and that the industry has "International Best Practice emission control" were particularly misleading.

Not being able to re-use tyres? Let us look at how many businesses we can build using waste tyres as the raw input material:

Rubber material (both tyres and conveyor belting) can be used to make a variety of products:

Road and Rail Applications
Rubber modified bitumen
Hot mix bitumen
Reflective crack sealant
Waterproof membranes
Gap seals
Stress absorbing membranes
Acoustic barriers
Road base
Portable traffic control devices
Ripple strips and speed bumps
Rail crossings, sleepers and buffers
Roadside safety railing

Construction & Industrial
Foundation material
Industrial flooring & footpaths
Anti-static computer mats
Acoustic barriers
Sprayed up roofing, insulation and waterproofing
Adhesive sealants
Mounting pads and shock absorbers
Membrane protection
Airfield runways
Shoe soles
Carpet underlay
Children's playground surfacing
Compounding with a wide range of plastic such as:
Polypropylene
Copolymers
Polystyrene
ABS
Thermoplastic rubbers of ethylene and propylene
Flexible foam
Rollers
Pond liners
Compression moulding compound
Extrusion compounding for rubber products
Injection moulding compound
Solid tyres for industrial equipment
Conveyor belts

Packaging
Filler
Bags
Recycling bins

Bulk Products & Mining
Filter for landfill leachate ponds
Erosion control landfills
Road base / stone replacement
Leachate pond liners
Oil spill absorber
Aggregate surfacing
Mulches and perma-mulches

Automotive
Filler in new tyre manufacture
Tyre retreads
Solid and pneumatic tyres
Oil spill absorber
Floor mats, mud flaps, moulded protection strips
Special friction brakes
Automotive door and window seals
ALLTRACK segmented earthmoving tyres
Gaskets
Adhesive sealants
Sprayable sealant for automobile wheel housings
Vehicle bumper bars
Flooring for truck trays and tipper bodies

Marine
Wharf buffers
Floating docks
Non slip flooring

Sporting
Flooring
Sporting fields, athletic tracks, tennis courts, etc
Gymnasium flooring and matting
Equestrian surfaces and workout areas

Rural and Landscaping
Flooring
Turf and horse training tracks
Watering systems, rubber hosing & low pressure irrigation drip hoses
Agricultural pipes
Flower pots, wall hangers, pot plants
Animal bedding
Protective fencing
Sprayable linings for grain silos, storage tanks, etc
Tyres for agricultural machinery

The majority of the above applications rely on a crumbing process, which physically separates the waste into three streams: rubber, steel and in certain cases, fibre. The crumb is used in production, the steel generally sold to a recycler, and the fibre composted. This process avoids the use of heat or chemicals, and is comparatively benign.

A needs analysis should be carried out in various geographic areas of the country, to identify which of the products above will prove the most viable and sustainable, and then implemented. This would generate a large number of sustainable jobs, and many of the products can be manufactured by SMME's. We produce many of them now, and it would make a lot of sense to use "waste" as a raw material, rather than continuing the extraction of limited virgin material, or worse, destroying valuable job and income creating resources by burning them and adding to our pollution problems. For the record, 60% of tyres are recycled in the USA, according to the Scrap Tyre Management Council. There is no reason why this should not be 100%.

The key problems with pollution from burning tyres (as proposed by the cement industry) are:

- The tyres will liberate Dioxins and Furans, amongst other toxic pollutants, which include polyaromatic hydrocarbons, CO, SO2, NO2, and HCl, when burnt. Dioxins and furans are amongst the most toxic Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP's) identified in the Stockholm convention, which has recently come into effect. South Africa is a signatory to this treaty, and is bound to REDUCE and phase out the production of POP's. We would be going against an International law that we are signatories to, as well as increasing the negative health burden for the workers themselves and communities living near the proposed sites.
see - http://www.epa.gov/ncea/pdfs/dioxin/factsheets/dioxin_short.pdf

- There will still be large amounts of bottom ash that need treatment as a hazardous waste, which will contain further long-term hazards, such as heavy metals. These problems never go away.

- It is a myth that dioxins and furans can be done away with by burning them at the correct temperature - dioxins are formed when temperatures climb or drop, and from emissions AFTER they leave the kiln - this is totally unavoidable, other than by not burning tyres and chlorinated waste in the first place. It must be remembered that VERY small amounts of dioxin are very dangerous - collected dioxins the size of a pea are sufficient to give cancer to 100,000 people, so even a tiny amount is not acceptable.

- The effects of dioxins are horrendous, as "dioxins can alter the fundamental growth and development of cells in ways that have the potential to lead to many kinds of impacts. These include, for example, adverse effects upon reproduction and development; suppression of the immune system (in a country with HIV/AIDS as a problem); chloracne (a severe acne-like condition that sometimes persists for many years); and cancer. Foetuses, infants, and children may be more sensitive to dioxin exposure because of their rapid growth and development"

A study done in 1994 has been superceded by one done more recently, which finds that the effects of dioxins entails a TEN-fold higher chance of cancer risk than previously estimated.

"Men exposed to cancer-causing dioxin are more likely to father daughters, Italian doctors said on Friday. Their study of men who had been exposed to the chemical when a herbicide plant in Seveso, Italy, exploded in 1976 showed it lowered the male-to-female sex ratio.

Even small doses seemed to have disrupted the men's reproductive systems with long-lasting effects, according to the study published in The Lancet medical journal.

"The lowering sex ratio in humans has been directly linked for the first time to male exposure to an environmental pollutant and at relatively low doses," said Professor Paolo Mocarelli, who led the study team.

The researchers measured levels of the industrial by-product in 239 men and 296 women in 1976 and 1977." Planet Ark May 2000.

- Re-use will also minimise the amount of toxic chemicals that are currently used in many of these products, reduce the amount of waste needing expensive treatment and handling, and of course the visual pollution of the tyre scrap.

A cement industry spokesperson has said that some 1,2-million tons of coal are consumed by the cement industry every year, while the Department of Minerals and Energy has indicated that the known coal reserves would last only another four decades. “Apart from the thousands of tons of scrap tyres produced in South Africa every year, the cement industry will in future also consider the use of other acceptable waste-derived fuels.”

Bluntly put, these will be used as waste incinerators, possibly for toxic and hazardous waste. Incinerators are already a huge problem worldwide as well as in South Africa. What is wrong with gas as a transition fuel? Why is there no research into sustainable energy by the industry? If a solar thermal chimney can run a smelter 24 hours a day, and be focussed enough to burn through steel plate, why not a kiln? It takes more energy to produce a tyre than we could ever recover from it by burning, and in an energy hungry world, it is folly to lose energy through such processes. Why not grow the market in building materials which have a lower embodied energy than concrete? Many examples exist. Why destroy resources and jobs in a country in dire need of both?

Incineration around the world is being increasingly banned, stretching from Connecticut, USA in 2000 to the Phllippines in 2002,. No incinerator or kiln in South Africa works to specification consistently, far less to EU standards! The cement industry has a history of creating environmental problems. Let us prevent it from expanding this unhealthy legacy into burning toxic and hazardous waste, and begin to divert scrap tyre resources into valuable and job creating products.

Muna Lakhani is a volunteer with Earth Life Africa. This article is written in his personal capacity. This article may be used, in whole or in part, as long as the source is acknowledged, and is not quoted out of context.