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Comment by ImHereToVote | Hacker News Reader

If a country burns coal. It should burn trash first, before the coal.

Absolutely, but green activists are actively fighting against burning trash. This needs to stop. Even if a country doesn't burn coal it should still burn trash instead of sending it to poor countries. People need to take responsibility for the trash that they generate.

Yeah, burning trash isn't a great answer

I'd say it depends. Amager Bakke in Denmark is a combined heat and power plant that burns waste and emits 687 grams of CO2 per kWh vs natural gas at 290 to 930 grams per kwh and coal at 900 to 1,050 grams per kwh. This makes burning trash CO2 competitive with Natural Gas. Using it for district heating probably improves the picture here because resistive electrical heating on a standard grid emits more CO2 than natural gas heat or pumped district heating.

It plausible that in cold climates burning trash has significant advantages.

90% of countries use some kind of fossil fuel to generate electricity or heat, so burning trash instead won't increase the CO2 emissions. The rule is simple: if you already burn fossil fuels, you should burn trash instead.

I disagree. Burning trash creates an implicit stopgap where the trash burning is better than the fossil fuels, so the process is placated until the trash burning isn't good enough, or its downsides rear their ugly heads. Instead of turning to trash burning as a solution if fossil fuels are already being burnt, a more long-term 3rd solution should be explored while still in the 'unsatisfactory' mindset.

It's not great, but burning trash in controlled incinerator is still much better than burning trash in an uncontrolled underground landfill fire.[1]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2026-08-06/bo...

    > Absolutely, but green activists are actively fighting against burning trash.

This is a widly broad statement. Most rich countries excluding the US and Canada make wide use of garbage incineration. It can be done in a very clean manner that disturbs the environment less than a landfill. One simple example: Sweden has almost unlimited amounts of land for landfills, yet chooses garbage incineration where possible. (To be clear: Certain stuff like broken ceramics [mugs, plates, etc.] cannot be burned and must be landfilled.) As I understand, there is not a large, active "green activists" lobby trying to stop this trend. (Any Swedes: Please correct me if wrong.)

This is the way to go.

China cracked the pollution issues of burning trash, and built a lot of high-temperature incinerator to burn trash and generate electricity.

The overcapacity leads to a shortage(!) of new trash to burn, and it has started to dig out landfills accumulated from the past decades.

The video from Asianometry is very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuIEBSb2xiE

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