DISQUS

The Michigan Messenger: Detroit moves to end trash burning — are “green jobs” on the way?

  • Tony Collings · 1 year ago
    Dioxin Also studies have shown higher dioxin levels near incinerators, another health hazard.
  • Minehaha Forman · 1 year ago
    It's a smelly affair I live a few blocks away from the incinerator and on a hot afternoon there's an inescapable smell of rotting burning flesh ... it's sick.


    The Detroit incinerator is the largest trash incinerator in the world, according to Ecocenter.org.

      If they get 800,000 tons of trash per year at a cost of over $170 per ton to Detroit residents in taxes, that means the company that owns the incinerator makes $136 million a year, much of which is from the cit of Detroit (Up to seven times the cost of recycle and landfill services).


    Other fun facts from ecocenter.org:

    -Asthma hospitalization rates in Detroit are 3-4 times the average rate of the state of Michigan. In addition to these staggering figures


    - Detroit is the only city of the 30 largest cities in the United States without any form of curbside recycling.


    Oh yeah, and the city's decision not to buy the incinerator, well, it's got a lot to do with money, not the environment, necessarily. As Mayor Kilpatrick said in a statement:

    "We will not exercise the option to purcahse the waste energy facility," Kilpatrick said in a prepared statement. "The proposed purchase price was beyond what the city was prepared to pay."

  • LoRayne Apo-Joynt · 1 year ago
    I think that's a follow-up article, Minni Wow, you said a mouthful in that comment!