PROPONENTS hail waste-to-energy as a hitting-two-birds-with-one-stone solution to runaway trash and energy pollution.

So they believe incinerating solid waste to fuel electricity generators is the future of waste management and clean energy.

A proposed legislative measure is already pending in the Senate that would institutionalize WTE. It, however, overlooks other much-cleaner waste management technologies, which evidence suggests is a much safer, cleaner way to convert garbage dumps into a repository of fuel sources.

Jump starting the industry, however, would take more than just a law. Instead it requires an entirely different system, one that would spur a paradigm shift in mindsets and ways of life. In short, a game changer.

The law must straighten the maze of bureaucracy that involves at least three government departments—DENR, DoE and DILG.

The DENR is there because the system involves waste and the WTF industry’s impact on the environment in the process of turning wastes into fuel for power generation.

The DoE is involved because the system is centered on the industry’s main product—electricity.

The DILG is in the loop, too, because it is supposed to oversee the waste management operations of local governments from where the raw material for fuel, garbage, will emanate.

What some lawmakers forget to say is that there is no other currently available method to produce electricity directly from waste other than to burn everything flammable that is collected from the garbage pile.

Plastics, food waste, textile, rubber, PVCs, polyurethane, name it. With or without effective segregation, these materials are toxic.

Without segregation, aka the Philippine waste system, these materials can kill.

A number of studies have been made on the viability of direct waste to energy. Most are lengthy but we can take a shorter route, at the risk of being accused of cherry picking, and take a look at what the environmental group Friends of the Earth said about using burning waste to produce electricity,

“There is insufficient evidence to conclude that any incinerator is safe,” said the group’s Melbourne office in a report online. Translation: Incinerators suck.

“Community groups have a basis for legitimate concern,” it said. Translation: Be afraid, be very afraid.

The group further notes that WTE was likely to miss the target if its aim was to reduce the volume of waste being dumped in landfills and open dumps.

“Burning the waste doesn’t cause it to disappear,” the group said, adding that 15 to 25 percent of the waste thrown in incinerators “remains as ash in the end.” Translation: Burning waste produces a different but more toxic trash.

“The incineration process produces highly toxic filter cake which will need to be disposed of in hazardous waste landfills,” said Friends of the Earth. Translation: You don’t only spend on incinerators, you spend more on keeping its byproducts from poisoning people.

Multiple scientific studies have presented findings leading to the conclusion that something as basic as simply breathing could shorten your life.

Though in minute amounts, the air we breathe, because of pollution, is laden with some of the most toxic substances on Earth—arsenic, lead, mercury and a host of other chemicals that could complete chemistry’s periodic table.

While in very miniscule amounts, these poisonous chemicals will build up in the human body and act like slow poison.

Add to these the poison that incinerating wastes will release into the air. We should really be afraid, very afraid.

And we can helplessly just watch as new forms of waste, a more toxic one, add to our garbage pile.