It can handle all the City's trash plus about 350 tons of trash from neighboring towns. The City already has contracts with three area landfills for its waste. It would be cheaper to ship waste to these landfills than to incinerate. The best option would be to have a waste management program that encourages waste reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting. Incinerators convert trash to toxic ash and toxic air emissions.
Incinerators require landfills for their toxic ash.
This ash is more dangerous than trash in a landfill because toxics more easily leach out of ash. These items represent a tremendous amount of recyclable material, all of which is currently collected as trash and burned in the incinerator. None of these items can even be deposited at the tiny recycling drop-off cart located at the incinerator. The state recycling law requires Harrisburg to have a program requiring businesses to recycle. This would also yield a tremendous amount of paper and packaging, yet the City maintains no such program.