And, lastly, incineration substantially reduces the need for landfill space. This means that an incinerator will extend the life of today's landfills by a factor of 2.5, not a factor of 10. The energy recovery from incinerators is relatively small, compared to the energy saved when material is recycled. In fact, incinerators require so much fuel to burn the garbage that another 1973-style oil embargo would shut them all down. It is not easy to burn trash, and incinerators often need many costly repairs that aren't anticipated in the initial project budget.
Incinerators are inflexible.
The ash from incinerators is toxic, laced with the heavy metals lead, cadmium, chromium, and arsenic, among others. It doesn't make either economic or environmental sense to convert three tons of trash into one ton of toxic ash. As much as our regulators would like to believe otherwise, there is only one kind of lead atom, and that lead atom is toxic to humans. Such risk assessments are whitewash, not serious attempts to anticipate pollution consequences. So landfills are out and incinerators are bad business.