Never mind that the complex regulations won't discourage the production of an ever-increasing quantity of wastes and won't protect public health. Balances and checks, don't you know. The main alternative to incineration has the serious disadvantage of being simple. The chief disadvantage of such a scheme is that it would require our industrial leaders to get off the dime and do things differently. It calls for the recognition that pollution is a visible sign of inefficiency in industrial operations.
Pollution is money going up the chimney, down the sewer, or out the door into waste trucks.
Pollution is raw material unconverted, or it is products that are not fully recovered. Increased efforts to reduce waste can result in increased profit. Even a small technical library contains so many answers to such a question that the problem is one of information overload. There are too many ways to detoxify wastes, besides incineration, for most people to have sufficient time to review them all.