the story of trash incineration

Today on the radio I heard an interview with Annie Leonard, creator of The Story of Stuff. The best part was when she expounded on the extreme absurdity and criminality of waste incineration. It's true, waste incinerators represent the evil end result of a culture of mindless mass consumption. Raw materials are lost forever in return for toxic air. Can you think of a worse exchange? I think of the concrete monstrosity they built in Nassau County, NY, and it makes me sad, and mad, that the whole culture there is like a machine designed to consume the maximum amount of goods in a place with high population and limited space, generating a correlating mountain of waste. The incinerator was apparently sold to the powers that be as a simple solution, but clearly there was a lack of reflection on the horrific spectacle of a consumer goods crematorium surrounded by shopping malls!

Anyway, it was good to learn that there is an international movement to STOP trash incineration, an organization called GAIA and the website www.no-burn.org