When Waste Disappears, or More Waste Please!

Alexander, Catherine

doi:10.5282/rcc/7391

When Waste Disappears, or More Waste Please!

Alexander, Catherine

Authors

Professor Catherine Alexander catherine.alexander@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Energy-from-waste plants in places like Britain were designed help reduce waste and carbon emissions, but they have had unintended side-effects. As Alexander’s essay shows, turning waste into energy does not liberate us from waste itself. On the contrary, the very energy plants that have made waste “disappear” by recasting it as a resource have, paradoxically, led to an increase of waste: in order to operate a new generation of large energy plants, demand for waste has risen and a tendency to ship waste to fewer and ever larger plants has set in.

Citation

Alexander, C. (2016). When Waste Disappears, or More Waste Please!. RCC perspectives (Internet), 1, 31-39. https://doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7391

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 3, 2016
Online Publication Date	Apr 3, 2016
Publication Date	Apr 3, 2016
Deposit Date	Aug 3, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Sep 5, 2018
Journal	Rachel Carson Center perspectives
Print ISSN	2190-5088
Electronic ISSN	2190-8087
Publisher	Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
Peer Reviewed	Not Peer Reviewed
Volume	1
Pages	31-39
DOI	https://doi.org/10.5282/rcc/7391
Related Public URLs	http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/2016_1_alexander.pdf

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