plastic fires and common sense

["Mark Robinowitz" <mrobinowitz@igc.apc.org>]

Washington, DC operated a trash to ash incinerator on the shores of the 
poisoned but still beautiful Anacostia River.  Immediately downstream, 
is Children's Island, which the city wants as a site for a speculative 
"theme park" (it likely won't happen because the investor doesn't have 
enough $, it's on the poorer, more crime ridden side of town, the island 
is very narrow and full of mosquitoes in summertime).  A homeless man 
lives on the island -- a nice place to be homeless, I guess (it's walking 
distance to a number of stores and neighborhoods).  Joe says that he makes 
sure not to burn any plastic in his camp fires, since the smoke is thick 
black and smells bad, and he knows better than to do that.  Ironically, 
his camp site on the forest on the island is about 300 yards from the 
incinerator, which primarily burned plastics!

DC has now shifted to burning trash at the Lorton, VA wasted-energy 
facility, at 3,000 tons per day, it's the second largest in the US, if not 
planet Earth.

So someone without much formal education has more common sense than Ph.D's 
in the incineration industry.  Hmmm.

Mark Robinowitz