I read your report on Vancouver’s incineration proposal with interest [Straight Talk, April 1-8]. I am a recycling manager with international experience just passing through, and this sounds familiar to me. There are circumstances in which incineration makes sense—reclaiming the embedded energy in a stack of broken wood, maybe. It doesn’t make so much sense when we are talking about a falling supply of mixed household waste over a long period of time. Much of it is metal, glass, and wet stuff that’s no good for burning; plastics actually save more energy in recycling than they create in burning; and let’s be honest, we can never be sure all the hazardous waste is out of the system before we send it off into the air we breathe.

Vancouver is a fine-looking place with fair air quality, and I’m glad it wants to be the greenest city in North America. In the lifetime of an incinerator (these things take time to fire up and to turn down), you could be looking at the alternative of zero waste or darn close as a real option. The Netherlands already recycles over 80 percent of its waste; parts of Belgium are at 90 percent. The name of the game is resource efficiency: reduce consumption, recover what’s unavoidable.

I hope Vancouver’s citizens stay ahead of the game and say yes to reducing and recycling, no to burning waste. Incineration is yesterday’s waste solution, not a response to tomorrow’s resource challenge.

> David Roman / Newport, U.K.