Some years ago, Switzerland completely stopped using landfills. All garbage is incinerated. The resulting slag is then processed to reclaim nearly all metals as well as some other important elements. Of course, the burning creates CO2. However, you don't have to mine and refine metal ores, and the incinerators also generate electricity and district heating. So the ecological balance is actually pretty good. As a fina…
How come the slag is far less problematic? You didn’t describe where it goes. I also don’t see the “ecological balance” here. That usually refers to relationships among organisms in an ecosystem where one’s waste is another’s sustenance, but where does the generated CO2 go? Or did you mean a trade-off of pollution?
By ecological balance I was mostly referring to the emission of CO2. While that is an inevitable part of incineration, it is largely compensated by reclaiming the metals, plus using the incinerators to generate electricity and district heating.
As I recall, incinerators have a poor reputation in the US because unfiltered incinerators were used back in the 1940s and 1950s, causing serious pollution problems. Modern incinerators filter the flue gases and the results are clean enough that the incinerators are often inside cities.