Incineration of waste in Hungary

Waste incineration in the national waste management

The incineration rate is quite low in Hungary at the moment. According to the data of 1998 as much as 8 % of the municipal solid waste was incinerated, which is practically undertaken by the only MSW incinerator, the Municipal Waste Incinerator of Budapest. Concerning the industrial hazardous waste incinerating, the rate is around 3%. The incineration rate at the industrial non hazardous waste is very low, around 0.1 %. There are around 40-50 pieces of incinerators in Hungary, which majority has been built not for incineration of waste. These incinerators have been built by big industrial companies and health institutions usually for the treatment of their own waste. Now some of them accept waste from other sources as well. Today there are incinerators in Hungary with high technical quality, which usually have been built by foreign capital and owned by foreigners.

Hungary has received a temporary environmental derogation until 2005 concerning the value limits emissions of the hazardous waste incinerators and its measurement conditions. Until 1^st July 2oo5 the incinerators, which don’t meet the EU requirements have to be closed. The main problem is not with the emission value limits and the emissions but the fact that the new European Union Directive determines continuous measurement obligation to the most important emission parameters. Such measurement usually does not exist at the minor incinerators in Hungary. The temporary derogation has been given to ensure the continuous measurement at the incinerators in a realistic time, where it is cost efficient. Particularly the hospital incinerators and other health incinerators had problems, and the majority of them had already been finished the operation.

Disadvantages of the incineration

During the incineration secondary raw materials are being burned, therefore according to HuMuSz it is not correct to call the energy recovery as „waste utilisation”. The burning of the waste is not energy recovery (or utilisation) but waste of energy!

There are serious drawbacks of the incineration, however, many people see it as a solution for the waste problem (waste removal). One can’t get rid of the waste by incineration! During the incineration process the waste is not removed, but transformed into slag, scale and smoke (and energy). The corpuscles of the smoke are emitted and resettle in the environment. The remaining elements of the waste infiltrate in the slag, in the salt of the gas filter. These parts are deposit to a closed hazardous waste landfill site – in the best case. During the chemical process in the incinerator several seriously hazardous compounds are produced in an uncontrolled way (the reaction of the chemicals can not be followed in the ever changing composition of waste). The composition of the emitted smoke is not known, data is available only on some components, which are not really promising in terms of the environment.

The waste incineration justifies the “throw away” think of way. It can make one believe that the waste can be removed or disposed economically so no need to stop the waste generation and consumption. The effort for the prevention/reduction is even plaid down.

The public control of the operation of the waste incinerators is not solved. The present environmental impact assessment regulation enables only limited rights for the public (not even in the decision making period). The public controlling committee (if will exist sometimes) has no right for continuous entrance, document review etc.