Sludge Watch ==> Burning Tires in Lafarge makes no sense ..Nova Scotia Editorial

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

And don't forget that the tires along with the used oil will further 
contaminate the cement kiln dust that they intend to mix with Halifax sludge 
to make 'N-Viro Soil'....a sludge material that farmers in Nova Scotia say 
they refuse to put on fields.

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EDITORIALS


Last updated at 9:50 PM on 15/04/07

The burning of rubber tires in cement kilns makes no sense

The Amherst Daily News

By John G. McKay

For the Amherst Daily News

Is there something intrinsically unfair about this? Nova Scotia taxpayers 
are obligated to pay a fee to the Resource Recovery Fund Board (RRFB) for 
the recycling of vehicle tires. Now the RRFB (a.k.a. the provincial 
government) wants to cut a deal whereby they will pay Lafarge Brookfield 
$2,385,000 a year to take the tires off their hands to burn as fuel in lieu 
of a prescribed amount of coal, in their cement kiln. Coal currently costs 
Lafarge $100 per tonne and it is estimated they will save $600,000 or 6,000 
tonnes of coal by burning tires, but that isn’t all.

Considering the fee charged to recycle tires, plus a $3 environmental surtax 
on new tires, this giveaway means that taxpayers will not only be 
subsidizing the fuel bill of a private company, they will be paying all of 
it. This is in aid of a company that operates in 75 countries and has a 
thousand plants in North America alone, with an annual turnover in excess of 
$25 billion.

Never mind the environmental factor involved in burning tires, which will 
make a lie of the $3 surtax. Every other recyclable commodity that passes 
through the RRFB is sold and the money distributed to municipalities 
throughout the province, ostensibly to fund landfill and other solid waste 
facilities.

With the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 
unanimously concluding that the problem is real and that we collectively are 
responsible, the spokesman for Lafarge, no less, who insists that burning 
tires is environmentally friendly and that they do it routinely, is only 
compounding the lie.

The summary of the panel released for policy makers (a.k.a. governments) 
specifically lists “by-product from cement production” as a prime source of 
carbon dioxide pollution, and considering that the burning of tires 
contributes infinitely more pollution than coal, what factual basis for his 
statement can the company spokesman possibly have?

What is more important is whether or not the provincial government will be 
lured into believing this gross fallacy, or will they rightly and fairly 
tell Lafarge to pay their own fuel bill. Sadly, given this government’s 
record of sellouts and handouts, the latter is highly unlikely to occur.



John G. McKay is a member of the Amherst Daily News’ Community Editorial 
Board

http://www.amherstdaily.com/index.cfm?sid=23047&sc=61