A Star Performance?

I got pretty incensed over The Star newspaper's special reports on garbage this week. In fact I was so peed-off I even wrote them a letter which I'm sharing here.

I am writing in response to the special reports about waste management that appeared in the Nation section of your newspaper on November 1st and 2nd.

While I applaud any attempt to inform the public about this serious social and environmental problem, I was appalled to discover that the series of articles you ran were biased in favour of the politico-corporate cartel that has been running this industry for years. There was no mention at all of the other initiatives that are already taking place in the country which deal with municipal solid waste from a different perspective.

The articles rightly pointed out the problems associated with landfills but to suggest that incinerators are the only option is a best miseading and at worst a deliberate attempt to keep the rate-paying public misinformed.

Incinerator technology is very expensive to build and it operates on traditional non-renewable fuel which means daily running costs are not only high, but they are also unstable due to fluctuations in the global oil price.

A lot of countries that adopted incinerator technology are now moving towards a waste to energy approach to solve municipal waste problems. This approach regards garbage as a valuable resource and reclaims as much as possible in the form of reuseable items and an alternative and renewable industrial fuel which can also be used to generate electricity.

My concern is that there was no mention of this in the so-called in-depth report Don't you think the rate-paying public deserve to be told that there are alternative ways of approaching waste management that are cheaper and environmentally cleaner?