By Luciano Boçi/Elbasani refuses to be killed

2023-04-30 14:16:00, Opinione Luçiano Boçi

By Luciano Boçi/Elbasani refuses to be killed

Illustrative photo

In no country in the world, an incinerator is seen as a business. It is considered a solution to a community problem. In Elbasan, the incinerator poses a serious health threat and deepens a murderous environmental crisis.

The incinerator usually burns waste that cannot be recycled. The interest is that it burns waste, which has a calorific value. Plastic, paper, cardboard and other calorie-rich waste do not go to incineration in any Western country; they are recycled.

It does not make economic sense to turn on the incinerator for bracken tails and spoiled lettuce. This explains why these plants are partially supported by the state. They provide a solution for waste that cannot be recycled in any other way.

The main cost of incinerators is the filters, not so much the combustion chambers. After all, the way the combustion fumes and its final residues are processed are the real cost of this work. Engineer Stefan Schatz has planned the construction of most of the landfills in southern Germany. The German expert who knows the incinerator well says that with this amount of money you can only build an incinerator without filters and the impact on the environment will be the same as if we burned the waste in nature, only this time surrounded by 4 walls.

In Albania, this process has been kept completely in the dark. The technology became understandable when construction was made a criminal offence.

Albania produces 900,000 tons of urban waste per year. About 850 thousand tons of them manage to be collected. 70% of this amount is directed to collection points, landfills, dumps and three incinerators. Of them, only the Elbasan incinerator has worked until today.

In 2021 - according to the State of the Environment Report, he burned a total of about 35,000 tons of waste.

This means that incinerators burned only 3.8% of the annual waste produced in the country. According to INSTAT, this amount is even smaller.

This analysis makes it clear that incinerators do not address the problem of waste, nor their treatment. The claim that stopping the Elbasan incinerator causes an environmental cataclysm is a lie.

The incinerator of Elbasan was re-lit in the middle of the campaign to burn a criminal charge of corruption, a reasonable hypothesis of money laundering and a proof of involvement of high officials in economic crime. His criminal file is the most serious that is now weighing on the table of SPAK.

But Elbasan's incinerator is an industrial ghost, with disastrous health consequences and minimal effects for what they were created for.

Tolerating the illogical logic of an electoral spectacle while accepting the inevitable death of your citizens from cancer is cynical to say the least. Only in Vidhas e Balldren 38 people have lost their lives from cancer and this disease accounts for over 25% of all chronic diseases in the area.

For all these reasons, I request the shutdown of the Incinerator and the re-evaluation of the waste processing solution in Elbasan. Let's be clear: when it's on, it's a weapon of mass destruction.

Before being anything else, I am a citizen of Elbasan. I have a home here, I raise my children here. I refuse to submit to this slaughter. Point!/ CNA.al