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U.S. cities have been burning municipal solid waste . For the first century, it was a way to get rid of trash. Today advocates have rebranded it as an environmentally friendly energy source.

Most incinerators operating today use the heat from burning trash to produce steam that can generate electricity. These systems are sometimes referred to as plants.

Communities and environmental groups have long , arguing that they are serious polluters and undermine recycling. Now the industry is promoting a new process called co-incineration or co-firing. Operators burn waste alongside traditional fossil fuels like coal in facilities such as cement kilns, coal-fired power plants and industrial boilers.

I study environmental justice and zero-waste solutions and contributed to a about the health and environmental impacts of co-incineration. Since that time, the Trump administration's to enforcing environmental laws against polluters – – has deepened my concern. I've come to the conclusion that burning waste is an unjust and unsustainable strategy, and new attempts to package incineration as renewable energy are misguided.

Incineration industry capitalizes on renewable energy

Currently there are burning about – about 12 percent of the total U.S. waste stream. They produced – a minuscule share.

Classifying incineration as renewable energy creates new revenue streams for the industry because operators can take advantage of programs designed to promote clean power. More importantly, it gives them environmental credibility.

In , waste incineration is included in renewable portfolio standards – rules that require utilities to produce specific fractions of their power from qualifying renewable fuels. The Obama administration's Clean Power Plan – which the Trump administration has pledged to replace – and co-incineration as carbon-neutral forms of energy production.

Another EPA policy, the , was amended in 2013 to redefine waste so that municipal solid waste can now be processed to become "non-waste fuel products." These renamed wastes can be burned in facilities such as boilers that are subject to . This is good news for an industry trying to by treating them as fuel.

Why waste incineration is not sustainable

Many environmental advocates in the and are alarmed over government approval of increasingly diverse waste fuels, along with relaxed oversight of the incineration industry.

Although municipal solid waste combustion is , host communities are concerned about potential . Emissions typically associated with incineration include particulate matter, lead, mercury and dioxins.

In 2011 the New York Department of Environmental Conservation found that although facilities burning waste in New York complied with existing law, they released .

of incinerators and waste facilities in communities of color and low-income communities was a key driver for the emergence of the environmental justice movement. In 1985 there were online, but by 2015 fewer than 85 plants remained. Many U.S. communities effectively organized to defeat proposed plants, but poor, marginalized and less-organized .

Now some companies are turning to co-incineration rather than building new plants. This move sidesteps and risky financial arrangements, which have created debt problems for host municipalities such as .

Co-incineration offers using existing infrastructure. It is hard to measure how many facilities are currently using co-incineration, since EPA's Non-Hazardous Secondary Materials rule does not require them to report it. But as one data point, two affiliated building material companies, Systech and Geocycle, are co-processing waste in .

Co-incineration is not clean

As an example of concerns over co-incineration, consider the program, which is sponsored by Dow Chemical Company and promoted by the nonprofit group . This project offers grants to municipalities to participate in a curbside pilot program that collects hard-to-recycle plastics for energy production.

Currently this initiative is collecting plastics in Omaha, Nebraska, and mostly co-incinerating them at the in Missouri. In 2010, the owner of this plant and 12 others for violating the Clean Air Act and other air pollution regulations, paying a US$5 million fine and agreeing to install new pollution controls. Although this is just one example, it indicates that concerns over air quality impacts from co-incineration are real.

Waste incineration deflects attention from more sustainable solutions, such as redesigning products for recyclability or eliminating toxic, hard-to-recycle plastics. Currently only of municipal solid waste is recycled in the United States. Rates for some types of plastics are even lower.

Dow's partnership with Keep America Beautiful is particularly problematic becomes it takes advantage of local municipalities and residents who want to promote zero-waste, climate-friendly policies. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, burning municipal solid waste emits .

As the Trump administration reverses or abandons national and policies to address climate change, many Americans are looking to local and state governments and the private sector to lead on this issue. Many and states are committing to ambitious and targets.

These policies can drive innovations in a greening economy, but they can also provide perverse incentives to greenwash and repackage old solutions in new ways. In my view, incineration is a false solution to climate change that diverts precious resources, time and attention from more systemic solutions, such as waste reduction and real renewable fuels like solar and wind. Whether it's an incinerator, cement kiln or coal plant, if you put garbage into a system, you get garbage out.

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