Mr. Harmon seems to say "come on, let us be reasonable" and entertain those "new" technologies. The problem is when one peers behind the curtain and discovers that the lobbyists aren't peddling anything really new. When asked to visit these wonderful no emission facilities, you find no destinations in the US where you could see anything but poorly performing pilot plants and some plants in Europe were decommissioned becasue the toxic emissions were so bad. Further we are asked to believe that the State is just following the Solid Waste Master Plan which calls for only supporting recycling and diversion. This is the same plan that the State has failed to finalize by a public release so it is actually only on State assurances that they are "following" the plan because us mere citizens have not seen it since it disappeared on Mr. Sullizan's desk almost two years ago. This kind of leadership by example is exactly why communities that have to bear a disproportionate burden from these polluting capital intensive facilies with their poorly managed trash transfer stations are less than assured by the soothing words. Meanwhile what is really needed is concrete action supporting the proven track record of non-polluting diversion and recycling that is happening in various municipalities across this country. Let the State DEP truly support resource recovery efforts by local enterprises and show us that you are following the SWMP that you have hidden from sight these past years. The failings in State leadership can not be burned away under the guise of a supposed landfill capacity issue and their failure to follow the recommendations in a plan that supposedly encourages recycling can not be solved by magical engineering of technologies that don't deliver on the no pollution promise

We should go back to burning trash in a fifty gallon drum in the back yard like we did when I was a kid. Or maybe some day we can eliminate packaging when everyone has a 3D printer in the parlor. In the meanwhile we have to deal with the facts we live in a consumer economy, too many people are too lazy to recycle, there is often not a market for recycled material, and the MassDEP has been gutted over the last couple decades. The world is not perfect, build another incinerator or three.

If by "environmentalist", Mr. Harmon means someone who sees the connection between human behavior and its impact on society, count me as an environmentalist. Mr. Harmon states in his opinion piece that the technologies haven't changed since 2010, it's the lobbying effort that's improved. Gasification and pyrolosis facilities "embraced" by European countries and Japan have closed because of serious emissions issues. A pilot program in Taunton failed to deliver on the promise of clean energy production. This environmentalist,with a strong background in technology, isn't against new, innovative technologies. I am against failed technologies offered in lieu of fact-based, effective approaches, whether high tech or low. Diverting useful materials from the waste stream may be low tech, but it works when it is fairly and consistently implemented, as evidenced by many European countries and cities in the US.