Can Burning Trash and Trees be Considered Clean Energy? (Code Green)

**Trash and Tree Burning is Pure Pollution**

Welcome to this episode of Think Tech Hawaii, hosted by Howard Wiig. In this episode, our guest, Mike Ewall, CEO of Energy Justice Network, discusses the deceptive claims surrounding trash and tree burning as clean and renewable energy sources.

Contrary to popular belief, burning trash and trees for energy releases significant amounts of pollution into the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide collected by growing trees is simply sent right back into the atmosphere, along with additional CO2 emitted during the energy-intensive burning process. Furthermore, trash burning releases toxic particulate matter, further contributing to air pollution.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, check out the ThinkTech YouTube Playlist for this show: [ThinkTech Hawaii YouTube Playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQpkwcNJny6nMw4RxJwoYzhZyXl8mz7hp)

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At ThinkTech Hawaii, we strive to be a leader in shaping a more vital and thriving Hawaii for future generations. Our mission is to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement in Hawaii through our digital media platform.

Keywords/tags associated with this video: Think Tech Hawaii, Tech, Energy, Globalization, Diversification, Economy, Hawaii, trash burning, tree burning, deception, greenwashing, Howard Wiig, Mike Ewall.

**Transcript**

[00:00:00] Howard Wiig: Thank you Foreign Howard wig code green think pick Hawaii we’ve got a really Lively show for you today and one which will hopefully contribute to Hawaii’s path to 100 percent green energy by the year 2045 very ambitious but by George we’re doing it and today’s program may take us a Step closer do that gives me great pleasure today to introduce Mike Ewell the CEO of energy Justice Network he’s coming to us today all the way from Philadelphia and this is a really interesting topic regarding the burning of biomass when I start first started out in this business Biomass was a hot hot pun intended topic and we all thought it was the cat’s pajamas well there has been a lot of rethinking about that and maybe our hosts or our guests like you will maybe the responsible party or getting our thinking totally totally different and we’ve got a whole lot of Ground to cover so welcome to the program Mike all the way from Philadelphia thank you Howard thanks for having me and again I thought this was years ago that bio burning biomass for energy was really really a good clean thing and you are saying no no no and I’ve gotten to Know you well enough you know that you have done a heck of a lot of research on this and you have been in this field for a long time so please uh take it away Mike sure thank you Howard so um yeah I’ve been involved in working on issues Around biomass and waste incineration for about 30 years now and biomass is one of the things that we’re often taught is part of that laundry list of clean energy sources or renewable energy sources so we see wind we see solar we see hydro and then biomass is always in there and part of It may be because some just want a nice long list of things that they can point to as options but really as I studied this on both whether …
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Trash and Tree Burning is Pure Pollution. The host for this show is Howard Wiig. The guest is Mike Ewall.

Trash and trees burning is incorrectly touted as clean, renewable energy. The CO2 collected by growing trees is sent right back into the atmosphere with extra CO2 exuded from the energy-intensive process. Trash burning sends all manner of toxic particulate matter into the atmosphere.

The ThinkTech YouTube Playlist for this show is https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQpkwcNJny6nMw4RxJwoYzhZyXl8mz7hp

Please visit our ThinkTech website at https://thinktechhawaii.com and see our Think Tech Advisories at https://thinktechadvisories.blogspot.com.

ThinkTech Hawaii streams from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm HST on weekdays. Check us out any time for great content and great community.

Our vision is to be a leader in shaping a more vital and thriving Hawaii as the foundation for future generations. Our mission is to be the leading digital media platform raising public awareness and promoting civic engagement in Hawaii.