LeGrand Bitter, executive director of Wasatch Energy, is a perpetual cheerleader for the incineration industry, and he frequently notes how dangerous everyday landfills can be. "Some places have been able to just dig a hole in the ground," he said. Bitter is quick to offer statistics that indicate dioxin emissions aren't as evil as advertised. He maintains two families of four burning their waste in a backyard barrel would produce as much dioxin as his incinerator, which burns 400 tons of trash per day and has no dioxin control measures.

A presenter told him that at a conference, he says. "I have no reason to doubt that representation."

Trashing Utah

Certainly, Wasatch Energy reduces landfill space. "There is no 100 percent environmentally safe way of disposing of garbage — whatever you do," said Stevenson. "We have to reduce that garbage as much as we can."

But Utahns don't reduce.

Statewide, consumers contribute mountains to a trash disposal problem that is at best disconcerting and at worst a full-fledged health hazard. We barely recycle. We rarely conserve. We fill up our trash cans and watch their contents disappear into the backside of garbage trucks that carry their loads to places most people have never seen.

"The state doesn't have a mandated recycling goal," explained Ralph Bohn, solid waste section manager for the state Division of Solid Waste Management. So the state doesn't track recycling.

The best recycling data Bohn has comes from BioCycle Magazine, which conducts a yearly national recycling survey. The magazine reports that Utah recycles 15-20 percent of its waste. In comparison, Arizona recycles 26 percent of its trash, Oregon 30 percent, Maine and New York, 42 percent.

Along the Wasatch Front, West Jordan and Sandy are the only cities with mandatory recycling, which means residents pay for curbside recycling service even if they don't use it. Recycling proponents say more cities need to follow the two cities' lead.

"They say they're able to reduce their waste by half," said Brad Mertz, marketing manager for recycler BFI. "It reduces what they have to pay for trash."

Recycling does reduce trash costs, says Jim Jones, Waste Management's business development manager. But for many cities, falling trash prices can't make up the extra recycling fees.

Recycling markets are fickle and Waste Management sometimes has a hard time finding buyers for recyclables. Often, Utah has to ship recycled goods to places like California where there are more buyers, said Jones, which boosts Utah cost to recycle.

"You don't get into recycling to make money. Basically the reason people do it is because it's the right thing to do," Mertz said. "Everywhere we've implemented recycling the response has been incredible. People know it's the right thing to do and they want to do it."

But Utah clearly isn't there yet — throughout state, 18 landfills each accept 20 tons of trash every day. Landfilling is popular here because it's cheap, $22 a ton versus four times that for recycling.