Crisis of Gigantic Size Looms as Europe Runs Out of Disposal Sites : Waste: High population density and ‘not in my back yard’ mentality magnify the problem. Paris no longer has dumps and instead has three incinerators, two of which produce heating for the city’s buildings.

ENTRESSEN, France — The artificial mountain reeks in the morning sun, growing ever bigger as cranes empty train cars loaded with tons of Marseille’s trash.

Reputed to be Europe’s biggest waste dump, covering 210 acres that includes refuse from before World War I, it is a symbol of the garbage crisis facing much of the Continent.

As in the United States, dumps are filling fast in Europe and new sites are hard to find because of high population density and “not in my back yard” resistance. That is forcing countries to step up plans to incinerate or export trash.

Environmentalists, in turn, are fighting those plans. They say that incinerators emit dangerous pollutants, that more should be done to limit product packaging, and that Europe should stop exporting its garbage, especially toxic waste.

“In a number of countries there’s a real saturation problem,” said Marius Enthoven, the European Union’s director general for environment and nuclear safety.

By 2005, landfills “will become a secondary or tertiary option. Some countries will go for the incineration solution,” he said.

Marseille, by the end of the decade, will have to find somewhere else to roll 60 rail cars filled with 15 tons each of garbage daily, said Jean St. Martin, a technical adviser at the Entressen dump 30 miles northwest of the Mediterranean port.

The city plans to build two incinerators within its boundaries, but locals are fighting it.

Marseille’s recycling program targets metal, paper, wood, glass, tires, batteries and used oil, and “people are asking for it to expand,” St. Martin said. But plastic, 25% of the trash arriving at Entressen, is not recycled.

The problem is cost. Recycling already is so successful that the supply of returned and sorted refuse is outstripping demand, forcing Marseille to pay companies $38 a ton just to cart off paper, St. Martin said.

Incineration is cheaper than recycling, Marseille Mayor Robert Vigouroux said.

“In France we consider the most important thing is to get value out of garbage,” said Francis Chalot, a waste engineer at France’s Environment Ministry. “Recycling is not the best way sometimes.”

Paris no longer has dumps and instead has three incinerators, two of which produce heating for the city’s buildings, Chalot said.

“What system doesn’t pollute? To sort more effectively, you’d have to send more trucks to pick it up,” he said.

French officials support their case for incineration by pointing to Germany, where companies were overwhelmed by recycled trash after instituting a program that allows consumers to return packaging.

“When the Germans pick it up, they don’t know what to do with it,” Chalot said.

The German government has stepped in to help finance recycling. But while the country may look “greener” than some of its neighbors, it is dumping abroad.

France is one of the main destinations--the environmental group Greenpeace calls it “Europe’s garbage can”--for both legal and illicit trash shipments.

French customs officials say 30,000 tons of demolition refuse were dumped illegally in northern Alsace in 1994. In September, officials found an illegal dump near the eastern town of Bar-le-Duc containing 300 tons of discarded plastic packaging from Germany.

Enthoven, the European Union environment director, is gradually standardizing regulations on transporting waste between member nations.

The EU also issued a directive in May banning the export of nonrecyclable waste to non-European countries, he said. But the tougher rules do not take effect until 1998 and exempt existing trash-export agreements.

If France is Europe’s garbage can, “Germany is by far the world champion in the export of toxic waste,” said Jan Rispens, a researcher for Greenpeace. He said Germany shipped 1.3 million tons to other nations between 1989 and last March, half the world total.

In Italy, only about 2.5% of trash is recycled, said Enrico Fontana of the environmental group Lega Ambiente.

Italy lacks a policy on packaging, which accounts for an estimated 40% of household waste. That amounts to 1,100 pounds per person in major Italian cities annually, according to the Italian magazine Panorama.

The city dump for Madrid, Spain, is full, and up to 40% of Spain’s trash goes to unauthorized dumps, said another Greenpeace researcher, Oliva Nunez. The rest is burned.

Barcelona, where new recycling centers are opening, has about 10 years of life left for its dump, said Jaime Moreno, a spokesman for that Spanish city.

Barcelona may expand incineration. It “is not very ecological, but there aren’t any other options,” he said.

That idea alarms environmental activists.

Waste incineration “threatens to become the leading contributor to the degradation of human and environmental health,” a Greenpeace study said.

Incineration of plastics and other trash produces dioxins, which are chemical substances linked to cancer, birth defects and reduced fertility.

But French officials say the dioxin problem is being addressed.

“That’s the case with the old types (of incinerators); they’ve had problems with dioxins,” Enthoven said. He said new technology has lowered emissions, but also concedes it “hasn’t been applied everywhere.”