At least in the US, a modern incinerator produces cleaner exhaust gases than a power plant does. This is because the air quality restrictions are quite tight, and building an incinerator from the ground up with those restrictions in mind results in exhaust flues with filters to catalyze by products into non-aerosols.

That said, providing heat is the best use for this since even low grade heat (100 - 150 degrees C) is usable for heating buildings and water for washing etc. But you can't pull a lot of electricity out of it with steam turbines.

This would work very well for the central heating systems (mostly coal or gas based) of northern China. We also have plenty of garbage to burn. But I wouldn't trust the government to implement it with the correct environmental safeguards.

As others have noted, you can sort out the worst garbage and install filters, and modern filters are very good.

It’s still worse for the air than putting the garbage in landfills, but landfills have their problems too.

It's better than landfill without methane recovery, greenhouse gas wise.

Source? Mole for mole, I'm sure methane is worse than CO2, but how much of the carbon mass in a landfill goes to methane?

I think (but don't have proof) that it still is better if none of it escapes as methane.

If you don't turn your waste into heat, presumably, you would dig up oil, refine it, transport it to where you need it and burn that oil. Chances are that produces more CO2 than the collection and burning of waste fairly close to where it is produced (transporting waste from Italy to Norway would probably be a different matter)

Also, the controlled burning of waste (typically at high temperatures) can break down molecules that, if dropped in a landfill, may make it into the atmosphere or ground water.

More arguments fore/against at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration#Debate. I find it telling that quite a few of the 'against' arguments compare incineration not with landfills, but with other technologies/solutions.

Methane is tens of times worse than CO2, so burning would probably have to release quite a lot of carbon to match methane.

It seems that the garbage is sorted through before they burned it.