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The Garbage Crisis: —Understanding H —Rnding-AnswePs"
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Preface
This issui! of Kl'A Journal
begins with a special
suction on William K. Reiily,
EPA's now Administrator.
First is an interview with
Reilly; tin: subject is his
policies and priorities, along
with some reminiscences.
Then an article profiles
Reiily, describing his career
and bis education and
providing some information
on his family and personal
interests.
The JounHil then focuses
on the solid waste crisis. The
coverage begins witli an
interview witli Sylvia
I.owrance, Director of the
Agency's Office of Solid
Waste, in which the Journal
asked questions about the
country's garbage problems
and about FPA's steps to
help deal with them. An
article follows on the solid
waste stream what's in our
garbage; where is it coming
from?
Then three features take a
look at major aspects of solid
waste control recycling;
landfills ,md incinerators.
and source reduction.
First is a Journal Forum, in
which six observers from
diverse vantage points were
asked their views on how we
as a society can become
recyclers.
Then three writers a
waste industry leader, an
environmentalist, and a state
official each address a
controversial question: Are
landfills and incinerators a
valid, workable part ol solid
waste management in the
United States:'
Recycle Seattle
6847600
Recover - Recyc le • Reuse
Recycle Seattle picks up comingled recyclable trash from South
Seattle residents. After delivery to the plant, trash is separated by
machines and a sorting crew and then it is baled. In January 1989,
1,333 tons were handled. Northern Seattle uses trucks with separate
compartments for newspapers; mixed papers; cans and glass.
Residents do the sorting.
Soinf WVjsre Utility photo
Next, an article explains
"source reduction," an aspect
of solid waste control that is
receiving increased attention.
Then, taking an overview.
an article by Bruce \Yeddle.
Acting Director of KPA's
Division ol Municipal Solid
\Vasle. and his deputy, I'id
Klein, suggests a strategy
which could help get control
of the garbage; crisis.
Following this piece, an
article by a specialist wit h
the Natural Resources
Defense Council suggests
what the individual can do to
help curb waste. The possible
steps range from changes in
grocery shopping habits to
composting yard clippings.
Five short "situation
pieces" follow, each
describing a situation at the
grass roots involving garbage
problems. The locales
include Indianapolis.
Indiana, which accepted a
facility to burn waste: Prince
Cieurge's (lounly. Maryland,
which rejected an
incinerator: Fast l.ynie.
Connecticut, which has
focused on recycling: Florida.
which launched a solid waste
control program with
unusually broad political
support: and Islip. Xew York,
which had its garbage
returned after a long, famous
trip on a barge on a fruitless
disposal journey.
The issue then takes an
international turn, with a
report on how Japan has
learned to handle its garbage
after that country started
running out of landfill space
35 years ago.
Returning to a U.S.
emphasis, two articles
concern first, the incentives
that could make it pay to
start curbing the garbage tide,
and second, mediation
techniques that helped settle
a landfill dispute, this one in
Fast Troy. Wisconsin.
An article by John A.
Moore. FPA's Acting Deputy
Administrator as this
issue went to press, discusses
a controversial topic, medical
waste, explaining the
problem and what is being
dune about it.
The issue concludes with
an article by Joel S.
Hirschhorn. Senior Associate
at the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment,
which makes the case for
pollution prevention, a
calculated effort to stop
waste before it gets into the
environment in whatever
medium or form. '.-.
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United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Affairs (A-107)
Washington DC 20460
Volume 15
Number 2
March/April 1989
vvEPA JOURNAL
William K. Reilly, Administrator
Jennifer Joy Wilson, Assistant Administrator for External Affairs
R.A. Edwards, Acting Director, Office of Public Affairs
John Heritage, Editor
Jack Lewis, Assistant Editor
Ruth Barker, Assistant Editor
Marilyn Rogers, Circulation Manager
EPA is charged by Congress to
protect the nation's land. air. and
water systems. Under a mandate of
national environmental laws, the
agency strives to formulate and
implement actions which lead to a
compatible balance between
human activities and the ability of
natural systems to support and
nurture life.
The EPA Journal is published by
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency. The Administrator of EPA
has determined that the
publication of this periodical is
necessary in (he transaction of the
public business required by law of
this agency. Use ol funds for
printing this periodical has been
approved by the Director of the
Office of Management and Budget.
Views expressed by authors do not
necessarily reflect EPA policy.
Contributions and inquiries should
be addressed to the Editor (A-107).
Waterside Mall, 401 M St.. S.W..
Washington, DC 20460. No
permission necessary to reproduce
contents except copyrighted photos
and other materials.
CD
0-
111
The annual rate for subscribers in
the U.S. for the EPA journal is
Si 1.00. The charge to subscribers
in foreign countries is $13.75 a
year. The price of a single copy of
the EPA journal is Si.75 in this
country and $2.19 if sent to a
foreign country. Prices include
mail costs. Subscriptions to the
EPA journal as well as to olhor
federal government magazines are
handledonly by the U.S.
Government Printing Office.
Anyone wishing to subscribe to the
EPA journal should fill in the form
at right and enclose a check or
money order payable to the
Superintendent of Documents. The
requests should be mailed to:
Superintendent of Documents,
GPO, Washington, DC 20402.
An Interview with
William K. Reilly 2
A Profile of the
New Administrator
by Jack Lewis 7
Focusing on the
Garbage Crisis
An Interview with
Sylvia Lowrance 10
What's in the
Solid Waste Stream?
by Jack Lewis 15
A Forum:
How Can We
Become Recyclers? 18
Are Landfills and
Incinerators
Part of the Answer?
Three Viewpoints 22
Source Reduction:
Its Meaning and Its Potential
by Roy Popkin 27
A Strategy to Control
the Garbage Glut
by Bruce Weddle and
Edward Klein 30
What You Can Do
to Help
by Eric A. Goldstein 33
Five Situation Pieces:
— Indianapolis, Indiana
by Beulah Coughenour 35
— Prince George's
County, Maryland
by Lynda V. Mapes 36
— East Lyme, Connecticut
by Dennis J. Murphy, Jr., and
Peter L. Battles 37
— Florida
by George Kirkpatrick
How Japan Is Handling
Its Solid Waste
by Joanna Underwood 41
Making It Pay To Cut Waste
by Alyce M. Ujihara and Paul
R. Portney 44
Mediation: How It Worked
in East Troy, Wisconsin
by Patti Cronin 46
About Medical Waste
by John A. Moore 48
The Case for
Pollution Prevention
by Joel S. Hirschhorn 50
Letter to the Editor 52
38
— Islip, New York
by Frank R. Jones 40
Fron! Cover: Sfranded 6y political
squabbles, (he famous barge u'ith
Sslip. New York, garbage, and (lie
lug "Break of Daivn" sil near (he
Verraza no-Narrows Bridge in (lie
EPA Journal Subscriptions
N'eiv Vorfc City area in March
3987. See article on Page 40 about
Jsiip's ivasle handling program
a/!er !he garbage barge saga. Pholo
by Bill Davis for Newsday.
Design Credits:
Ron Farroh;
James R. Jngram:
Rober! Flanagan.
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I I Payment enclosed (Make checks payable to Superintendent of Documents)
ED Charge to my Deposit Account No
-------
An Interview with William K. Reilly
fn tin inlervii.'iv. Ki'A Journal
-------
I must say it worries me that much of
pollution regulation has become so
arcane and so specialized that only a
smaller ami smaller community of
people understands it. I think that's a
problem.
Those are the kinds of things that I'd
like to see addressed. I suspect, I might
add, that many of the cross-media
concerns that we face can he addressed
through program administration rather
than legislation.
There are, I have been warned by so
many people, very sensitive political
issues that are raised when anyone tries
to integrate legislation. EPA responds to
many Congressional committees, and
every issue thai arises has its proper
jurisdiction. We surely won't be able to
go with one single proposal that all ot a
sudden unites all of our programs in a
much simpler way and expect that to be
passed in this Congress or in the next
few years. Bui that's a direction I'd like
to see us move.
You've talked with the President
several times. Could you share with us
your impression of whether EPA is
likely to be elevated to Department and
Cabinet status sometime during the
next tour years?
£\ 1 don't know. There has been
legislation introduced in Congress to
create a Department and to elevate EPA
to Cabinet status. As a conservationist, I
have supported those initiatives. The
President has made clear to me that he
is not in favor of the idea tor the simple
reason that he would like a smaller.
more manageable Cabinet. He has, in
fact, moved some people out of the
Cabinet who once had Cabinet rank.
I don't know what is likely to happen.
There's considerable feeling in the
Senate in favor of making EPA a
Department; I've been exposed to the
idea frequently during my courtesy
Steve Delaney pholo
hearings. 1 think we'll just have to wait
and see. The President, I believe, is not
going to actively oppose those efforts.
He has an open mind on them.
Your predecessor at EPA, Lee
Thomas, has said that one of his major
goals in recent years has been to restore
a natural resources orientation to EPA
decision-making after so many years
spent focusing almost exclusively on
human health issues. Do you share this
goal and will you take further steps to
restore a balance there?
1\ 1 expect that wo will continue to
respect Lee's priority for natural systems
and perhaps even elevate it. To mi:, the
environment has always meant both the
protection of human health and the
stabilization of natural systems on
which all activity, including all
economic activity, fundamentally
depends.
I believe that both ot these concerns
are important to EPA. As a
conservationist, 1 have worked in my
own career on ground-water protection.
on wetlands management, on ha/.ardous
waste control, and a number of other
issues that cait across both human
health and natural systems concerns. In
the future; 1 would expect LPA to be
more involved in SOUK; ol the natural
systems and traditional environmental
protection concerns.
We have a society that is changing
very, very rapidly. The choices that
people make about where to settle and
how to organize development and
economic activity often have their first
consequences on natural systems, and
those have often served to warn us
about what's to come. Congestion is
Steve Deianey ptm
very often followed by air pollution
problems and the rest. 1 think that KPA
can do an effective job of environmental
leadership, but it's going to have to
involve itself across the spectrum.
focusing not just on human health but
on natural systems.
Q Many people at KPA still
remember Russell Train's years as
Administrator. You're known as a
Train protege. Would you share with us
any lessons you might feel you've
learned from your mentor?
/y. I've learned so much from Russ
Train, it would be hard to put it all
down. We've had a great relationship, I
was privileged to work for him on the
Council for Environmental Quality
(CEQ) in the early 1970s, and I've been
close to him ever since.
Russ gave me great advice on the day
of my appointment. He said, looking
MARCH/APRIL 1989
-------
hack on his own tenure, that when lie
left KPA, he could hardly walk; his back
was bothering him so much duo to both
lack of exercise and stress. So he
advised me. "Get the exercise. You're
going to need it."
That was one bit of advice he gave
me; he also made a second suggestion.
A day or two before, I had had 35
minutes alone with President-elect
Bush, and Train said, "When you get to
be my age, you'll want to remember
exactly what the President said to you
at a meeting like that. You won't ho able
to unless you write it down. So keep a
diary. Sit down every now and then and
jot down the significant things that take
place."
That's been the kind of relationship
we have had. I think Train has been an
extraordinarily graceful and reassuring
public: servant in the time that I've
known him. I've always had the sense
with Train that the right considerations.
the right values, were being brought to
bear on the problem. More than
anything else, I've learned from him
that you want to get your values clear
first. You want to know what you
believe about where public: policy can
best serve the public: and how it can do
it most effectively. A lot of the other
questions are subsidiary to the question
of bringing good values to bear—trying
to really make a difference.
Trying to make a contribution is the
way Russ thinks of his public: service. I
can rec:al! very early on when I was a
young lawyer on the CKQ staff, There
was a stockpile of nerve gas at a military
base in Alabama, and a chemist said
that this stuff was going to become
increasingly volatile and had to be
disposed of within about six months.
The question was whether it should go
into the ocean or how else it might be
disposed of.
Steve Delaney photo.
I remember that I gave '['rain some
advice about the politics of it, how
sensitive the situation was. and how
important it was for the CEQ to be a
good watchdog on all this and not give
in. We had made all sorts of
commitments that we would not
dispose of anything in the ocean; that
was a big Nixon priority at the time, But
Train responded by asking, in essence:
"What about when we go up to
Congress? The Congress is going to want
to hear what is the safest course and the
best choice for this stuff." We ended up
saying that, if we really had as little
time as this chemist said, ocean
disposal was the; only way to got rid of
the stuff.
I remember that Train just bit the
bullet on that one without any
apprehension. As soon as it was clear
that that was the best choice among a
lot of bad ones, even though it was
unpopular and embarrassing, that's
where we came out. The experience
taught me a lot about how best to ask
questions when problems come up,
irrespective of politics and the
rest.
Vj Some people are not too familiar
with the work of The Conservation
Foundation, which you were President
of until your appointment as EPA
Administrator. Could you share with us
the special mission of that organization
which you had been with for about 15
years, and your view of its major
achievements?
/\ I see the role of The Conservation
Foundation as being one of identifying
and advancing emerging ideas for
resolving environmental problems. We
don't have a membership. We have been
largely free of a lot of the political
pressure that affects interest groups in
our field. We have tried to see ourselves
as objective within the conservation
spectrum. We are a conservation
organization, but we believe that our
particular task is to identify and
advance policies that are sensitive not
just to improvement of the environment,
but to the social and economic; impacts
environmental policies entail.
In other words, we have considered
what we do as "real world" kind of
work. In the 1970s we got heavily
involved in dispute resolution through a
business environment program, largely
as a way to advance public policy. We
saw at that time that a number of
important issues were stalemated, and
the level of polarization and
confrontation in the society looked like
it might seriously impede our
environmental progress. We then went
out and enlisted people to do work on
all sorts of things: on toxic: substances
regulation, on export of hazardous
materials to the Third World, and most
recently on ground-water policy in a
forum chaired by Governor Babbitt of
Arizona, and then on wetlands policy in
a forum chaired by Governor Kean of
New Jersey.
In each case, our role was to bring
together a variety of people representing
different backgrounds and interests, and
then try to forge a consensus position
on divisive issues of environmental
policy.
In most of the instances I mentioned,
the efforts were marvelously successful.
For instance, the "no net loss" of
wetlands proposal that President Bush
picked up came right out of The
Conservation Foundation's forum. It was
the principal recommendation among a
hundred or so recommendations in the
national wetlands policy forum. We also
did three reports on the state of the
environment in the United States in the
1980s. Those were, I believe, the most
comprehensive analyses of
EPA JOURNAL
-------
William Reilly testifying
before the U.S. Senate
Committee on Public Works
and the Environment. At
confirmation hearings, Reilly
stressed that EPA should be
an advocate for the
environment and enforce
pollution cleanup laws.
e Delaney photo
environmental conditions and trends
ever undertaken by a private
organization. They were expensive. We
didn't want to do them, but we thought
that with all of the acrimony,
particularly in the early 1980s, and the
severe budget cuts that afflicted the
CEQ, reducing their capacity to do this
kind of comprehensive report, it was
necessary for somebody to step into the
role, an organization that could speak
with reasonable objectivity and
credibility on these questions. We took
on that challenge.
I think that's the emblematic function
of The Conservation Foundation: to
speak clearly, objectively, with
sensitivity about a whole range of
considerations that are involved in
making environmental policy, but
always forthrightly as
conservationists.
We've: spent some time exploring
your past. Now we'd like to explore
your views on issues facing LPA right
now, and likely to dominate the work
of the Agency in the years to come. One
of those issues is the fate of the world
environment. International
environmental problems are now more
prominent than ever: CFCs, the
Greenhouse Effect, and so on and so
forth. Will EPA have to change to he
able to cope with them, and are you
thinking of specific changes now?
/\ 1 think we will want to give a
much higher priority to international
activities in the future. I've had two
conversations with the President since
my appointment. On both occasions, he
has brought up with me questions of
international environmental policy.
That's a sign of the times. It's no
longer sufficient to think in terms of our
domestic responsibilities being
insulated from international concerns.
whether you're talking about acid rain
and our relationship with Canada, or
the Greenhouse Effect and our
relationship with the Third World.
There are going to be many things tor us
to do to carry out our responsibilities
vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
We are very significant producers of
carbon dioxide and other major
pollutants, and we have to be aware of
our international impact. We also have
to maintain our role of international
environmental leadership. I've noticed
that even in those countries whore the
United States is not so popular and it
might not he politic to acknowledge
U.S. leadership, there is a demand for
our expertise. They want our health
research. They want our
epidemiologies! information. They want
to know about the history of our
legislative requirements and
pollution-control technology. They want
everything we've done. They recogni/e
that would be valuable to them, whether
it's work we've done on air pollution or
hazardous waste or toxic substances. I'd
like to see us continue to play that role,
and do it much more actively and
aggressively in the future.
I think that to the United States, it's
an important part of foreign policy for
us to be genuinely helpful to other
nations as they try to manage their
environments, After all, it's in our
fundamental interest to help other
countries protect the part of the planet
they share with us anyway.
At present, the American economy
appears to be doing well, but federal
funds are in short supply. How will you
cope with the austerity that is
expected? What will your top priorities
be?
•i\ I see a number of priorities. I think
a very important area where EPA can
play a leadership role is in helping the
public and Congress understand
present-day choices affecting the
environment. We should help them
understand what are the more serious
environmental problems and play a role
in educating people to prepare for the
future.
The United States is going to undergo
significant changes in the years to come.
Managing our environment will require
major investments. It will require
changes in behavior. It will require
some reasonably significant changes in
our life-stylus. At EPA we are going to
have to take a leadership role in helping
define some of those choices, and
delineating what the future will bring us
if we fail to take action.
One thinks particularly ol municipal
waste. This society is going to have to
become much more disciplined in
dealing with waste, whether organi/.ing
waste for recycling and re-use, or for
disposal and incineration if that's got to
be the result. We've got to be more
disciplined about generating less waste
in the future and thinking of ways to do
that. Pollution prevention will, I expect,
be a very important priority ot mine,
though government regulation is only
one way of achieving that.
There is a very important educational
role that we've got to play at the same
MARCH/APRIL 1989
-------
At confirmation hearings, Reiily
told the committee, "it is in
everyone's interest to protect
the only planet we share, at a
time when evidence is
mounting of the Earth's
vulnerability to destabilization."
Sieve Deidney photo
time, and there is also a very important
function of working with states.
localities, environmental organ!/.ations.
and businesses to get the society pulling
together and making sure that the $80
billion or so of funds that are spent
annually on pollution control in the
United States are spent intelligently on
the things that really matter and
improve the environment for
us.
v«£ How do you expect the
atmosphere of environmental debate in
the 1990s to differ from what you've
encountered in the 1970s and 19»0s?
And, of course, you've been involved
and exposed a long time. Will there be
more confrontation or less?
/\ It's very hard to say at this point.
We are taking office at a time when I
think public expectations of the Hush
administration have suddenly become
quite high. We have moved from a
period when certainly the
environmental community was skeptical
to a moment when many of our
environmental group leaders are
speaking with great excitement and
anticipation about a number of the
initiatives that the Hush administration
has identified, whether it's "no net loss"
of wetlands or an international
conference on global warming or the
prospect of encouraging reauthorization
of the (Mean Air Act with significant
tonnage reductions of sulfur oxides. All
of these things are promises that the
Administration intends to keep.
1 would hope that, in that vein, wo
can move to address some of the really
difficult and historically divisive issues
in environmental policy with a little
less confrontation than we've had in the
past. But when one looks at the history
of Superfund—and it's going to
continue to be controversial for the next
couple of years—I don't want to be
naive or suggest that there are not going
to be some very difficult choices to
make: for example, budget choices, and
choices about economic impacts and
where they should be distributed in
society and who should pay for what.
Issues such as these are bound to
generate confrontation and contention.
But in Congress there's been a change in
the spirit of our relationships on
environmental policy, and that's
encouraging to me. I just hope it lasts.
I have been tremendously encouraged
by my conversations with Senator
Mitchell. Senator Moynihan. and other
members of the Senate Knvironmenl and
Public Works Committee, as well as
with other senators and members of the
House. I get the sense that they agree
with me on the need to get on with
things, that they want to see the
Administration be an active player on
environmental issues.
A key part of that will be greater
involvement by KPA in future legislative
debates. The President and I are
committed to that, and they're very
encouraged that that's the role I've; said
we want to take and expect to take. So I
think Congress is going to welcome our
participation. They may not support all
the proposals we make in every case.
but 1 think that they are pleased that we
are planning to stay actively involved.
That understanding has won us a good
deal of trust starting out. I hope we can
live up to it and maintain it.
From a more short-term
standpoint, what issues do you expect
are going to dominate your agenda
during the next six months?
/\ During the next six months we are
going to have some very significant
legislative and budgetary concerns.
We are. first of all, now looking at
some new budget priorities, changed
from the budget that the Reagan
Administration sent up just a few weeks
ago, and 1 suppose by the time this
appears, those will be known to the
public,
Secondly, we are preparing for the
reauthorization of the Clean Air Act and
looking at options on acid rain.
particularly on non-attainment and on
air toxics that we would hope to have
reasonably clear, at least from the point
of view of the Administration's position.
within the next !)() days.
We are then going to be involved in
the RCKA reauthorization debate, and
we expect to work out positions on that
and discuss them with Congress. These
things will dominate our near-term
agenda.
We'll al.so begin to prepare the budget
for the next fiscal year very shortly and
go into determining our priorities lor
submissions to the Office of
Management and Budget and
negotiations with them. That will take
us well into 1989.
We have, as you know, a number of
other things coming along. I am
particularly interested in Superfund,
which accounts for a very large portion
of the KPA budget; I want to get very
heavily involved in that as soon as 1
can, but not before the Clean Air Act
issue is well resolved.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
A Profile of
the New Administrator
by Jack Lewis
William K. Reilly. the widely
respected President of U'orld
Wildlife Fund and The Conservation
Foundation, takes EPA's helm at a
pivotal moment in the Agency's short
but eventful history. President George
Bush has promised to be more of an
environmentalist than his predecessor,
and many interpret his choice of Keilly
as EPA Administrator as a sign of
sincere commitment to that goal.
Reilly himself gave resounding
credence to that belief at his January 31.
1989, Senate confirmation hearing. The
Administrator-designate spoke fervently
of the need for a "new era" in EPA's
history: "We are at an historic moment,
characterized by urgency and
opportunity Rarely, if ever before,
has there been such a need for
leadership on the environment . . . [and]
I expect to be a strong advocate."
EPA's new Administrator lias
leadership traits that suit him for this
challenging role. It is expected that
EPA, already the scene of negotiated
rulemaking and other
non-confrontational administrative
strategies, will greatly benefit from
Reilly's special gifts, both as an
individual and a manager.
Reilly's proclivity for drawing people
together will not just be directed
outward, toward the regulated
community: it can also be expected to
bring new cohesion to the internal
operations of EPA. In September 1988.
two months before his appointment.
Reilly criticized the "heavily fragmented
system" of environmental regulation
that now prevails at EPA. Also in 1988.
he sponsored a Conservation
Foundation proposal for a "model"
omnibus Environmental Protection Act
that would reflect the cross-media
realities of today's environment.
Although such a law is unlikely in the
foreseeable future, a push toward a
simpler and better coordinated
regulatory apparatus will certainly be
one of Reilly's major goals (See
interview).
President George
Bush conducted the
swearing-in ceremony
for EPA's new
Administrator, William
K. Reilly, on February 8
at EPA's Waterside
Mall headquarters.
Steve Oe'jney jj
Reilly's personal style—gentlemanly
and soft-spoken—makes him the ideal
mediator, effective at bridging
differences even when antagonisms are
intensely felt and there seems to be no
common ground for agreement. He is
also known for his firm grasp of facts
and his commitment to principle. The
importance of ethical "values" is a
theme to which Reilly refers frequently
in conversation, and he attributes that
facet of his thinking-- like so much
else—to his tutelage under Russell
Train.
Reilly. born 49 years ago in Decatur.
Illinois, has compiled an impressive
professional record. After attending
public high school in Kail River.
Massachusetts, he completed his
undergraduate studies at Yale in 1962.
Reilly then moved on to Harvard for his
law degree, which he received in 19(if>.
That same year he married Eli/abeth
Bennett Buxton, the mother ol his two
daughters. After serving for two years as
a Captain in the U.S. Army. Keilly next
earned a master's degree in urban
planning from Columbia I'niversity.
awarded in 1971.
While studying at Columbia, Reilly
received his first exposure to the
burgeoning field of environmentalism,
As Associate Director of the Urban
Policy Center at Urban America. Inc.. lie
co-authored a report for the Public Laud
Law Review Commission that predicted
what future demands cities would make
on public land. Ever since, land use and
land conservation have remained among
Reilly's keenest interests,
As a senior staff member at the CEQ,
from 1970 to 1972. Reilly's
responsibilities included land use.
public lands, urban growth policy, and
historic: preservation. During the next
year, from 1972 to 1973. he headed a
Task Korce on Land Use ami Urban
Crowth, chaired by Laurence S.
Rockefeller; this task force produced a
popular report called The Use of Lcind.
Reilly's career moved into high gear
in 1973 when he was named President
of The Conservation Foundation, a
high-profile Washington-based think
tank committed to steering public policy
in the direction of decisions that
improve the quality of the environment
and ensure wise use of natural
MARCH-APRIL 1989
-------
While he was President of
World Wildlife Fund and The
Conservation Foundation,
Reilly visited Pasachoa
National Park, Ecuador, to
meet with representatives of
no n-govern mental
organizations that do
conservation work. World
Wildlife Fund (WWF) helps
with training.
Diane Wood photo WWF
resources. Reilly's land-use concerns
found creative application at the
Foundation, which sponsors
action-oriented research into a wide
variety of matters related to
environmental policy.
During the past 15 years, the
Foundation has also taken an unusually
strong interest in toxics and pollution
control. For example, Reilly was
instrumental in the 1984 founding of
(Mean Sites, Inc., the public-private
partnership that hroke the logjam in
ha/.ardous waste site cleanups. He has
also maintained an active interest in
Third World environmental concerns,
and traveled extensively in developing
countries.
In recent years, Reilly has scored
successes with his efforts to secure
dialogue and cooperation among
frequently polarized business and
environmental leaders. One such widely
applauded breakthrough occurred in
November,1988 when 25 previously
warring environmentalists,
industrialists, and developers made a
public: commitment to a "no net loss"
goal for U.S. wetlands, a resource
heretofore subject to dangerously rapid
depletion. These same people, so
harmonious by late 1988, had scarcely
been on speaking terms when Reilly
first coaxed them to convene for a
meeting in July 1987.
Another facet of Reilly's background
deserves mention. In 1985, The
Conservation Foundation merged with
the Russell Train-led World Wildlife
Fund, a major organization with a
budget of $30 million, six times greater
than that of the Foundation itself. Reilly
became the President of the merged
Foundation/Fund, where Train is now
Chairman of the Board. Today, as before
1985, the World Wildlife Fund is
committed to the preservation of
endangered species and their habitats
all over the globe. Under Reilly's brief
stewardship, its membership has
undergone a spectacular rise, tripling in
four short years.
Since Reilly was already a frequent
visitor to the Third World for The
Conservation Foundation, his recent
experiences with the Fund have simply
amplified his already pronounced
international orientation. During an era
in EPA's history when international
issues are suddenly a top
priority—whether acid rain or the
Greenhouse Effect or CFCs—Reilly's
hands-on experience is expected to
make a valuable contribution,
EPA's new Administrator is also
likely to be more ecologically oriented
than many of his predecessors. Because
of his working background. Reilly is
interested in protecting the health not
just of people and wildlife but of the
biospheres in which they live.
Repeatedly in recent years, his
predecessor, Lee M. Thomas, has called
for a move away from EPA's almost
exclusive concern with environmental
threats to human health. Reilly, too. is
committed to continuing that quest lor a
sounder balance between
never-to-be-neglected human health
goals and the long-term challenge of
preserving for future generations both
the ecosphere and our natural resources.
Everyone at EPA wishes
Administrator Reilly the best of success.
both personal and organizational, during
his years at EPA. All who now work
here are eager for a period of more
aggressive environmental action at the
federal level, and it is inspiring to know
that our new leader wholeheartedly
shares that goal. Indeed, in every
respect, William K. Reilly appears to be
the right man in the right place at the
right time, a
(Lei-vis is Assistant Kdifor of EPA
Journal.)
The Fresh Kills landfill on Staten
Island, New York.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Focusing on the
Garbage Crisis
Frequent reports about a garbage crisis in America have been
appearing in the news media. In the remainder of this
issue of EPA journal, various experts explain aspects of the
problem. In addition, a diversity of points of vunv is
included, recognizing the controversial nature of garbage and
the best way to deal with it. And different local situations are
described, to illustrate how garbage problems are being
addressed.
Photo by William C Franz
:tr
MARCH/APRIL 1989
-------
An Interview with
Sylvia Lowrance
Is fi solid ivusle crisis upon us? \Vhcif
ociuseci it? U'licit is the .solution? EPA
Journal asked tJie.se and other questions
nhniil solid ivrj.ste issues ami KPA's
solid i\-(isl(! policies in an interview
with Syh'id I.mvnince, Director of the
Agency's Olh'ce ol Solid U'nsle. The
interview follows:
vJ Some people are talking about a
solid waste crisis in the United States,
others seem geared toward business as
usual. Just how serious do you think
the problem is at the present time?
/\ 1 think the problem is very surions.
and it's gelling more serious every day.
We now produce about H>0 million tons
of solid waste per annum in this
country. By the year 2000. we're 540ing
to he producing 190 million tons
annually. The Fact that we're running
out ol solid waste capacity in this
country in find of itself presents a crisis.
Hut the real issue is that the crisis we
face today is different in different
sections of the country.
hi some sections of the country it's
very acute today. They literally do not
have any more landfill space. In other
sections of the country, it's a crisis
that's going to overwhelm them soon, if
localities and citi/.ens don't take steps
today to plan for tomorrow. So. it's a
very real crisis, although it's effect on
different localities may differ right now.
V^/ Why is the subject suddenly in the
newspapers and on television so much?
Did the problem sneak up on us in
some way?
A\ I don't think the problem sneaked
up on us. 1 think that a couple of
incidents recently really brought the
solid waste issue to the forefront of
public consciousness. First and foremost
was the Long Island garbage barge in
1987. I think that most Americans were
startled at the prospect of the United
States having to export our garbage to
other countries. And, I think that
offended the average American.
1 think that led to additional focus on
the part of the public on what was going
Steve Delaney pholo
on in their local community, and it was
clear upon examination over the last
few years that most communities wen;
either running out of landfill space in
their own locality, or they wore
exporting their garbage not just to other
countries, but to other states. At this
point in time, we predict that about a
third of our landfills are going to close
in the next few years.
Would you tell us about EPA's
national strategy tor solid waste? What
is it? When will it take effect?
A
EPA's strategy is called "An
Agenda for Action." That was a very
conscious call because the basic tenet of
the strategy is that everyone has to take
action. Not just EPA. but everyone: the
individual citizen, industry, local
government, state governments, as well
as the federal government. 1 think what
people can expect from the federal
government is a stronger leadership
role.
We intend to be leaders in what we
do best, and that's the development of
new, cost-effective technologies that
localities can use, not just for landfills,
but also for treatment of solid waste and
for recycling. We're going to be
facilitating development of new
technologies in the private sector.
through increased efforts in our R and D
program, where we will be assisting
new industries in the development ol
new technologies for solid waste;.
We plan to take a much more activist
role and have already started to do so.
The first thing is to develop new and
more protective standards for landfills.
So to the extent that landfills are still
used in the future, these new standards
are going to set new minimum technical
requirements on municipal landfills that
assure a greater level of protection.
Also at EPA we're going to provide
national leadership on source reduction.
One key to solving not just the volume
issue for garbage, but also the toxicity
issue, is an active source reduction
program.
The other thing th.it people can
expect from EPA is education. Everyone
needs to be educated about what the
management options are lor municipal
solid waste. How many different ways
are there to manage solid waste? We've
got landfilling. Many people use
incineration. And there are also new
and innovative ways of managing
garbage, new ways of recycling, and
new ways that you can approach source
reduction. We intend to educate the
public as well as local government
officials about what their options are.
What's EPA's role vis-a-vis that of
states and localities, what about
public/private arrangements, and so on?
I\ I'd like to emphasi/.e the fact that
to solve the solid waste crisis that we're
facing in this country, everyone has to
play a role. No individual and no
institution can do it on its own. Again.
in terms of the federal government, 1
think ours is a role of leadership, it is a
role of research and education.
Local governments clearly are on the
front line of this problem. Local
governments and their citizens have to
plan for their future, they have to deal
now with siting issues, to site new
facilities to manage the waste that will
be produced, and foster programs of
source reduction and recycling. They
have to plan for such programs ami they
have to fund them.
As for state programs and state
governments, their role is overall
regulation management ami permitting
of local modes of waste management, as
well as coordinating the federal
government's liaison with the locality.
It's also the states' responsibility to
educate citizens, to provide technical
assistance to localities in doing their
planning, and in planning for the future.
Are you daunted by the
educational challenge that's ahead; is it
a challenge the likes of which we've
never seen before?
/I. I think there's a tremendous
challenge for anyone in government
these days who is dealing with any
waste issue. I think there's a great deal
of public concern with regard to solid
waste and as well us hazardous waste. I
think the public perception of waste is
10
EPA JOURNAL
-------
EPA is encouraging
Congress to modify the
law and create a
special category for
municipal incinerator
ash. This main ash
conveyor has been in
use for two years in
Olmsted County,
Minnesota's,
waste-to-energy
facility.
one of belching smoke stacks, of an
abandoned Superfund site that's posing
a significant hazard or destroying the
environment in their area. Today, we
have new technologies, we have new
ways o( doing business. We've
advanced.
And, I think the challenge of
government is to convey to our citi/.ens
what is possible today — that safe waste
management is possible, that we have
new and safe technologies, which, if
they are properly operated, can ho
utilized safely by the community. That
to me is the enormous challenge facing
us all.
There are some landfill
regulations that your office is working
on right now. Could you tell us how
strong they will be, and what are their
special features?
ix We hope to have those new
regulations out in final form this fall.
They are going to be very strong
regulations. They're going to require
most existing and now landfills that an:
sited in the future, to substantially
improve how they're designed and how
they're opera ted.
We're going to establish in those rules
minimum standards for where these
facilities can be located, how (hoy must
be designed to ensure that materials
from these landfills don't migrate and
pose a problem to health in the
environment. They're also going to
require monitoring, so that if something
does happen it is detected immediately
and we know that there's a problem so
that it can be cleaned up immediately
and never does pose a significant health
problem.
Those regulations are going to be very
costly for many localities to implement,
but the cost has to be weighed against
the benefits that are going to be derived
from having that type of upgraded
standard.
Will these new regulations drive
up the cost of disposal considerably
and, if they do, do you think they will
make other alternatives more desirable?
1\ In many cases the new landfill
rules will increase the cost of disposal.
But, one has to understand that we have
not, historically, been paying the true
cost of disposal. The cost of disposal in
the past often hasn't included the
standards that are necessary to abate a
problem or to prevent a problem from
occurring in the first place, that can
later cost hundreds of millions of
dollars to chum up, and can cause great
loss.
As to the second part of your
question, yes, the cost of waste disposal
has already gone up in some sections ot
the country to SlOO a ton. Si 20, or $140
per ton. With the added cost of the new
regulations, I think other alternatives
will become much more attractive. In
fact, in some instancies, we believe that
the exist of a local recycling program
will actually become lower than land
disposal.
Do you think the small
communities will be able to comply
with these more complicated and
expensive landfill regulations?
/\ I think small communities will
over time be able to comply with these
regulations. In the short term, small
communities face a severe financial
problem, not just for financing solid
waste, but they have increased
responsibilities in almost every area of
environmental protection and increased
cost of sewage treatment, increased cost
of providing adequate and safe drinking
water supplies to their citi/.ens.
The local decision-maker faced with
making choices on how to spend that
single dollar is going to have to make
choices on how to better manage these
programs, and the local decision-maker
in small communities is going to have
to look at new and innovative ways of
delivering these services to their
citizens.
Some small communities already are
establishing public private partnerships
in the solid waste area. They're assuring
that their citizens understand the true
cost of disposal, and passing on these
costs to their citizens, so that their
citizens are more likely to look for
better ways of managing their waste, or
in fact minimizing the amount of waste
they produce.
In addition, main' small communities
are looking at regionalization, Rather
than bearing the cost of operating a
small landfill in the locality, they're
combining with other small localities,
so that they can share the costs.
What role can individual citizens
play to ensure that local response is all
that it should be?
/\ Local government is highly
dependent on its citizens' involvement
in its decisions. In the solid waste area
in particular you have increased citizen
involvement and oversight of how their
solid waste is being managed and where
it's being managed. So I think we have a
strong grass-roots movement that is
MARCH/APRIL 1989
11
-------
going to assure that local governments,
small and large, are looking at sound
waste management practices, and to the
extent they're using private companies.
looking at their environmental track
record to make sure that they know how
to manage waste saleh .
Why it is so difficult to get
incinerators sited? Are they really as
dangerous as people think they are?
.A. I think we face the same problem
with solid waste incinerators that we
faced with many modes of waste
management in this country. What we're
dealing with is past images and past
practices. And many of our citizens are
still concerned that history is going to
repeat itself.
I think, again, what is important to
understand is that we've made
advances, that we have regulatory
programs on the books, that the federal
government and the states have active
enforcement programs, and that we have
new technologies. We have to inform
citizens that incinerators can be safely
designed, and that then; are
state-of-the-art incinerators that can be
safely run and not pose a public health
risk.
IJ Is there any specific new
technology you would like to speak
briefly about?
/\ One example concerns air
emissions. KPA recently published a
guidance document on a state-of-the-art
technological design that will ensure
that emissions from a municipal
incinerator are not harmful to human
health or the environment.
To the best of our knowledge, all of
the waste energy facilities that are being
planned in this country at this time are
planning on using that state-of-the-art
technology.
Many cities have incinerators that
produce fly ash and ash, but there is a
great deal of confusion over how
they're supposed to dispose of it. What
should cities be doing about the ash
program, and how is the federal
government trying to help out?
•f\ That confusion stems from a
statutory provision in our federal RCRA
law which treats some municipal
incinerator ash as non-hazardous by
law. However, other municipal
incinerator ash that may be identical but
is produced in a slightly different
fashion may in some circumstances be
considered hazardous.
From our perspective that doesn't
make technical sense. Ash material from
municipal incinerators should be
managed safely. We are encouraging
Congress to modify the law to create a
special category for municipal
incinerator ash. For that special waste
category we would develop special
management standards tailored to the
ash material.
In the meantime, on the part of the
federal government, we are providing
technical assistance to localities that are
trying to plan for their ash management,
and informing them as to the standards
we think are appropriate for the
particular ash.
deal with the waste materials that they
produce. And in fact we've got to
educate our citizens that it's in their
interest not to produce as much waste
as they're currently producing.
Are other industrial countries
reaching the same impasse as the
United States with regard to landfills
and incineration, and what can we
learn from them?
f\ I think we and other countries
share our successes as well as our
problems. In some cases, I think other
countries have developed new
technologies on a local level, and new
ways of managing their waste that we in
the United States can learn from.
Certainly some of the European and
Canadian programs for recycling are
models on the local grass-roots level.
On the other hand, the United States
continues to make significant strides in
incineration as well as treatment and
reuse technology, and we're sharing
these advances with other countries. All
of us face a garbage problem — of course.
especially in the industrialized world.
What, if anything, can we do with
the "not in my backyard" syndrome
that impedes both landfill and
incineration sites?
l\ The most important thing goes
back to a theme that I have repeated
over and over again, and that's one of
public education. It's incumbent on
those of us in government, those in the
waste management industry, as well as
local and state governments, to educate
our citizens about the true cost of
disposal.
Many citizens don't consider the fact
that this package that they're throwing
in their garbage can today has to be
placed somewhere tomorrow, and may
pose an environmental problem
tomorrow, if it's not managed safely.
We've got to make our citizens much
more aware of their responsibility to
Now we'd like to ask a few
questions about alternatives to landfills
and incineration: for example, recycling
and source reduction. The waste
management industry has been growing
very rapidly and with great
sophistication in recent years. Is its
new-found success and profitability
leading to further entrenchment of
conventional disposable oriented
methods, and are we missing some of
the more ecologically advanced
alternatives?
/v I think that the waste management
industry in this country is at the
forefront of looking at new ways of
managing our garbage. We have to
recognize that for the foreseeable future,
we're going to need all modes of waste
management. We need to source reduce
and recycle just as much as we possibly
can. but we're still going to need
treatment facilities and we're still going
to need land disposal facilities, to deal
with the entire waste volume that we're
producing today, and will be producing
over the next decade.
The waste management industry in
this country has seen this, I believe, as a
lucrative market, and in fact many
localities and states are working with
the waste management industry to site
new recycling facilities, and to work on
source reduction.
According to a recent news report,
the market for recycled newspapers has
collapsed, and reports also indicate
that there isn't enough garbage to keep
some incinerators going. Are these
reports bad news for the solid waste
management industry?
/\ Actually. I'm very optimistic about
the prospects for recycling. We
understand that markets are expanding
and that the capacity to handle
newspaper and other materials is
growing and will continue to grow. 1 am
aware that in a small number of cases.
the supply of paper has been created
before the capacity to handle that
supply has had a chance to develop. As
a result, the value of newspaper has
dropped dramatically in those instances.
We think that this is a temporary
problem and that over the long haul, the
supply and the capacity will get into
synch.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Collection day.
Steve Delaney photo
With respect to the incinerator point.
I think that is becoming less of a
problem because localities that choose
incinerators as part of their integrated
waste managment system are now
taking recycling into account when they
design the si/.e of their incinerators. For
those communities that did not take
recycling into account in si/.ing their
incinerator, hut now wish to recycle
newsprint. I would suggest that they
look to neighboring communities for
garbage to keep their incinerator going
and then recycle what they can. In
times of capacity shortage, this
approach can help both the neighboring
communities and the community with
the "oversized" incinerator.
waste stream. We know that lead and
cadmium are great contributors to the
toxicity of municipal ash. We in the
federal government and those in
industry have to track back to more of
our products to look at what we're using
in producing those products and look
ultimately at preventing the use of
toxics in the first place in the products
that we're producing. And that's really
the source reduction challenge of the
future.
You mentioned source reduction.
We'd like to know what it can become.
What is its potential?
/i Source reduction, is solid waste
not entering the municipal waste stream
in the first place. There's great promise
for source reduction. One aspect is to
reduce the volume ol the material, the
other is to reduce its toxicity.
You look at tht! municipal solici waste
stream in this country, and the vast
majority of it is made up of paper and
yard waste. In terms of yard waste,
composting can take care of as much as
1H percent of the waste stream. It never
enters the waste stream. So there is
great promise.
In terms of toxicity, we deal with a
significantly more difficult issue. We
have to do more work in this country to
identify and eliminate the sources of the
toxic components in our municipal
What can Congress do? Can
Congress help to institutionalize source
reduction?
/v Congress certainly can help us in
encouraging both source reduction and
recycling, and helping to pave the way
for their implementation. As to the need
for particular legislation at this point in
time, I don't believe that we need
legislation, because we haven't really
reached the limits in terms of what we
can do in source reduction and
recycling under current law.
What kind of changes in
packaging do you believe are possible
to foster source reduction?
*» The issue of packaging is one of
the more difficult issues that we have to
deal with in source reduction. It's very
simple for many of us to say packaging
materials should be reduced by
three-quarters. But one has to look
behind why the packages are created the
way they are, and why packaging
material is required. Some current
packaging materials are being used to
protect health, or to increase the
shelf-life of a product, or for other
beneficial purposes. I believe we're
going to have to look at the balance that
needs to be struck between reducing the
municipal waste stream and meeting
other societal needs as well, in terms of
health protection, convenience.
shelf-life, and economics.
There is a great deal more known in
this country about source reduction in
industrial terms, in terms of reducing
the amounts of toxics by changing
chemical processes and plants than
there is about source reduction in
packaging and consumer goods. FI'A
plans to work very closely with industry
to encourage a dialogue among the
various industries about where there are
opportunities to deal with the packaging
issue.
Some people are suggesting that
we should be recycling as much as 80
percent of our garbage. Is that realistic?
I\ We've established in the "Agenda
for Action" a goal of 25 percent source
reduction and recycling by 1!)()2. We
believe that is achievable, and many
communities can and will exceed it. In
fact, many communities already believe
more is achievable and have set higher
goals for themselves: 35 percent to 40
percent is not uncommon on the part of
many states and localities. 1 am not
aware of any community in this country
or elsewhere that has achieved HO
percent recycling.
In terms of the future. I think that
based on our experience in trying to
reach our 1992 goal, we'll better he able
to assess how much further we can
push source reduction and recycling tor
the future.
Do you sense that we have the
nationwide support for recycling, the
kind of backing from citi/.ens and
companies and so on that we would
need to really make it happen?
/A. 1 believe we have very strong
support for both source reduction and
recycling in this country. Almost every
town, township, city in this country that
we hear about today either has put in
place a recycling program or is planning
to put one in.
Are there legal requirements for
recycling that are in the offing at the
federal level?
/i Given the high level of interest on
the part of localities and citizens in
MARCH APRIL 1989
-------
putting recycling programs in place, I
don't believe there's a need for federal
legislation mandating recycling. We
should wait and see the results of all the
grass-roots efforts that are going on
before we contemplate the need for
federal legislation.
Where do plastics fit into the
overall solid waste situation?
/\ Plastics are an important
component of the municipal solid waste
stream, because they make up about six
or seven percent of the weight of the
waste stream. But they also tend to be
very light-weight, and some are very
bulky. And for that reason we need to
deal with them as part of the solid
waste crisis. The plastics industry at
this point in time is undertaking a great
deal of research on how to increase
recycling of plastics. Right now there is
recycling of plastic milk jugs and of
plastic soda containers. The plastics
industry is looking at new ways to
increase the recycling of plastic goods.
In addition, industry is looking at
degradability of plastics, and new
formulations of plastics that are
degradable are coming on the market.
The plastics industry is really taking the
initiative to deal with the plastics
pollution problem.
What about car batteries and
tires?
/ V Car batteries and tires arc; two of
the problem components of our
municipal waste stream. Both pose
serious public health and environmental
problems, and need to be
source-reduced and recycled. Many car
batteries already are recycled, and we
think many more need to be. Many
states have buy-back or deposit
requirements, where they make sure
these materials are being recycled.
There are new techniques and new
technologies being experimented with
for recycling tires. But we also ought to
remember source reduction for tires in
particular, One aspect of source
reduction is increasing use for life. An
80.000-mile tire will last a lot longer
than a 30,000-mile tire, and thus assure
that we don't have as many tires in our
municipal waste stream. Also consumer
buying habits can influence
manufacturers to produce products with
longer useful lives.
Talk about resource recovery,
where we're suggesting that it's kind of
an offshoot of recycling. What kind of
resources are most readily recovered.
what are your easy targets there?
1\ Clearly, aluminum is one of the
primary targets, and most aluminum
cans are already being recycled. Paper.
and paper products are easily recycled:
we know the technology. The challenge
is to make sun; that we have stable
markets for recycled paper. The federal
government certainly can provide a
leadership role in looking at procuring
recycled paper for its own use. And
we're going to encourage not just that
we do that within EPA. but that we do
that government-wide.
In addition, i think we have to look at
the whole issue of yard waste in the
municipal waste stream. There should
be much more emphasis on back-yard
composting. Very simple technologies
are available! and can be used today.
All of these changes are going to
cost a lot of money. Will it all balance
out in the end?
r\ I think that the benefits we gain
over time through better and safer
management of our solid waste will
cancel out any added costs that we
incur in the short run. First of all, we
are for the first time as a nation
considering the true cost of disposal.
That's why tipping fees are going up at
local landfills. We understand the true
cost of safe disposal, The comparative
costs of modes of waste management
now dictate more advanced modes of
waste management, and clearly call for
increased source reduction.
Bob Palmer. Springfield, Missouri, News-leader
In addition to the benefits of safe
management in terms of heath
protection, we also have a strong history
in this country of resource management,
and preservation of precious natural
resources. And 1 think there's increasing
citizen awareness that if we
source-reduce in our garbage, we
preserve the natural resources that we
so badly need for the future of this
country.
How do you feel about where
we're going to be, how we're going to
come out in a year, five years, 10 years,
15 years?
More than any other issue that I've
worked at in my career at EPA, 1 see
more national consensus on the issue of
municipal solid waste than I've seen on
any issue that we've dealt with in at
least the last decade. All parties,
industry, local citi/ens. local and state
governments, all the people who have
been working with us in pulling
together the national "Agenda for
Action" for municipal solid waste, agree
that we have a problem on our hands.
but everyone agrees that there an;
solutions. And one of the bright points
in developing the "Agenda for Action"
was realizing that we all, despite many
past differences, agree on what we all
need to do to solve the crisis.
With that kind of agreement and
consensus, along with the grass roots
activities that are growing in every
section of our country, I'm convinced
over the next five or 10 years, we'll
make fantastic progress in new source
reduction and recycling programs and
dramatically upgrade our modes of
treatment and landfilling of what is left.
14
EPA JOURNAL
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What's in
the Solid Waste Stream?
By Jack Lewis
3 million tons ;.i year in the United
States
When considering possible
approaches to any problem, it
helps to take stock of its key
characteristics. Solid waste is more
difficult to characterize than some
problems because it is a hugely complex
phenomenon that is in constant flux
every day. varying from season to
season and from place to place.
Social and media attention to the
problem are also subject to fluctuation.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was
fashionable to condemn U.S.
consumerism and to predict that the
nation would be buried in its own
garbage. Then hazardous waste stole the
spotlight in the late 1970s and. in the
form of Superfuiul, held it for most of
the 1980s.
How times have changed! With
landfills at or nearing capacity (and new
sites in short supply), with incineration
siting stymied and costs dramatically
rising, Americans are now taking a fresh
look at solid waste. Kspeciallv in the
wake of 1987's Lslip barge fiasco, an
awareness has taken hold that L'.S.
society really is going to have to deal
with the throw-away problem that just
won't go away.
The problem is compounded by the
fact that government and industry have
not done a very systematic: job of
gathering data about the municipal
waste stream. Data does exist for the
decades since World War 11, but only
recently has it become more thorough
and comprehensive as a result of
redoubled efforts at the national, state.
and local level. However, even on the
basis of the limited data now available.
it is possible to identify the major
components of the nonhazardous waste
stream, at ieast in their broad national
parameters. It is also possible to speak
with some authority about pasl and
future trends.
Data gathered since I960 is not only
revealing but to a surprising extent
encouraging, because it shows that
measurable progress has already been
MARCH'APRiL 1989
15
-------
Rubber, leather, textiles, wood - 8.1
Yard wastes - 17.9%
Food wastes - 7.9%
Plastics - 6.5%
Miscellaneous inorganic wastes - 1.6°/<
achieved, For example, during the
quarter century from 1960 to 1986, gross
discards of municipal solid waste in the
United States grew from 87.5 million
tons per year to nearly 158 million tons.
Net figures are less misleading,
however, lor they show the situation
offer energy recovery and recycling
processes an: taken into account. From
1960 to 1986, net discards increased
from 81.7 million tons in 1960 to 131.2
million tons. The gross increase during
that quarter century was 80 percent,
while the net increase was only (SO
percent, a full 20 percent lower.
An awareness has taken hold
that U.S. society really is
going to have to deal with the
throw-away problem that just
won't go away.
Bv th(! veai 2000, that net figure of
131 million tons per annum is projected
to rise only 4 percent, to 130.8 million
tons, while the gross figure climbs 22
percent to nearly 193 million tons. This
is an indication of how energy recovery
and recycling techniques, of the sort
discussed elsewhere in this h'PA
Journal, can lend to progress, at first
gradual hut nonetheless real.
What components go to make up
these millions of tons of garbage? The
breakdown is usually according to
material, product, and source. The pie
chart on this page provides a visual
representation of the material ami
product percentages of the waste stream.
Waste? sources will be analy/ed later in
the article.
Before getting down to specifics, one
can speak of broad trends. Changes in
what we consume, our life-Styles, and
even the way we package what we
purchase have had a dramatic effect on
our waste stream. Over the past 25
years, we have seen greater reliance on
prepared, pre-packaged foods, and less
consumption oi loose, hulk items such
as vegetables I mm tood markets or loose
nuts and bolts from hardware stores.
Paper and paperboard - 41.0°
Metals - 8.7%
Glass - 8.2%
Gross discards, by weight, of municipal
solid waste materials, 1986
Beverage containers have changed from
refillable glass bottles to steel cans, to
aluminum cans, and most recently to
plastic. Advertising has changed as
well, with more catalogs and bulk-mail
advertising.
In addition to all the changes in what
goes into the waste stream, we have
seen changes in what we pull out of our
waste for recycling. Newspapers and
certain other types of paper, aluminum
cans, and glass containers, as well as
discarded appliances, have been and
will continue to be recycled. However,
recycling rates will continue to vary as
market conditions and other factors
affect these different materials. The
figures provided here reflect net
quantities that remain after current
recycling processes are completed.
Materials
What trends in the waste stream do
those net figures reveal? Food wastes
have remained relatively constant at
12.5 million tons, and are expected to
remain so through the year 2000. This is
partly because U.S. population growth
is negligible, but it is also a reflection of
the improved efficiency of our food
packaging. Waste plastics, on the other
hand, surged from 3 million tons in
1970 to 10.3 million tons in 1986. and
are expected to climb to 15.6 million
tons by 2000. Paper and paperboard.
which are frequently used in
conjunction with plastics in American
packaging, continue their spectacular
growth: from 24.5 million tons in 1960
to 36.5 million tons in 1970, from 50.1
million tons in 1986 to an expected 66
million tons in 2000.
Glass, on the other hand, is a waste
that appears to have reached its peak in
the vicinity of 13 million tons per
annum. Rubber, leather, textiles, and
wood constitute another traditional
category that appears to have readied its
peak, at the same approximate quantity.
Products
What product trends are most apparent
now? The biggest increase in the past 26
years has been in the category of
nondurable goods, such as clothing,
newspapers, and other mm packaging
paper products, that are discarded
within one year of production. These
catapulted from 15.1 million tons to
35.1 million tons, and are expected to
grow to 47.5 million tons by the year
2000. Even durable goods, such as
furniture and appliances, are beginning
to show up in the waste stream more
Changes in what we consume,
our life-styles, and even the
way we package what we
purchase have had a dramatic
effect on the waste stream in
the United States.
rapidly than they did in the past.
Having already jumped trom 9.1 million
tons in 1960 to 19.2 million tons in
1986, they are expected to reach 23
million tons by 2000.
Trends in containers and packaging
are more difficult to analyze. Net
discards of these materials have climbed
steadily from 24 million tons in I960 to
42.7 million tons in 1986; they are
expected to reach 50.7 million tons in
the year 2000. But their percentage of
municipal solid waste by weight has
actually remained constant at about 30
percent. This is partly because the
newer packaging materials are lighter
weight than their predecessors.
Unfortunately, they are often bulkier.
and since they are usually composites ot
paper, foil, and plastics, they are
difficult or impossible to recycle.
In addition to the substances already
described, there are other wastes that
are often co-managed with municipal
solid waste: municipal sludges, waste
combustion ash, industrial wastes, and
construction and demolition wastes.
These materials are not included in the
composite weight figures already cited,
but thev can be substantial. For
EPA JOURNAL
-------
instance, wastewater sludges amounted
to over 40 million tons in 1986,
municipal waste combustion ash to 3.8
million tons, and nonhazardous
industrial wastes to a whopping 430
million tons. Fortunately, most
nonhazardous industrial wastes are
managed on-site by the generating
industries, but some are landfilled at
muncipal solid waste landfills, as is the
majorit}' of wastewater sludges and
combustion ash. Therefore, although
technically not part of the municipal
solid waste stream, these substances do,
in reality, have a very great impact.
Many"readers may wonder what is the
relationship of the nonhazardous
municipal waste stream to hazardous
waste. There is some overlap, since
small quantities of hazardous waste do
enter the municipal solid waste stream
from households and small businesses.
Nevertheless, the great mass of U.S.
hazardous waste is strictly segregated
from municipal solid waste and handled
in a much more rigorous fashion.
Sources
Who puts the various types of waste
into the municipal solid waste stream'.11
Of course, there is some overlap among
the different categories, but the
predominant source, whatever it is
determined to be, is the key to how
municipal solid waste is classified. The
principal sources of municipal solid
waste may be characterized as follows:
• Residential: Waste from single and
multiple-family homes.
• Institutional: Waste from schools
and colleges, hospitals, prisons, and
similar public or quasi-public: buildings
Infectious and hazardous waste from
these types of facilities are managed
separately from municipal solid waste.
• Commercial: Waste from retail
stores, shopping centers, office
buildings, restaurants, hotels, airports,
wholesalers, auto garages, and other
commercial establishments.
• Municipal: Waste generated by
municipal public: works, such as street
sweepings and tree and brush
trimmings.
• Industrial: Waste such as corrugated
boxes and other packaging, cafeteria
waste, and paper towels from factories
or other industrial buildings. The term
does not include waste from industrial
processes, whether hazardous or
nonhazardous.
What ts Recyclable?
At present, approximately 11
percent of all U.S. solid waste is
recycled, but experts estimate that
its full potential may be as high as
50 percent.
Recyclables
Materials:
• Paper (Newspapers, corrugated
boxes, office papers, mixed papers)
• Plastics (Milk, soft drink, and
other containers)
• Glass (Bottles and jars)
• Aluminum (Cans and other
aluminum products)
• Steei (Appliances and other steel
products)
• Wood (Pallets, lumber, etc.)
Compost:
• Leaves, grass, and brush
• Food wastes
• Some other organic materials,
such as paper contaminated with food
Nonrecyclables
• Wastes heavily contaminated by
food residues, household chemicals,
or dirt
• Composite materials, e.g., aseptic
boxes made of paper, foil, and
adhesives, plastic-coated paper,
furniture and appliances (other than
their metal content)
• Miscellaneous inorganics, such as
street sweepings
From its national data base, Kl'A
estimates that about 3,6 pounds of
municipal solid waste were generated
per person per day in 1986. After
materials and energy recovery, that
amounts to 3 pounds per person per
day. The comparable numbers tor the
year 2000 are expected to reach 4
pounds per person per day gross, and
2.8 net (or 3.0 if ash is included).
There is an urban versus rural
disparity in pur capita rates of
residential waste generation. The per
person per day residential rate
nationwide is now estimated to be 2.2
pounds: but it could run as high as 4.5
pounds per person per clay in
Washington, DC], or 5 pounds per
person per day in New York City. There
are also seasonal variations, with yard
waste being a summer and fall concern
in the North but a year-round problem
in the South, u
MARCH APRIL 1989
17
-------
A Forum:
How Can We Become
Recyclers?
Dr. Barry Commoner
Director, Center for the
Biology of Natural
Systems
Fveryone seems to agree ive
must become a recycling
.society. Assuming they're
correct, hoiv are we going to
become recyclers? For this
Forum, EPA Journal asked
this question of six persons,
ail involved in the solid
waste control jield in some
way. Their answers follow:
If—as we must—we are to
become a recycling society,
we must begin by properly
defining the purpose of
recycling. Recycling is often
regarded as a good thing to
do because it conforms with
the "no waste" rule of
ecology. Guided by this
purpose, people are content
to do some recycling,
perhaps of newspapers, cans,
and bottles. A state such as
New Jersey is regarded as
ecologically well-motivated
because it mandates 25
percent recycling.
Hut this is the wrong
approach. Of course,
recycling is ecologically
sound, but its purpose is to
solve the trash disposal
crisis—to provide an
alternative to the
environmentally hazardous
trash-burning incinerators
and landfills burdened with
their toxic ash. This calls for
intensive recycling, a system
aimed not at a few targets of
opportunity but at the toted
trash stream, intensive
recycling recognizes that
about 90 percent of the trash
is recyclable and that much
of the remaining 10
percent—plastics, for
example—ought to be
eliminated from the trash
stream. In this way, intensive
recycling becomes the
method of trash disposal,
eliminating the need for
incineration and greatly
reducing the toxic burden on
landfills.
Can this be done? The
answer is yes: we at the
Center for the Biology of
Natural Systems have just
shown, in a pilot test for the
Town of East Hampton, Long
Island, that intensive
recycling can recover 84.4
percent of residential trash in
the form of marketable
products: compost prepared
from the household-separated
food garbage and yard waste;
various grades of paper
separated at a materials
recovery facility (MRF) from
a second household
container: aluminum cans,
tin cans, and color-sorted
glass also separated at the
MRF from a third household
container. The fourth
container holds the
non-recyclables, 13.2 percent
of the total in our pilot test.
This figure, plus
misclassified rejects
amounting to 2.4 percent of
the total trash, leads to the
84.4 percent actually
recovered.
Widely adopted, intensive
recycling would generate
assured supplies of paper,
metals, and glass that could
be sold to users at a
relatively low price, or even
given away, because each ton
recycled saves the
community the high and
rising cost of landfilling or
incinerating a ton of
unseparated trash. Since
manufacturers prefer recycled
materials because they are
cheaper than virgin products,
they will respond by
progressively moving toward
maximum (in some cases,
such as glass, nearly total)
use of recycled materials,
creating, at last, the recycling
society.
18
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Congressman Norman
Lent (R-N.Y.)
Ranking Minority Member
U.S. House Committee on
Energy and Commerce
Diana Gale, Director,
Solid Waste Utility
Seattle,
Washington
With landfill capacity
dwindling and waste
disposal costs skyrocketing,
recycling is often touted as a
cheap, convenient cure-all for
the garbage crisis ailing
America. While it can help
alleviate some of the problem
by reducing the volume of
waste, recycling by itself is
only a partial remedy, and its
proponents must take care to
acknowledge these
limitations and avoid
overselling this vital tool as a
panacea.
Today, only 10 percent of
the country's solid waste is
recycled, and most specialists
agree that even well-run
recycling programs might
recover only 20 to 25 percent
of the total waste stream.
There are many reasons for
this. For example, many
items such as plastics,
disposable diapers, and
certain multi-material items
cannot be recycled. And
frankly, most Americans
simply dislike the
inconvenience of separating
trash, removing metal lids
from glass jars, washing out
cans, and bundling up
newspapers. In any event,
merely separating articles
does not guarantee their
reuse. The effectiveness of
recycling will depend on
locating new markets for
recycled materials, which
many towns find difficult
even now. The simple
economic reality of supply
and demand dictates that as
more areas recycle, the
market becomes inundated.
and demand for recycled
goods dries up.
Nevertheless, every ton of
garbage that is recycled is a
ton that taxpayers don't have
to pay to get rid of. For this
reason, many communities
are actively pursuing sound
waste management plans that
incorporate waste reduction,
recycling, and construction of
resource recovery (or
waste-to-energy) plants that
also burn refuse to generate
electricity or steam.
Sadly, political paranoia
and the NIMBY (Not In My
Backyard) syndrome have
paralyzed responsible efforts
to deal with the nation's
waste disposal crisis in a
realistic manner. It's time to
recognize that there is no
magic cure-all and citizens
must be willing to make the
hard choices necessary to
stop the trashing of America
now, before it's too late.
People in Seattle are
demonstrating that they
are willing to adjust their
life-styles to make recycling
work. Seattle is an
environmental I y conscious
city where maintaining
quality of life is considered
almost as important as
acquiring consumer goods.
This fact .supports a recycling
ethic, but the essential
elements of our successful
program arc low cost.
convenience, choices, and
effective promotion.
People respond when hit
in the pocketbook. Seattle's
recycling program is free;
but, garbage collection is
expensive. We have a
variable can rate: the more
garbage you product; the
more you pay. Nearly 80
percent of the people are
using one can or less for
garbage, and nearly 70
percent of the people are
participating in the city's
voluntary curbside program.
City decision-makers
wanted to start with a
voluntary system, which
means the program needs to
be convenient. People were
given free bins and regular
pick-ups. We are now
initiating a "block leader"
program to remind people of
their pick-up dates and to
take advantage of
neighborhood "peer
pressure" to encourage all the
people on the block to
participate.
People like choices and
need to be educated. They
want a range of methods for
reducing or recycling waste
so they can "customize"
recycling to their life-style.
For separatee! yard waste,
three alternative systems of
collection are provided. We
are designing programs for
each element of our waste
stream, and we spend much
time and money on
education and promotion.
Becoming aware of the
environmental problems of
waste disposal and steeply
rising costs has made people
willing to change! behavior.
Curbside recycling is (In-
most popular civic program
initiated in recent years.
Using a recycling bin has
become a badge of honor and
a visible statement that one
cares about tin; planet Karth.
MARCH/APRIL 1989
19
-------
William P. Moore,
Director, Waste
Reduction
Waste Management of
North America, Inc.
Dale Gubbels,
President, National
Recycling Coalition
To answer th;it question. I
must ask yet another:
Who an; "we"?
Individual riti/.ens,
businesses, institutions, and
all love-Is ol government—we
all have a role to play. Leave
out any of these important
players and society is
unlikely to adopt a recycling
ethic.
Most people understand
this on the level that
individuals save materials.
local governments collect
them, and businesses process
them. Hut these activities
don't necessarily represent
recycling's beginning or its
end. To make the system
work manufacturers must
design products that are both
recyclable and made from
recycled material. And.
manufacturers are correct in
saying they need to know
that individuals.
governments, and other
businesses will buy recycled
materials and support
collection programs, thus
assuring them of both
markets and steady supply of
raw materials.
A simple credo for all to
follow is this: put as much
effort into recycling as we
once put into harvesting and
mining our natural resources.
On the national level, this
should equate to the level of
energy that went into
opening up vast portions of
the continent to
development. There are
numerous examples to show
how that was accomplished,
but perhaps most instructive
is the Homestead Act of
18G2. In loss than 50 years,
the country gave to willing
pioneers over a quarter
billion acres of land.
Now is the time for similar
bold, creative, and
far-reaching initiatives such
as:
• Tax breaks for businesses
using recycled materials.
• Rebates for federal
electrical power users to
encourage manufacturers to
switch to secondary
materials.
• An income tax check-off
program to support
conservation measures.
• Grants and loans to
encourage entrepreneurs to
establish new uses, and thus
markets, for recyclables.
Numerous possibilities
exist, it only we—all of
us put our minds to the
task. And unlike past
initiatives, which viewed
natural resources as gifts to
be exploited, this
time—through recycling—we
can restore the bounty for
future generations.
Translating our country's
philosophical acceptance
of recycling into practical
reality is the largest challenge
facing solid waste managers.
But several recent
developments have made
recycling a more viable solid
waste management option. In
increasing numbers.
commercial businesses and
municipalities are requesting
recycling services. Secondly,
the technology for collecting
and processing recyclables
has made significant
advances. Finally, every ton
of material recycled
represents a ton of airspace
saved at a dwindling number
of landfills.
Waste Management's
recycling activities are
perhaps the fastest growing
segment of the company's
operations. Our Recycle
America program now
conducts over BO curbside
recycling operations in cities
across the country and
another 250 company
divisions are directing
commercial and other forms
of recycling. The corporate;
headquarters also has
mounted a major office paper
recycling program that has
reduced the company's waste
stream by half. In addition.
an internal purchasing
preference for recycled
products has already resulted
in the conversion of over 13
million sheets of paper from
virgin to recycled stock.
Our experience has
afforded us some perspective
on the elements common to
many successful recycling
programs:
• Proper planning: Recycling
is not merely the collection
of recyclable materials—it
includes the return of those
materials to commerce. In too
many poorly planned
programs, collected paper is
sent to landfills for lack of
market planning. Recycling is
a demand-driven process
rather than a supply-driven
process, and well-conceived
programs are planned ahead
to secure identifiable markets
at good prices.
• Consumer convenience;
There is a good reason why
curbside recycling programs
consistently secure higher
tonnages of recyclable
materials than other types of
programs. When recycling is
made easy for consumers,
more citizens participate.
And higher participation
rates not only reduce cost.
but also divert more discards
into reuse—which should be
the primary goal of every
program.
• Pub/ic/PnVate Partnership:
Many of the nation's most
successful programs, such as
the one in San Jose,
California, are structured so
that both the private sector
and the public sector have
economic incentives to
mount an effective program.
When both sectors have a
stake in the program's
success, significant
advantages occur.
As for the future, from our
perspective, our nation needs
more creative public policy
approaches to recycling—not
simply in straight subsidies,
but in visionary programs
tied to market stimulation.
These range from investment
tax credits tor recycling
equipment to innovative
procurement policies and
aggressive "buy recycled"
initiatives. Waste
Management has developed
detailed recommendations on
these issues.
For solid waste managers,
recycling simply represents
both good environmental
policy and good business.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Mary T. Shell, Deputy
Director, Division of
Solid Waste Management
New Jersey
Department of
Environmental
Protection
Recycling, at least in New
Jersey, is a significant part
of the solid waste
management program. Its
continued success is
contingent on the
cooperation of all waste
generators in the state and on
commitment and investment
by government and industry
to expand the marketplace
for recycled products. It will
also require policy changes at
government and corporate
levels to reduce waste at the
source, to reduce the use of
toxic materials, particularly
in consumer products, and to
design for recycling.
A significant supply of
potentially recyclable
materials is generated in
every home, business, and
institution. These materials
will flow as separated scrap
if a well-constructed and
intensive education program
is implemented, and a
convenient, reliable
collection service is
provided. A change in the
one trash can habit and the
method of handling waste
material in the home, office,
or school must occur to
achieve separation of
recyclables. Only an
intensive education program
will bring about these
changes. People must clearly
understand what materials
must be separated, how they
must be handled, and where
they must be placed for
collection.
The method for source
separation must be relatively
straightforward and the
collection system convenient.
If existing solid waste
practices call for collection
from a central location or at
the curb, then public
participation in the recycling
program will require a
similar collection system for
the recyclables. This
necessitates a political
commitment to the
integration of recycling into a
waste management program.
By making this
commitment, New Jersey has
experienced a tremendous
increase in the supply of
recyclable materials
source-separated by its
businesses and residents. The
documented tonnage in 1982
was 250,000 tons. In 1987,
this number reached 1.5
million tons, not including
commercial recycling. It is
anticipated that by the end of
1989, more than two million
tons will be recycled through
municipal and commercial
sources. The number of
curbside collection programs
reached 439 in 1988. To
achieve these levels, the state
has conducted a statewide
promotional campaign and
organized annual workshops
and seven-week courses on
recycling. Grants for local
government education
programs were provided.
Because the education and
collection criteria were met,
and a local mandate to
source-separate was in place,
enforcement is only required
to refine the process and to
bring the few recalcitrants
into line.
But source-separated
materials will have little
value if there is no market
demand for the material or
for the final product
manufactured from the
recycled scrap. Thus demand
and price are affected by the
volume and quality of the
scrap. A glass company can
manufacture containers using
large volumes of cullet
(crushed glass), but
manufacturing specifications
and customers' orders must
be met. The material supply
must be available as needed.
A variety of paper products
can also be manufactured
from scrap, but newsprint
and writing paper require
higher quality material than
paperboard or insulation. The
price paid and willingness to
buy will hinge on the volume
of that scrap and its quality.
Development of
intermediate processing
systems to refine the quality
of the source-separated scrap
and to consolidate large
volumes of material to
enhance marketing potentials
has been the hallmark of
New Jersey's program.
Multi-material processing
centers to handle materials
collected through the
municipal programs were
developed in the 1980s to
accommodate the large-scale
commitment to recycling and
to provide a more convenient
separation and collection
system.
The increased supply of
material requires expansion
of the marketplace through
modification of
manufacturing processes to
displace virgin raw material
with scrap, and also to
develop new products to
utilize more scrap. In
addition, demand must be
created for the final product.
By way of example, the
largest volume of material in
the residential and in most
commercial waste streams is
paper. For the homeowner,
12 to 15 percent of the waste
stream is newspaper and
magazines, yet the publishing
industry takes back very little
of its product to put out
tomorrow's news. Industries
generating consumer
products must make an
investment to modify their
processes to make their
products more recyclable or
recycled. Industry must also
support research to address
the technical problems in
manufacturing recycled
products, and government
must make the same
economic commitment to
support recycled materials
that it has given l>y way of
tax advantages for extraction
of natural resources, a
MARCH. APRIL 1989
21
-------
The siting of landfills and
incinerators to bundle
garbage is one of flu; most
controversial environmental
issues today. Is (lien; a place
for these facilities in the
nation's future? EPA Journal
asked the viewpoints of a
ivasl<; disposal industry leader,
mi environmentalist, and
a state official. Their
commentaries follcm-.-
by Eugene J. Wingerter
Are Landfills and
Incinerators
Part of the Answer?
Three Viewpoints
Try taking this quiz: What's
the answer to meeting our
needs for increased solid
waste disposal capacity? Is it:
a) More landfills?
b) Increased recycling?
c) Development of more
waste-to-energy plants?
d) Source reduction?
Fart of the problem really
lies in the question itself. Far
too many people view this
complex dilemma as having a
simple, single-answer
solution. That is not the case.
There is no "magic bullet"
that will rid us of our wastes.
The best answer is that no
matter how much we recycle
or burn or reduce our waste
volume at the source,
American communities must
still deposit significant
amounts of trash in a sanitary
landfill. In other words, the
correct choice is all of the
above.
Landfills represent the
common denominator of
what EPA and members of
our industry call the
"integrated waste
management approach." This
approach reflects the
complexity of our current
disposal needs. According to
EPA's statistics, Americans
produce nearly 250 million
tons of trash each year, of
that amount, close to 160
million tons are generated by
individual households and
neighborhood businesses—an
amount equal to 3.(i pounds
of trash produced daily by
each person in the country.
After recycling and
22
waste-to-energy combustion,
more than 131 million tons
of trash still remain to be
deposited in landfills.
Current EPA data show
that more than 80 percent of
our trash is landfilled in
about 6,500 facilities: another
10 percent is incinerated
(with or without energy
recovery), and the last 10
percent is recycled. The
advantage of utilizing
waste-to-energy facilities is
that they reduce the volume
of refuse by 90 percent,
achieving a volume reduction
that no other waste disposal
option can offer.
increased recycling and more
waste-to-energy facilities).
The National Solid Wastes
Management Association's
(NSWMA) own public
opinion polling shows that
many people are beginning to
recognize how serious the
solid waste problem has
become. Our 1988 public
opinion poll of 1,500 adults,
for example, showed more
than half believe disposal
capacity is a public issue of
greater importance to their
community than affordable
housing or expanded police
and fire protection. Among
those polled, 53 percent said
. . . the fact remains that
disposal facilities will be
needed for years to come.
Of the 6,500 operating
landfills, EPA projects more
than 2,000 will close within
five years—causing an overall
yearly capacity loss of 55
million tons. At current
construction rates, additional
landfill space will be
available for only 20 million
tons of this amount. So
where will the garbage go?
This question brings into
focus why the "all of the
above" answer is correct. The
growing size of our trash
dilemma mandates doing
everything possible to reduce
waste volumes—both at the
source (by improved product
manufacturing and
packaging) and within the
waste stream itself (through
government was doing too
little to assure environmental
protection.
But the poll also showed
that such people have not yet
accepted the "all of the
above" approach that may be
needed. For instance, when
asked their views about
building new landfills, 65
percent registered strong
opposition. This "out of
sight, out of mind" attitude
has resulted in a paradox:
many communities,
particularly in the Northeast,
now must ship their trash
more than 300 miles to find a
permanent disposal site.
That's not a solution—it's an
example of sending your
problem to someone else's
backyard.
Why are most people so
reluctant to resolve the
"garbage crisis," even when
their own communities are
involved? In general, two
concerns have been raised:
how to manage air emissions
from waste-to-energy
facilities and how to ensure
ground-water protection at
landfills. Regarding air
emissions, federal and state
laws already require such
facilities to use the best
available pollution control
technology—which means
that properly operated plants
meet all existing
requirements.
Concerning ground-water
protection, the main focus is
on resource recovery ash, a
concentrated by-product of
the combustion process. Such
ash contains small amounts
of lead and cadmium—not
because these are created by
the burning process, but
because they are already
present in the garbage. But
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Westchester County mass-burn resource recovery facility,
Peekskill, New York, handles 2,250 tons per day. Unprocessed
municipal solid waste is burned, producing steam for
heating, cooling, and generating electricity. Ferrous metals
are recovered from the residue and the ash is put in a
landfill.
ash can be safely deposited
in properly designed landfills
that include liners, leachate
collection systems, and
ground-water monitoring
devices.
Unfortunately, many
people do not yet understand
that these safeguards exist
and are part of any integrated
approach to waste
management. As an industry,
this is one of the messages
that we need to convey—our
strong commitment to
protecting public health and
the environment. We need to
underscore how we can
safely manage the very small
potential risks associated
with solid waste disposal.
There are several important
steps that can be taken to
help resolve our solid waste
disposal dilemma. First, we
need to support EPA's efforts
to resolve ambiguities in
existing environmental rules
so that public confidence in
our regulatory system will be
restored. In some cases, this
may mean creating minimum
federal standards to serve as
a basic guideline for state
officials in drafting their own
solid waste disposal plans.
And it may also mean that
Congress will have to act.
Beyond such measures.
however, we must broaden
the policy dialogue to
include a more intensive
discussion about solid waste
management with members
of the public. This discussion
must focus on each element
of the integrated approach
and on the need for a
coherent overall plan.
Finally, we must muster
the political will to solve our
problems, rather than
postpone them. State
legislatures must decide
where the buck really stops
when local officials are
unable to act in the broader
public interest. After all,
what's more important:
leading your community
toward a permanent solution
or heading down the
procrastination path to an
eventual crisis?
While we can decrease our
reliance on landfills and
resource recovery plants
through increased recycling
and waste volume reduction,
the fact remains that disposal
facilities will be needed for
years to come. Society will
continue to generate refuse
that must be managed. It is
only through expanded
public information and the
exercise of effective
leadership that we will be
able to address our solid
waste problem through a
truly meaningful integrated
waste management
approach, n
(Wingerter is Executive
Director and Chief Executive
Officer of the National Solid
Waste Management
Association, which
represents a number of
industries in (he solid waste
control area).
by Richard A. Denison
Seemingly overnight, our
nation's communities
have found themselves
confronted anew with an old
chore: taking out the trash.
Over just the last two
years, the "solid waste crisis"
has moved from being a cry
of alarm to a truism and now
is threatening to recede into
little more than a platitude.
Any number of reasons for,
and solutions to, the crisis
are offered by the interested
parties: some see landfills
filling up, while others see
them draining poisons into
ground water. Some consider
incinerators a clean
alternative to unsightly
dumps, others see only air
pollution and toxic ash.
Some regard skyrocketing
costs of landfilling and
incineration as the problem.
others view those same costs
as providing incentives to
explore and fund better
alternatives such as
recycling. Some blame
citizen opposition and
"environmental evangelists"
for the crisis, others believe
they have no alternative but
to block the limited choices
offered them.
Quite an impasse!
In my view, these are all
manifestations, not causes, of
the solid waste crisis. To
fashion truly viable solutions,
we must go back to where we
should have started in the
first place. Rational
management of our trash
requires that we understand
what is in it and how best to
manage each component (a
field of study sometimes
referred to as "garbology").
MARCH/APRIL 1989
23
-------
Traditionally, we've skipped
over this step entirely. We've
simply buried all of our
trash, typically in dumps that
are little more than large
holes in the ground. Now
many communities are
attempting to replace these
mass landfills with
"mass-burn" incinerators. Of
course, incinerators don't
make trash disappear; they
only process it and reduce its
volume, still leaving large
amounts of toxic ash that
must itself be landfilled.
Our traditional approaches
to landfilling and
incineration both suffer the
same defect. Each
perpetuates two myths that
compromise our ability to
find workable solutions to
the solid waste dilemma:
first, that we can manage
trash without considering its
individual components, and
second, that a single method
can successfully manage our
entire waste stream. If trash
is anything, it is diverse. It
contains some materials that
are readily recyclable, others
that aren't; some that burn,
others that don't; and some
materials that are probably
best buried, others that
should never be.
Yet today's landfills are
operated as mass graves for
society's discards; lead-acid
batteries and last week's
leftovers receive equal
treatment. And mass-burn
incinerators consume trash as
if it were a homogeneous fuel
like coal, when in actuality it
is comprised of materials
such as cans and bottles
(which don't burn), yard
wastes and paper (which
burn but can be readily
composted or recycled), and
still other materials that
contain toxic metals, such as
batteries and many plastics.
Landfills contaminate ground
water, and incinerators
pollute the air and create
toxic ash in large part
because they don't
discriminate in the waste
they handle.
No matter how we view
the issue—whether we are
trying to find the safest and
most economical means of
management hierarchy—will
all play some role in this
nation's solid waste
management for the
foreseeable future. Given the
principles discussed above,
what is a proper role for each
in a rational waste
management system? First, a
delicate balance must be
struck between the clear logic
that certain of these options
(reduction and recycling)
take priority over the others,
and the likely need for most
if not all options in many
Incinerators don't make trash
disappear; they only process it
and reduce its volume, still
leaving large amounts of toxic
ash that must itself be
landfilled.
disposing of these materials,
or evaluating potential to
reclaim their resource or
energy value, or assessing the
prospects for reducing the
quantity or toxicity of
waste—all of these
perspectives demand that we
recognize trash for the
plethora of materials it is,
and as a corollary, that we
take steps to keep separate
(or to separate trash into) its
various components. This
ethic is already at the heart
of recycling, evidenced by
the growth of programs for
curbside collection of
recyclables and the
increasing use of
mixed-waste processing
technologies. Such source
separation must become the
ethic for incineration and
landfilling as well.
Reality dictates that source
reduction, recycling,
incineration, and
landfilling—the four tiers of
the now familiar waste
communities. While it is
rarely practicable to proceed
in an orderly fashion down
the hierarchy by
implementing the options in
sequence, many communities
have entirely precluded any
serious development of the
options that should be the
first resort. The
all-too-common scenario of
committing most or all a
city's waste stream and
hundreds of millions of
taxpayer dollars over several
decades to an incinerator
project, while paying little
more than lip service to
recycling, makes for poor
fiscal and public policy.
In addition to their popular
appeal, source separation,
composting and other
recycling programs are now
recognized as serious waste
management tools: not only
can they greatly reduce the
amount of waste that must
ultimately be disposed of,
they can also increase the
safety of landfilling or
incineration, by removing
materials that shouldn't be
buried or burned. And a
growing number of public
and private studies indicate
that recycling may well prove
to be the most cost-effective
means of managing most of
the municipal waste stream.
For the substantial
amounts of waste that can be
expected to remain even after
maximum recycling, reliance
on landfilling and
incineration will continue, so
their significant health and
environmental risks must be
directly addressed. Proper
design of facilities using best
available technology is
critical. For landfills,
impermeable liners and
covers, and collection
systems for leachate can
greatly reduce risks to water
supplies; methane recovery
systems can turn landfills
into sources of energy.
For incinerators, advanced
combustion systems and
state-of-the-art air pollution
controls, coupled with
restrictions on the kinds of
waste that may be burned,
can reduce air pollution
significantly. With respect to
incinerator ash, provision for
chemical or physical
treatment and separate
disposal of the ash in lined
landfills must be integral
parts of any incinerator
project. We already know
that these protective
measures will not come
cheaply; we know even better
the costs of not insisting on
them, o
(Dr. Denison is a scientist /or
the Toxic Chemicals and
Solid Waste Programs of the
Environmental Defense
Fund.)
24
EPA JOURNAL
-------
by Norman H.
Nosenchuck
New York State, like most
of the states in the
United States, faces a solid
waste disposal capacity
crisis. Ever-increasing
amounts—over 20 million
tons of garbage in 1988, up
from about 18 million tons in
1987, and about 17 million
tons in 1986—indicate that
we are also increasing the
amount of trash each of us in
New York produces: from
0.97 tons per person per year
in 1986 to 1.13 tons per
person per year in 1988.
And, there are fewer and
fewer permitted facilities in
the state to handle this trash.
To address this garbage
problem, New York State's
solid waste management
policy calls for (in order of
preference): waste reduction;
reuse and recycling;
waste-to-energy systems; and
land burial of the remaining
wastes. The New York State
Solid Waste Management
Plan established a goal of
curbing waste by 50 percent
by 1997—8 to 20 percent to be
achieved by waste reduction
and 40 to 42 percent by
reuse/recycling.
Under the state's new
rules, any plan for a new
solid waste facility is
reviewed by the New York
State Department of
Environmental Conservation
and there must be a
demonstration that waste
reduction and recycling will
be maximized.
Wastes may be reduced by
changing the way in which
goods are manufactured and
packaged, or by diverting to
reuse or recycling waste
materials that formerly were
discarded. However, we must
not depend totally on such
efforts to solve our garbage
problems. There are
limitations. We'll still have
about 50 percent of the
garbage left and we've got to
get rid of it. We can take that
Building a sanitary landfill in 1988. Workers position synthetic liner panels. The liner is
tested continuously during construction. Pipes underneath collect any liquid that might
escape.
remaining portion of the
trash and extract energy from
it through incineration.
significantly reducing the
volume of waste materials
that we bury in the ground.
Waste-to-energy facilities,
combined with waste
reduction and reuse recycling
programs, and landfills for
ash residue, can provide
acceptable solid waste
management for
governments. The sizing of
these waste-to-energy
facilities is critical. We do
not want them so big as to
discourage waste reduction
or reuse/recycling programs.
Emissions from a properly
designed and operated
waste-to-energy facility, using
state-of-the-art pollution
controls, should not
significantly or unacceptably
increase risks to human
health or the environment.
Ash residue from incinerators
will be placed in lined
landfills with leachate
collection.
New state regulations for
incinerators require that new
facilities have more pollution
controls, operate at more
efficient nstos at higher
temperatures, and are
monitored more closely by
better trained operators. For
the first time, limits an: set
for dioxin emissions.
The regulations require a
"cradle-to-grave" approach
for ash residue management
from waste-to-energy
facilities. Such a step-by-step
management approach allows
the Department to monitor
and control ash residues from
generation to final
disposition, therein'
protecting human health and
the environment from the
potential dangers of
mismanagement. The
approach will be formalized
in a required ash residui;
management plan, prepared
MARCH/APRIL 1989
2b
-------
by the applicant. The plan
will he an enforceable
provision of the permit
issued to operate; the facility.
In New York, our goal is to
use landfills only for disposal
of wastes that cannot be
reduced, reused, recycled or
combusted in waste-to-energy
facilitie.s. Those include .some
sewage sludge; waste needing
disposal while
waste-to-energy facilitie.s are
temporarily out of service;
construction and demolition
debris; waste from some rural
areas where other waste
management methods are not
practical; and ash residues
from waste-to-energy
facilities.
Landfilling operations must
be carefully managed. The
new regulations require that
new landfills be constructed
with double composite liners
to provide a minimum of six
layers of protection between
the trash and the underlying
groundwater with dual
leachate collection systems
and leak detection systems.
New state-of-the-art solid
wasle landfills in New York
State will have basic:
engineering and construction
standards similar to those
now required for hazardous
waste landfills. Landfills will
be required to conform to
rigid siting restrictions to
prevent them from being
built where they may have an
impact upon sensitive
environments such as
principal and primary
aquifers or regulated
wetlands. In addition, the
requirements for siting
studies will compel selection
of the most environmentally
appropriate; sites for new
landfills.
Solid waste management is
no longer as simple as it was
when localities budgeted
minimal amounts of money
for garbage disposal at the
local landfill. Today.
long-term commitments of
emphasized, nor should we
forget the lessons learned
from past failure to do this.
Very few people welcome
incinerators or landfills as a
neighbor. Siting solid waste
management facilities may be
In New York, our goal is to use
landfills only for disposal of
wastes that cannot be reduced,
reused, recycled or combusted
in waste-to-energy facilities.
resources and significant
sums of money are needed.
Also, history has taught us
that early and continuing
presentation of issues to the
public is essential in gaining
public confidence and
support. The public must be
informed early and
continuously for the duration
of a solid waste management
project. The importance of
this can not be over
the biggest problem facing
communities planning .solid
waste management programs.
The NIMBY syndrome—Not
In My
Backyard—accompanied by
the lament—NEMTOF—Not
In My Term Of Office—is
still prevalent; but these
facilities have to be located
somewhere.
The key to overcoming
such reluctance is proper
community planning and
analysis, overseen and
monitored by the state to
assure compatibility with our
goals in the context of an
integrated state solid waste
management program: waste
reduction, reuse/recycling,
waste-to-energy incineration
and volume reduction, and
landfilling. Only if all of
these methods are integrated
into a comprehensive solid
waste management program
can we hope to overcome the
imminent disposal crisis in
our respective states, c
(Nosenchuck is Director of
the Division of Solid Waste
in the New York State
Department of Environmental
Conservation.)
Special devices are used to test liner seams during construction
of a new landfill. Inspectors from an engineering firm are
continuously on site until construction is completed.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Source Reduction:
Its Meaning and Us Potential
by Roy Popkin
Reducing the steadily increasing flow
of solid waste deluging our nation's
overloaded and diminishing landfills
and other disposal resources means
solid waste managers must find ways to
foster the concept of "source reduction".
This is the modern-day environmental
equivalent of the old western movie
admonition to stop the bad guys by
"cutting them off at the pass."
Implementing source reduction
measures necessitates getting consumers
and industry to recognize that a
"throwaway society" in which
convenience and easy disposability
dominate the market-place does not
make environmental or ecological sense.
According to the EPA's Municipal
Solid Waste Task Force report, "The
Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for
Action," source reduction is "the
design, manufacture, and use of
products so as to reduce the quantity
and toxicity of waste produced when
the products reach the end of their
useful lives. Source reduction is not a
technology or process (such as landfill,
incineration, recycling, or composting)
to be applied to the solid waste stream.
In applying the concept of source
reduction, one fully considers the
ultimate destiny of products when
making decisions on how the products
are made and which products or
materials one uses."
EPA experts involved with
implementing the new Agency-wide
emphasis on pollution prevention see
source reduction as a key component of
integrated waste-management and as a
first line of defense against the growing
mountain of solid waste clogging our
national waste stream. In homes,
business, and industry, this approach
can take many forms: using less or
non-toxic solvents in a production
process so there is less hazardous waste
going into sewer-bound effluent; using
cloth diapers instead of disposable
diapers (or using highly absorbent
brands); using paper bags instead of
plastic; composting garden trash and
grass cuttings from backyards or park
areas; using a photocopier that prints on
both sides; selling products or fast foods
in degradable packaging; using
longer-lasting products; and taking the
mercury out of batteries used in
cameras, toys, and flashlights. Or it can
One would expect that the
goals and concept of source
reduction would be so obvious
that their adoption and
implementation would be in
full swing across the nation.
take the form of outright bans on the use
of certain products or chemicals—like
taking lead out of gasoline or
prohibiting the use of DDT, or special
taxes or penalties related to waste
disposal practices.
Our Throwaway Society
Americans discard over 160 billion
pounds of solid waste per year. This
was the equivalent of 3.58 pounds per
person each day in 1986 (and is
expected to reach almost 4 pounds by
the year 2000). West Germans throw
away less than 2.5 pounds per day, Oslo
residents 1.7.
Every year we throw away 16 billion
disposable diapers, 2 billion razors and
blades, and mountains of automobile
tires, construction and demolition
debris, sludge, automobile bodies,
nonhazardous industrial wastes,
incinerator residues, household
hazardous wastes, and nonfood
products such as detergents or
cosmetics that may be left inside
discarded containers.
A Dow Chemical executive recently
told a solid waste forum that 40 percent
of the 50 billion pounds of plastic
consumed each year by the U.S. plastic
market is used to make disposable,
one-use items. And, says Stewart
Mosberg, President of the Packaging
Coalition for Solid Waste Management,
Inc.: "One-third of almost 150 million
tons of commercial and industrial trash
generated by Americans per year is
packaging." Mosberg predicts that
within the next 10 years, more than
one-half of U.S. cities will run out of
dump site capacity. He emphasizes that
" recycling, reclamation, and
incineration are necessary for survival."
Approaching the Problem
One would expect that the concept and
goals of source reduction would be so
obvious that their adoption and
implementation would be in full swing
across the nation. This is still far from
the case, even though there is good
reason for optimism. Michael Flynn,
Acting Chief of the Criteria and
Assessment Group in EPA's Municipal
Solid Waste Program, indicates that
tunnel vision may be part of the
problem. He says that when volume
reduction is discussed, the focus is
usually on packaging. He urges that
much more attention be given to paper
products and to yard waste. Also, when
looking at the overall problem of
improving the manageability of the
municipal waste stream, manufacturers
and consumers, as well as regulators
and waste managers, should stress the
need for products that are not only
degradable but are less toxic, recyclable,
and have a longer life span, and a better
potential for re-use. Some of these
objectives, he notes further, are not
always compatible (i.e., degradability as
opposed to durability, as in the case of
the need for reusable plastic food
storage containers versus plastic
MARCH/APRIL 1989
27
-------
Large fronds from Arizona palm trees, a
striking example of yard waste as a source
of modern garbage.
six-pack holders that are strictly
throwaway items).
Howard Levenson of the
Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment (OTA) points to other, more
negative roadblocks: "The problem with
the adoption of source reduction is a
lack of incentives for the needed
changes in social, business.
manufacturing, and other related
behavior, Those involved at this point
don't share the cost of the burdens solid
waste creates. While source reduction
has theoretical primacy in approaching
the problem, you need a lot of
incentives and a strong federal role to
bring about the needed changes in
product design and in people's
behavior—what they will or won't buy."
Promoting Source Reduction
Existing socio-economic and technical
problems notwithstanding, promotion
and implementation of source reduction
approaches (in; increasing at all
government levels and on the part of
businesses and consumers. Congress, for
example, has passed legislation banning
non-degradable six-pack holders and
has asked KPA to report later this year
on what additional steps are needed to
encourage source reduction.
KPA's Pollution Prevention Office and
the Office of Solid Waste, are placing
special emphasis on source reduction
issues, both within the Municipal Solid
Waste program and through
coordination of Agency-wide source
reduction approaches. The .Agency is
looking at actions to help educate
consumers away from the
(hrmvaway convenience approach to life
because, as OTA's Levenson says,
changes in consumer purchasing
patterns are crucial to getting
manufacturers to change their products.
Workshops, conferences, outreach, and
education efforts, as well as an
information clearing house, are
envisioned.
At the request of Congress, UFA is
also preparing a report on plastics in the
marine environment and the solid-waste
stream. Since most plastic waste is
lamlfilled (with the amount expected to
increase; 50 percent by the year 2000),
the Agency is evaluating means of
reducing plastic pollution, increased
attention is being given to the search for
substitutes.
In addition, EPA scientists are
working on reducing sources of
municipal solid waste toxicity,
specifically on heavy metals like lead
and cadmium that enter the waste
stream from such sources as discarded
batteries, consumer electronics, glass,
ceramics, plastics, appliances, and
pigments. Removing such sources from
the waste stream could help resolve
concerns about what happens when
products containing lead or cadmium
are recycled or incinerated.
Rhode Island is regarded as
the state that is currently
doing the most about source
reduction.
State and local government
involvement in source reduction
activities is growing, especially in terms
of consumer education and legislative
action. There have been a number of
attempts to ban or tax products or
materials considered undesirable and at
least one Washington state community
is trying rezoning to bar a fast-food
chain that uses non-degradable
polystyrene food containers. Also, the
University of Washington has stopped
using plastic utensils in its cafeterias.
However, most of the specific product
bans that did become law have been
legally challenged and either found
unconstitutional or become mired in
expensive, drawn-out litigation.
Rhode Island is regarded as the state
that is currently doing the most about
source reduction. A statewide Source
Reduction Task Force has recommended
bills to make source reduction the top
priority in solid waste management
planning. The Task Force has
introduced a package of bills, including
financial incentives or disincentives.
Already adopted by the legislature are
bills exempting paper bags from the
state use tax and requiring stores to
have them available, and another taxing
businesses that sell a significant amount
of litter-generating items. Task Force
staff say there is 90 percent
participation in Ocean State source
reduction and recycling efforts. Also
planned are an in-store consumer
education campaign and technical
assistance to businesses through waste
reduction and recycling audits that will
suggest internal production changes to
achieve source reduction goals.
There is significant source reduction
activity in at least a doxen other states,
and in many local municipalities and
counties. Suffolk County, New York, for
example, has banned plastic food
containers and the use of polystyrene
foam and polyvinyl chloride for retail
and restaurant food packaging. Piano,
Texas, successfully reduced a major
source of residential garden waste with
an intensive public education effort to
change the way residents cut their
lawns so that the amount of bagged
grass clippings coming to the town
dump was markedly lowered; and
Montgomery County, Maryland, by
picking up leaves raked to the curbside
and composting them, sharply reduced
the volume oi bagged leaves picked up
by garbage trucks and taken to the
county landfill.
Regionally, the Coalition of
Northeastern Governors (CONG) has
initiated a major source reduction effort,
in collaboration with industry and
environmental groups, because "the
Northeastern states, with a population
of over 50 million, generate significant
quantities of solid waste," and
"represent a significant portion of the
consumer market served by the
packaging industry." A Coalition Task
Force on Source Reduction is seeking
"to identify meaningful voluntary and
other measures that can effectively be
carried out by and within the region to
reduce packaging waste volume and
problem materials." The Coalition
includes the governors of Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New
Jersey, New York. Pennsylvania,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
Vermont.
,'K
EPA JOURNAL
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Waste Age photo
Task Force goals are to be
accomplished by reducing the total
volume of disposable packaging material
generated for domestic, commercial,
industrial, and governmental use;
increasing the recyclability of packaging
products-that cannot be reduced;
reducing the disposal impact of
package waste by changing to more
environmentally benign packaging
material; and increasing the recycled
material content of packaging products.
The Northeastern governors met
recently with the chief executive
officers of a number of major packaging
and product manufacturers and
distributors of such products to initiate
the cooperative effort.
Business and industry reaction to
source reduction, to date, is limited. A
number of relatively new associations
and coalitions dealing with specific
waste generation problems (especially
related to plastics) seem to be as
concerned with avoiding new
regulations and possible financial
disincentives as with changing to more
environmentally desirable products.
Nonetheless, there are a number of
examples of industry-based moves
towards source reduction.
Proctor and (Iambic is test-marketing
in Kuropu ;) fabric; softener in a reusable
plastic container. When the liquid is
used up, the consumer buys a small
refill package of cleanser concentrate to
mix with water in the original
container. Sales in F.uropo have been
promising; U.S. market tests are being
considered. The company is also
lab-testing a new degradable container
for other products and has increased the
absorbability of its disposable diapers to
the point where, a spokesman said they
can "cut in half that particular
contribution to solid waste."
Polaroid has eliminated mercury from
its battery packs and has reduced the
amount of disposable material in its
film packs; at the same time, however,
the company started marketing a
throwaway camera. Nonetheless, the
Safeway is using degradable
plastic bags, and McDonalds
engineers and Amoco are
looking at ways to replace
polystyrene foam packaging or
make it degradable.
company has a very active Toxic; Use
and Waste Reduction Program, and
hopes to reduce the "volume of all
waste material, not just materials judged
hazardous by law."
Safeway is using degradable plastic:
bags, and McDonalds engineers and
Amoco are looking at ways to replace
polystyrene foam packaging or make it
degradable. Buick has ordered its
suppliers to use recycled materials
when packaging parts for shipment to
Buick assembly plants, while 3\1 and
other companies are changing processes
to use less or non-toxic; coatings and
solvents.
How successful these and other
source reduction efforts will be in the
long run is hard to project. EPA's
Michael Kelly hopes that within the
next five years continuing increases in
solid waste volume will be reversed and
that by the end of the century there will
be a substantial reduction. The Final
Report of the Municipal Solid Waste
Task Force has set a national goal of a
25 percent volume decline due to
source reduction and recycling, as
compared to 1988's ten percent drop.
However, Allegra Cangelosi, staff person
of the Northeastern Governors Task
Force, says there is a need for a clear
index on which to base such predictions
and measure progress, while Karen
Hurst and Paul Relis. authors of "The
Next Frontier, Solid Waste Source
Reduction," offer a variety of forecasts.
none topping 10-to-14 percent by the
year 2000. Hut if new developments
have a multiplier effect and produce
more positive results, source reduction's
successes may be even greater.
EPA's Agenda for Action does see
cause for hope even though the report
conceded that "a source reduction ethic
is not dominant in today's production
or consumption habits." The report says
that with recently expanded "interest in
the preventive benefits of solid waste
source reduction...solid waste issues in
the news, depletion of needed landfill
capacity, difficulties in siting landfills
and incinerators, and soaring disposal
coasts, source reduction of solid waste
has begun to receive serious
consideration. Local and state
governments are interested in the
possibility that source reduction might
abate waste management costs and
environmental risk, avoid liability costs,
preserve landfill capacity, and conserve
natural resources."
If tlie urgent issues can be clarified lor
American consumers and industry and
there can be a change in tin1 nature of
consumer demand, a source reduction
ethic will replace: our throwaway
life-style. This would be a major step
forward for HPA'.s pollution prevention
approach to environmental
protection. •
(f'opkin is (i writer-editor in (he f'.'/'A
Office of Public Affairs.)
MARCH APRIL 1989
-------
A Strategy
to Control the Garbage Glut
by Bruce Weddle
and Edward Klein
For many Americans, 1988 was the
year the garbage glut hit home.
Newspapers reported the feckless
odyssey of a U.S. barge that spent over
two years roaming the open sea looking
for a port at which to dump its cargo of
incinerator ash. A flood of medical
waste closed beaches along the eastern
seaboard. Many people paid much more
to dispose of their trash. In some cities
waste disposal costs soared to more
than $100 per ton because of shrinking
landfill space, long-distance hauling,
and high landfill and incinerator
"tipping" fees. Barges, spoiled beaches
and booming costs, however, are only
symptoms of a more basic problem.
Last year, the United States produced
enough waste to fill a convoy of garbage
trucks reaching halfway to the moon,
and the convoy is getting longer every
year. Even as we produce more and
more garbage, we are running out of
places to put it all. New waste
management facilities are desperately
needed, but many cities face formidable
opposition when siting new landfills,
incinerators, and even recycling centers.
Some communities have already run out
of nearby places to put their garbage.
Others have adequate capacity now.
But, given the long lead-time required to
set up a waste management facility,
these communities must start planning
now to avoid a capacity crisis in the
not-too-distant future.
How then can we handle all this
waste? Last year, EPA set up a
Municipal Solid Waste Task Force to
address this question. The Task Force
findings and recommendations are
outlined in EPA's report, "The Solid
Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for Action."
The report says that the problems
associated with municipal solid waste
management, including cost and
capacity, are felt most directly at the
local level; therefore localities must be
the first line of defense. But everyone
has a role in dealing with the garbage
problem.
EPA stresses the need for an
"integrated waste management system,"
which is the complementary use of
source reduction, recycling, incineration
and landfilling to comprehensively
manage garbage.
Last year, the United States
produced enough waste to fill
a convoy of garbage trucks
reaching halfway to the moon.
Communities should mix and match
these four tools to develop an integrated
waste management system that best
suits their local needs. Communities
should use source reduction and then
recycling to the extent practical,
followed by incineration and landfilling.
To help foster this preference, EPA has
set a national goal of increasing the
nation's source reduction and recycling
efforts from 10 to 25 percent by 1992.
Some communities have set similar or
even higher goals and are on their way
to achieving them, primarily through
ambitious recycling programs.
Source reduction involves minimizing
the volume and toxicity of products that
ultimately require disposal, and making
goods more durable so that longer
periods of time elapse before they are
discarded. One element of source
reduction is for designers and
manufacturers to develop packaging and
products that use less material and
create less waste. In addition, toxic
chemicals should be replaced where
safe and suitable substitutes are
available. Several states have already
taken steps to accelerate these changes.
Rhode Island legislators have
introduced bills to make source
reduction the top priority in the State's
solid waste management planning.
Several bills have also been introduced
in New Jersey to ban or tax certain
plastic packaging and disposable plastic
products. EPA will be monitoring these
activities to determine if they are
successful in achieving source
reduction. We will also work with
industry, public interest groups, states
and localities to achieve source
reduction at the national level.
Much of the national goal set by EPA
can be met by stepped-up recycling
efforts. Recycling involves collecting,
separating, processing and marketing
"wastes" such as glass, metals
and paper, as was done during World
War II to ease wartime scarcity.
Recycling can divert potentially large
volumes of trash from landfills and
incinerators, and can help conserve
natural resources such as trees and oil.
Ten states have established mandatory
recycling programs, and many local '
communities have adopted voluntary
programs with curbside pick-up,
drop-off centers, or both. In many cases,
these towns have found that recycling is
less expensive than incineration or
landfilling, especially when avoided
landfilling and incineration costs are
considered.
A rapidly expanding part of recycling
in some communities is the composting
of yard wastes, which account for nearly
one-fifth of the municipal solid waste
stream. Composting allows yard wastes
to degrade naturally for reuse as
fertilizer or mulch, reducing the need
for scarce landfill space. Several states
have already established composting
incentives by banning the disposal of
yard wastes in landfills.
Incinerators and landfills, however,
will be needed for many years to come
because source reduction and recycling
in themselves, won't solve all of the
30
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Aluminum Company ot America pholo
nation's trash troubles. Incineration is
useful for reducing the bulk of some
municipal waste and provides the
added benefit of energy production. As
such, incineration can be a viable part
of an integrated waste management
system, especially if other management
practices (such as recycling) are used to
complement it. In some communities,
incineration can be made more efficient
by removing from the waste stream
those components that don't burn well
or that could create harmful air
emissions when burned. At the same
time, recycling returns some of these
wastes to productive use. To address
concerns over the air pollutants and ash
that incineration produces, EPA plans to
propose emission standards and is
developing guidance for handling and
disposing of incinerator ash.
For the foreseeable future, landfills
will be essential for disposing of a
significant portion of the waste.
Landfills will continue to be needed for
wastes such as non-combustibles,
non-recyclables and incinerator ash.
Landfills also can produce moderate
amounts of energy through the recovery
of methane gas which is produced as a
Some community groups, like these Boy
Scouts, raise money by recycling cans.
by-product of waste decomposition. To
ensure that toxic gases and liquids do
not leak from landfills and that they
operate safely, EPA has proposed
standards that will force most landfills
to take more stringent steps to protect
nearby residents and the environment.
These rules will bring about a
substantial improvement in the way
solid waste landfills operate.
Much of the national goal set
by EPA can be met by
stepped-up recycling efforts.
All of these elements—source
reduction, recycling, incineration, and
landfilling—can work together to form a
completely-integrated waste
management system. Each community
should "custom-design" its approach to
emphasize specific solid waste
management practices that are
consistent with the community's
demographics, financial resources, and
waste stream characteristics. A
community like Manhattan, Nevada, for
example, may choose to rely on
landfilling as its primary waste
management practice since land is
readily available and tipping iee.s ,nv
low. On the other hand, Manhattan,
New York, where land is at a premium.
disposal fees are high, and good
recycling waste markets exist, may rely
more heavily on recycling to reduce the
amount of garbage going to landfills and
incinerators.
Integrated waste management is an
important framework for addressing the
nation's solid waste woes, but solving
the problem is contingent on a strong
partnership among government,
industry and the public. EPA's "Agenda
for Action" recommends specific roles
for everyone.
MARCH/APRIL 1989
31
-------
Source-separated
trucks like this one in
Santa Rosa, California,
can make the recycling
process easier.
Waste Management photo
• To begin with, strong national
leadership is essential. The federal
government will provide this leadership
through technical assistance, guidance,
education, and regulations (such as
HPA's proposed landfill requirements).
National leadership also includes
bolstering recycling markets by bavin"
federal agencies purchase recycled and
recyclable products. This also sets a
good example for the resl of UK; nation.
The federal government will also foster
source reduction and recycling by
performing market studies and
identifying incentives and other means
for reducing volume and foxicily.
• Enforcement and planning are; key
responsibilities of state governments.
Slates must regulate and issue permits
to facilities and enforce those
requirements. Kach state should also
determine the types and quantities of
solid waste produced within its borders,
and how to manage; it. Stats:
governments should work with
localities on integrated waste
management. State governments, too,
should purchase recycled goods
whenever possible and help develop
stable markets for recycled materials. To
encourage stable markets, slates might
also create incentives, such as
low-interest investment loans for
business and industries thai make
recycled goods. Finally, states can
provide; education and technical
assistance to municipalities.
• Local and county governments are
primarily responsible for safely and
effectively managing their citizens'
trash. They should plan for the best
combination of integrated waste
management components and
implement the appropriate system; they
should also take a lead role in
encouraging separation, collection, and
marketing of recyclable materials, and
educating businesses and consumers
about integrated waste management
practices.
• Waste management and recycling
industries, too, should work with
localities to plan and carry out
integrated waste management. Localities
and private industries can work together
in a public/private partnership to safely
and efficiently handle the garbage. The
need for, and role of private industry
will vary from community to
community.
Waste companies can help develop
markets for recycled materials and
educate the public about ways to reduce
the local garbage problem.
• Manufacturers should "design for
disposal." That is, they should remove
toxics, cut back on volume, and use;
materials which are recyclable, where
practical. As large; consumers,
manufacturers and retailers
(supermarket and fast-food outlets, for
example) should buy recycled and
recyclable products. Businesses can also
play a key role in educating consumers
about the best ways to dispose of the
products they purchase.
• Citizens must understand and accept
their role in both creating and solving
the garbage problem. They should learn
about the products and packaging they
buy and about the wastes their
households and offices produce. Armed
with this knowledge, consumers should
seek out products that last longer, are
less toxic, and have less packaging.
They can use their purchasing power to
demand these types of products.
Consumers also should participate in
local recycling efforts by separating
trash for pick-up, and, where feasible,
performing backyard composting.
Citizens should be prepared to pay for
their trash disposal, and to recognize
the need for local waste management
facilities. Finally, every individual
should make a conscious effort to
produce less waste, or at least stop
increasing the amount of waste
currently produced.
Solving the nation's waste
management problems will require
cooperation by all of us. No one
segment of our society—government,
industry, or private citizens—can do the
job alone. As a nation, we must deal
with our garbage problem now. II we
wait, the solid waste disposal problem
will only get worse. Q
(WeddJe is Acting Director of EPA's
Municipal Solid Waste Program, and
Kiein is Acting Deputy Director.)
'}
EPA JOURNAL
-------
What You Can Do To Help
by Eric A. Goldstein
Think only government officials can
solve the country's mounting solid
waste disposal dilemma? Think again.
All of us have direct control over our
trash through what we purchase and
what we throw away. The amount of
garbage generated, the toxicity of trash
discarded, and the levels of recycling
and waste reduction are all affected by
citizen decisions. As members of the
public, we ran probably have a greater
impact in easing the garbage disposal
crisis than perhaps on any other
environmental issue facing the nation
today.
Take yard and food wastes. Together
these materials account for a whopping
25 percent of the nation's garbage load,
according to EPA data. By setting up
backyard composting programs, many
homeowners could take a big chunk of
these materials out of the waste disposal
stream.
In the composting game, everyone
wins. The return of leaves and other
organic waste to the earth replaces
nutrients in the soil. The need for new
landfills and troublesome garbage
burning incinerators is reduced. And
with less refuse left for garbage pick-up,
disposal fees can clip (or at least hold
their own in an era of sharply rising
collection costs).
You don't need fancy technology to
set up a backyard composting system.
The concept is literally as old as the
woods. All you need to start is a small
area in which you put down a
6-to-10-inch layer of grass clippings and
Building a compost pile.
Adapted from and reprinted by permission of Organic Gardening
magazine Copyright 1987. Rodale Press. Inc. USA All rights '
reserved for a one-year sutiscnotion send $13 97 10 Organic
Gardening. 33 £ Minor St. tmmaus. PA 18098
leaves. Then cover them with some soil.
adding fresh cat litter or alfalfa meal to
cut down on odors. You can even add
kitchen scraps (not meat). Rodale's
Organic Gardening recommends that the
moistened compost be piled at least
three feet square and up to four feet
high. The pile should be turned every
few weeks, and can be covered with a
tarp during winter months.
Many localities have already kicked
off their own municipal composting
programs. In these operations, yard
waste is collected as part of the local
trash pick up and is taken to municipal
parks or other facilities, where
large-scale composting activities are
underway.
If you cannot set up a backyard
composting program, and your
community does not have a municipal
program, why not lobby for one? It is an
"apple pie" issue the whole
neighborhood could support. And the
community contacts you establish to
support local composting could coino in
handy when other environmental issues
heat up.
Mention recycling and most people
think of cans and bottles. With good
reason. Americans purchase nearly 200
million cans of beer and soda every day.
And that figure doesn't even include
many millions of glass and plastic:
bottles. You can help trim these
numbers through recycling, saving
Repeat layering as below
Kitchen scraps
Alfalfa meal (or
alfalfa-based cat litter)
to 3" layer manure
or more grass clippings
Few shovelfuls of soil
6 - 10" layer green plant
material and grass clippings
Size of finished pile: 3' square, 4' high
MARCH/APRIL 1989
33
-------
money and conserving natural resources
in the process.
Ten states now have returnable
beverage container laws. Five-cent or
ten-cent deposits for each bottle or can
are levied at the point of purchase; the
cash is refunded when the empty bottles
and cans are returned. A better way for
children to learn about conservation and
to pick up extra allowance money
would be hard to find.
Even in states without bottle deposit
bills, beverage container recycling is
worth doing. This is particularly true in
the case of aluminum. Recycling
requires only five percent of the energy
needed to produce virgin aluminum
cans from bauxite. In part for this
reason, you can find recycling
opportunities for aluminum cans
throughout the 50 states.
Don't forget newspaper recycling. The
only trick here is to keep glossy
newspaper supplements (Along with
junk mail and other trash) out of your
separately bundled newspaper. Many
localities already have special pick-ups
for newspapers. If your community does
not, find out why. Although markets for
recycled newspapers fluctuate, the
landfill space your town can save by
recycling newspapers makes this
strategy attractive, to say nothing of the
benefits from reduced demand for forest
products.
What happens to the insecticides,
paint, batteries, nail polish remover, and
other household toxics you discard? If
you are not participating in a local
household hazardous waste collection
program, these toxins are probably
winding up in a landfill where they
threaten to contaminate ground or
surface water, or an incinerator where
they aggravate air pollution problems.
find out from you sanitation department
if your community has a household
toxics recycling program and help keep
these harmful pollutants out of the air
and water.
Better than recycling trash is not
producing it in the first place. Such
activities fall under the banner of
"source reduction." Much of the strain
on our existing landfills comes from a
post-World War II explosion in
packaging. The annual consumption of
packaging in New York State, for
example, has Jumped from about 400 to
800 pounds per person since 1958.
Why? Packaging sells. Advertisers have
bombarded American consumers with
messages luring them to products with
elaborate, often multi-material,
packaging. While some of this packaging
is justified for sanitary purposes, the
proliferation of packaging has clearly
gone too far.
Here are some tips for those seeking
to get out from under the packaging
mess. For starters, know what you want
when you go shopping; buy the product,
AH of us have direct control
over our trash through what
we purchase and what we
throw away.
not the package. Many supermarkets
now offer items for sale in bulk
quantities. Patronizing these products
can save you money. Excess packaging
is expensive; usually it is the consumer
who pays.
When purchasing beverages, you
might want to stick with glass bottles or
aluminum cans; the recycling of plastic
bottles is still in its infancy.
You can also cut down on solid waste
by bringing your own string bag or
satchel to the market to carry a few
items home. The Europeans do this, and
it is one reason why some European
countries produce only half the waste
per person than the United States does.
And why not skip the bag completely if
your trip to the convenience store is
only for a quart of milk or a loaf of
bread?
Americans now live in a throw-away
society. Everything, it seems, is
disposable these days. Add fountain
pens, razors and even cameras to the
growing list of products that were once
reusable and now are needlessly piling
up on landfills across the country.
When purchasing consumer items,
inquire about the durability of a
product. A cheaper model that will
break down or fall apart more quickly is
no bargain.
Recycling and waste reduction
opportunities don't end in the home.
Commercial waste adds significantly to
local waste disposal burdens. In New
York, for example, commercial wastes
surprisingly account for nearly 50
percent of the total garbage disposed by
the City.
There is plenty citizens can do to cut
back the amount of commercial trash.
Paper and paper products regularly top
official lists of solid waste volumes. In
Washington, D.C., the dean of white
collar towns, paper accounts for more
than half of all solid waste generated.
Separating white ledger and computer
paper for recycling could cut down on
disposal costs and bring in extra income
for your company. This is not a high
risk operation; demand for these
materials has remained relatively stable
over the years.
Another idea is to switch your
company's letterhead and paper stock to
recycled products. Local environmental
groups can help identify suppliers in
your area.
All these opportunities for citizen
action do not mean that government
agencies are off the hook. Recycling and
waste reduction activities will never
assume their rightful position as the
nation's dominant waste disposal
strategies without full cooperation from
and aggressive involvement by city,
state and federal officials.
But you should not minimize your
own role. If there is a silver lining in
our nations's trash disposal woes, it is
that the very citizens who are
responsible for producing so much of
the municipal garbage load can find
plenty that they can do to turn the crisis
around. D
(Goldstein is a senior attorney with the
Natural Resources Defense Council,
Inc., a national environmental group.)
34
:PA JOURNAL
-------
Five Situation
Pieces:
What is happening around
the country, tit the grass
roots, regarding solid ivasfe
management? While the
Journal does not have the
resources to conduct a broad
survey, we did locate ivhat
we felt were Jive especially
interesting situations. They
include Indianapolis,
Indiana, a city that accepted
a facility to burn its garbage;
Prince George's County,
Maryland, u locale that
turned doivn cm incinerator;
East Lyme. Connecticut, a
town with a strong recycling
program; Florida, a state thai
is launching an ambitious
solid ivaste control program
with unusually broad
political support; and finally,
Islip, New York, the town
that scut out the garbage
barge that became the; focus
of international attention
because a place could not be;
found that would accept ami
dispose of the waste. The
Journal asked persons
involved in each of the five
cases Jo author articles
explaining the situations for
the la)' reader. The, five
pieces follow.
Indianapolis, Indiana
by Beulah Coughenour
Burn it. bury it or leave it
at the curb!
Ten years ago, the City of
Indianapolis looked into the
future and realized we were
heading for trouble unless we
figured out what we were
going to do with our trash.
The single remaining
landfill had a severely
limited life, and local
government was being held
responsible by the U.S. EPA
for any environmental
problems. In addition, this
one landfill was in a position
to have an uncontrolled
monopoly on the area's trash
market, which could have
forced the city to pay
potentially exorbitant prices
for disposal there.
The outlook for additional
landfill space was not good.
Fifteen formerly available
landfills in the area had been
closed in recent years, either
due to regulations or because
they had gone out of
business. Meanwhile, no new
landfills had been sited in
central Indiana for years. One
of the factors was strong
citizen opposition, which
had increased as the public
became more aware of the
environmental dangers from
inadequately planned sites.
A solid waste task force
composed of people from
various groups interested in
finding a solution to our
problems was appointed by
the Mayor. This larger group
evolved into a smaller
steering committee which
explored many options
including recycling,
worm-farming, composting
and land application.
landfilling in southern
Indiana coal mines, and mass
burn or refuse-derived fuel
technologies. One member of
the group had a plane so we
were able to see various
techniques first-hand. We
learned a lot about trash!
In 1978, the steering
committee visited resource
recovery facilities in
Dusseldorf, West Germany.
What we saw convinced the
committee that the mass
burn/resource recovery
technology was best for
Indianapolis. We made the
decision on the basis of
addressing several key areas:
(1) the technology had to be
technically sound ami
proven; (2) any plan had to
be cost-effective and backed
by a reputable bonding
company with a deep pocket
and a financing plan
requiring equity participation
on the part of the vendor: (3)
the strategy also needed to he
backed by the legal authority
to control the flow of trash to
disposal facilities and to
choose the best vendor
through the Request for
Proposal (RFP) process
rather than just accepting the
lowest bidder.
In 1979 the task force set
up some guidelines:
• The city would guarantee
an average of 1500 tons of
solid waste each day with an
average 4500 to 5000 British
Thermal Units (BTlJ's) per
ton.
• The Request for Proposals
would include three 600 tons
per day (TPD) mass burn
boilers with the capacity to
dry some wet sludge cake.
• The mass burn plant
should be constructed
through a full-service vendor
who would design, construct.
own, operate, and guarantee
performance.
• The financing .should
include Industrial Revenue
Ofy of IrttitanaiMfis photo
*
Light 'er up! L.-R.: Indianapolis
Mayor William H. Hudnut, III;
City-County Councilwoman
Beulah Coughenour; and
Barbara Gole, Director,
Department of Public Works.
The first fire was tit in the city's
new mass burn plant on August
24, 1988.
MARCH/APRIL 1989
35
-------
Prince George's County,
Bonds the vendor taking 25
percent equity interest. The
cost would he backed In the
assets of the vendor and
repaid from tipping fees and
the sale of steam. (Tipping
fees are highly dependent on
sale of steam.) A landfill will
still be needed for bypass
and ash disposal.
We thought we were ready
to roll. 1 lowever a new
Director of Public Works had
other priorities. Our plans
were put on hold (Patience!)
Then in 1984, with the
appointment of yet another
Public Works Director, the
task force was expanded to
include those groups who
have a stake in solid waste
decisions the Chamber of
Commerce,
environmentalists, and
citizens from homes and
neighborhoods surrounding
prospective landfill sites.
In an effort to site a new
landfill for Marion County,
which includes Indianapolis.
the local government went to
the community through a
Landfill Kvahiation
Committee (LKCJ with a
broad base of representation.
This group outlined what the
best site would be like
without knowing what
locations might be proposed.
Appropriate sites were
sought, based on these
criteria.
The proposed sites were
announced in December
1984. Citizens' groups
opposed the new landfill
sites by bringing masses of
angry residents and live rats
to public meetings. The
process led Indianapolis
Mayor William Huclnut, III to
decide that there would be
no new landfill during his
administration.
The city administration
decided to go back to the
original resource recovery
plans. An RFP was put out in
(tine of 1985. We had bids
from three major systems.
The steering committee heard
these presentations. The
proposal from Ogdeu Martin
System. Inc. was accepted in
September 198f>. Their use of
the proven Martin technology
along with a capital cost
projected at $84 million and
Ogden's cash equity of $21
million made them clearly
the best vendor for
Indianapolis. We still had the
advantage of energy tax
credit and accelerated
depreciation, which kept our
cost down considerably.
The process which took
Indianapolis from an
impending solid waste crisis
to successful plan for solid
waste management produced
a ground breaking on May
16, 1986. The first fire lit in
the new mass burn plant by
Mayor Hucinut on August 24,
1988, could only have been
possible through the
partnership of many people
from the business, political,
technical, and environmental
fields. As other communities
set about planning to meet
their own needs, they need to
consider at least these several
suggestions:
• Seek to educate the
community about the reality
of the solid waste problems
your municipality faces.
• Form a broad-based
committee to look at possible
solutions.
• Include citizens with
backgrounds in varying
fields—technical, financial,
environmental and
legislative.
• Make sure the technology
is workable and that you see
it in action. Ask questions
when you tour.
• Make certain you can
control the trash flow.
• Select a company with a
strong financial position.
• If possible, site your
facility in an already
industrialized area.
Above all, have the bulldog
tenacity to see the proposal
through. A mayor's support
is indispensable. Expect
things to take longer than
you thought and don't give
up! n
(Coughenour is City-County
Councillor for Indianapolis
and Marion County,
Indiana.)
Sharon Kuck phoJo Pnnce Georges Journal
Citizens banded together in Prince George's County,
Maryland, to make clear their opposition to a solid waste
incinerator. County trees and mailboxes were festooned
with blue ribbons symbolizing blue skies and clean air.
Twenty-four hundred tons
of trash a day; that's the
solid waste disposal problem
in Prince George's County,
Maryland. Every day garbage
trucks lumber across the
nearly 500 square miles of
this suburban county,
bordered on the west by the
District of Columbia. They
carry garbage churned out by
the county's approximately
700,000 residents; garbage
that is rapidly filling the
county's two landfills, slated
to close by the year 2002,
even if a controversial
landfill expansion is
approved by the local County
Council. Without the landfill
expansion, the landfills will
be chock-full by the late
1990's. And, because it takes
years to approve a site, and
obtain permits for a new
garbage disposal facility such
as a landfill or incinerator,
there is little time for
debating even the proposed
short-term solution.
Nevertheless, debate is the
one thing Prince George's
county has had plenty of, so
long-term solutions to the
trash disposal problem have
been harder to come by. In
fact, a bitter and nearly
three-year debate over what
to do with the county's
trash—including proposals to
burn it. bury it, recycle it. or
do a little of each—has left
the county government still
dealing with garbage the
old-fashioned way. Nearly all
of its garbage is buried in two
landfills. A proposal by
County Executive Parris
Glendening to build an
incinerator that would burn
half the county's garbage was
rejected unanimously by the
County Council last
November, after prolonged
and acrimonious debate.
Glendening. a popular county
executive who generally gets
what he wants from the
County Council, lost big on
this one, at least in the short
term. More than 300 angry
county residents packed a
public Council hearing last
October, weeks before the
final vote on the incinerator.
The handwriting was already
on the wall. Citizens were
convinced incinerator
emissions would poison the
air, and that bottom ash
disposed of in "monofills"
(landfills only for ash) would
leach toxic plumes into the
ground water.
One resident strode to the
dais and slapped a small
cylinder full of incinerator
ash in front of each Council
EPA JOURNAL
-------
Maryland
by Lynda V. Mapes
member and invited them to
unscrew the lid and breath
deeply. Make no mistake, the
citizen activist said, council
members' political careers
would "burn in flames of the
election of 1990" if they
voted jn favor of an
incinerator. The speaker was
part of a highly vocal,
organized, aggressive citizens
group known as the Prince
George's Recycling Coalition,
which was formed within
two weeks of a press
conference Glendening called
last June to name his chosen
location for construction of
the so-called waste-to-energy
facility.
The coalition sounded a
heavy drumbeat of concern.
Town meetings were held
and environmental activists
visited the county and spoke
against incineration. The
local Sierra Club became
involved. Blue ribbons
symbolizing blue skies and
clean air turned up on trees,
mail boxes, and signs as the
movement spread. The group
distributed posters declaring
"Prince George's County:
Incinerator Free Zone." A
full-scale, countywide
mandatory recycling program
and state-of the-art landfills
were the only trash disposal
methods the group decreed
acceptable.
As the anti-incinerator
movement grew, early
Council supporters of
incineration began to say
federal and state air quality
standards for incinerator
emissions and regulations
regarding disposal of
incinerator ash were
nonexistent or inadequate, so
how could they be expected
to vote for an incinerator?
The embattled County
Executive brought panels of
experts before the council to
answer technical questions
about incineration and ash
disposal. The experts assured
council members that
breathing incinerator
emissions was safer than
drinking water, or driving a
car.
He also warned that the
county would have to truck
its trash out of state when its
landfills finally bulged,
because recycling could not
handle enough trash. He said
that angry constituents would
wonder why their
government did not act
sooner and more decisively
to solve the Prince George's
County trash disposal
problem.
Seagulls, Glendening
predicted, would be in every
kitchen, picking over piled
up scraps; garbage would
wash up on the beaches from
ocean dumping. But in the
end, even the most dramatic
arguments failed to convince.
The Council had to bury
most of the county's garbage
in landfills and recycle the
rest for the foreseeable future.
Council members all hotly
deny it was fear of losing
their jobs that spurred the
nine of them to vote against
incineration. Rather, they say
that it was concern for the
environment and a desire to
give full-scale recycling a
trial that moved them to vote
no.
As often happens in
politics, few seemed fully
satisfied with the decision.
In the newspapers, the
county executive scolded the
Council, saying it had
shirked its responsibility to
provide a long-term solution
to the trash problem. He
emphasized the Council's
reversal of its own earlier
unanimous commitment to
reduce reliance on landfills
for trash disposal.
On the other side, citizen
activists who pushed for
defeat of the incinerator were
uneasy with what they saw
as a compromised victory.
They had asked for a
mandatory, countywide
recycling program to dispose
of as much waste as possible.
Instead, they got a
commitment from the
Council to launch a
voluntary recycling program.
And they were disappointed
by a lack of specifics on how
the program would work and
when it would begin.
Even Council members
who voted against the
incinerator publicly
expressed misgivings about
their decision; some said the
incinerator proposal is sure
to be back in a few years,
when recycling and
landfilling fail adequately to
take care of the trash disposal
problem.
Today, a pilot recycling
effort is underway in six
county communities,
including more than 5,000
households. Newspapers,
bottles, and aluminum cans
are collected at curbside. But
the effort is not even a year
old.
Meanwhile, trash trucks
continue their trek to the
county landfills, packing
them fuller with 2,400 tons
of trash each day. As county
officials often said during the
incinerator debate, "it's got to
go somewhere." Q
(Mapes is a Staff Writer for
the Prince George's Journal in
Prince George's Counly,
Maryland.)
East Lyme, Connecticut
by Dennis J. Murphy,
Jr. and Peter L. Battles
As the first town in the
state to achieve
Connecticut's goal of 25
percent reclamation of the
waste stream through
recycling, East Lyme, with its
population of 15,000, is
known as a recycling leader.
East Lyme's commitment to
recycling goes back to 1974,
when the town adopted an
ordinance requiring the
source separation of
recyclable materials. We
began with residential
curbside pick-up of
newspaper and magazines,
and in 1976 added
mandatory separation of glass
and cans. Under the current
system, residents set out their
recyclables on the same day
as their regular refuse
pick-up, with glass and cans
in a container carrying a
town-supplied recycling
sticker and newsprint
bundled or placed in paper
bags. A two-person crew
operates the town's recycling
truck, which can cover all
routes in a 5-day week.
Since 1985, the town has
brought the private haulers
serving multi-family and
non-residential development
into the recycling program,
encouraged by institution of
a $35 per ton tipping fee for
unseparated waste brought to
the landfill. At the same
time, corrugated cardboard
was added to the list of
mandatory recyclables. As a
result, all industrial,
commercial and multi-family
units are supplied by the
haulers with a dumpster for
refuse and two additional
dumpsters for recyclables.
At the landfill, the town
maintains separate ramps
with leased 30-yard roll-offs
for glass, cans, and
newsprint, and a compactor
for corrugated material. Glass
and cans are hauled to and
sorted at a regional
processing facility. The
facility is currently being
upgraded with funding
assistance from the state.
Newsprint and corrugated
material are transported to
recyclers under contracts
with private recyclers. Also
at the landfill, a full-time
gate attendant ensures that
MARCH/APRIL 1989
37
-------
Florida
East Lyme, with its
15,000 population, was
the first town in
Connecticut to achieve
the state's goal of
reclaiming 25 percent
of the waste stream
through recycling.
fast Lyme phow
other recyolables and
non-refuse materials are
deposited separately for
disposal without iandfilling.
'These materials include scrap
metal, batteries, tires, and
motor oil. In 1987, total
tonnage recycled exceeded
2,400 Ions, an almost 30
percent diversion from the
solid waste stream. In the
past year the town has begun
curbside separated collection
ol leaves for composting, and
recycling of office paper in
the Town Hall and the public
schools.
With the notoriety our
recycling program lias
achieved, it is not .surprising
that numerous inquiries
come from municipalities
around the country on how
to set up and run an effective
program. We are happy to
show people what we're
doing, but wo sometimes
sense that these delegations
go away slightly
disappointed to find we have
no "secret ingredient"—no
simple trick of the trade that
will guarantee; success.
Alt hough we have no
magic to impart. Fast I,vine's
15 years of recycling
experience indicates that the
most vital aspect of a
recycling program is
communication—developing
a clear and simple message
and then continuously
reinforcing it.
First, tin; townspeople
must be convinced of the
necessity of recycling. Some
people may be swayed by
resource conservation or
anti-litter arguments, but
everyone appreciates simple
economics. This is why our
appeal is not to our residents'
environmental conscience
but to their pocketbooks:
every ton of material recycled
is a ton the taxpayers won't
have to pay $100 or more to
dispose of at an out-of-town
landfill after our own facility
closes this year. The theme
is: better to spend money on
educating our kids than to
spend it on burying our
waste.
This message and the
simple rules concerning
when and how to put out
recyclables are repeated in
regular paid newspaper
advertising, in flyers and
brochures mailed out with
tax bills and distributed
through supermarkets, and in
instructional material left at
the curb by the recycling
crew when materials are not
separated. The town has even
prepared a packet for
Welcome Wagon to give to
new residents. Also, we seek
out any publicity that we can
generate because articles
about the success of our
program instill community
pride that increases
participation.
An indispensible
component of the education
effort is an effective recycling
coordinator, and the place for
the coordinator is in the
field: educating, cajoling, or
otherwise effecting the
compliance of commercial
waste generators, private
haulers, and individual
residents.
The kind of persistent
public relations and
education program that we
speak of requires a strong
commitment at Town Hall,
from the chief elected official
on down, but it can yield
dramatic results. In the early
1980's, East Lyme was
recycling approximately
1,000 tons per year, a
successful program for a
town of 15,000 people. By
1985, the realization hit
home that our landfill would
close within a few years, and
with a renewed emphasis,
that level grew to over 2,400
tons in 1987, a 140 percent
increase; in 1989 the town
expects to recycle 3,000 tons
of material. D
[Murphy is First Selectman
for the Town of East Lyme,
Connecticut, and Battles is
Director of Planning for the
Town.)
During the summer
following the 1987
session of the Florida
Legislature, there was a
growing awareness of
emerging solid waste
problems. The Secretary of
the Department of
Environmental Regulation
was calling solid waste
management the most
neglected environmental
problem in the state.
Nearly half of Florida's 67
counties were operating
landfills under a consent
order from the DER to correct
violations in landfill
operation. The agency listed
48 solid waste landfills as
suspected of being, or
actually known as, sources of
environmental contamination
and public health threats.
Nine of the 48 sites were on
the federal Superfund list.
The public really began to
realize the magnitude of the
problem when it was
reported that
Jacksonville/Duval County
processes enough solid waste
to fill the Gator Howl every
22 days and Miami/Dade
County processes enough
solid waste to fill the Orange
Bowl 13 times a year.
Even though the Senate
formalized its approach for
reviewing the solid waste
management issue by
creating the Select Committee
on Solid Waste Management,
there was a growing
consensus emerging in the
legislative and executive
branches of the state
government that solid waste
management problems had
grown to near critical
proportions and needed to
have a high priority for the
1988 legislative session. The
House Natuial Resources
Committee, chaired by
Representative Sid Martin
assigned full time staff to
review the issue and propose
legislation for the House of
Representatives.
Governor Bob Martinez,
previously the Mayor of
Tampa, Florida, was already
well aware of the growing
solid waste problems facing
local officials. The Governor
18
EPA JOURNAL
-------
by George Kirkpatrick
Under Florida's comprehensive new solid waste legislation, old
tires must be destroyed. Portable tire shredders like this one can
help.
and his appointed Secretary
of the Department of
Environmental Regulation,
Dale Twachtmann,
announced that they would
develop legislative proposals
for the 1988 session.
The Senate Select
Committee on Solid Waste
Management held eight
meetings at various locations
around the state to gather
information on solid waste
problems and to meet with
local government officials
and private sector businesses
to solicit their comments on
ways to solve them.
Extraordinary efforts were
made to inform statewide
business organizations about
the emerging solid waste
issue and to solicit their
suggestions on how the
business community could
help solve the problem. A
great many man-hours were
devoted to these tasks, as
committee members traveled
around the state to meet with
as many business groups as
possible in morning and
evening sessions. The
business associations were
receptive to these discussions
and indicated a willingness
to participate in finding
solutions, even if it meant
providing new taxes or fees
to solve the problem.
Participants in these
meetings included such
organizations as the Florida
Retail Federation, Associated
Industries, Soft Drink
Association, Southland
Corporation, Beer and Wine
Industries, Waste Haulers,
Publix, and many others. The
toughest folks to get involved
were the plastics companies.
Finally after much pounding
and threatening, they came to
the table. An informal
advisory group was formed of
businesses involved directly
in recycling activities to
solicit their suggestions for
reducing the volume of solid
waste. This advisory group
involved representatives from
the paper, glass-forming,
plastics, scrap iron and metal
industries and others. These
forums helped to develop a
broad base of interest groups
who generally supported the
need for solid waste
legislation, and the
recognition that such
legislation needed to be
comprehensive in its scope to
solve Florida's problems.
This later proved to be
extremely important in
overcoming early proposals
to have less comprehensive
legislation limited to
mandatory beverage
container deposits (bottle bill
legislation) and attempts to
"take my client out of the
bill."
As the legislative proposals
on solid waste matured
during the 1988 session, they
became the most
extraordinary environmental
legislative package of this
decade. Never have so many
different lobbying groups
been interested and involved
in a single bill. There were
easily 70 to 80 lobbyists who
regularly attended the weekly
meetings held in both Houses
to amend and improve the
solid waste legislation. I
would estimate that we
ultimately dealt with over
230 lobbyists and interest
groups.
There were several issues
that proved to be major
roadblocks to the passage of
this important legislation, but
both Senate and House
leaders were committed to
solving the problems and
removing the roadblocks.
Among the major issues
were:
1. The role of private waste
management businesses,
including private recyclers
versus local governments.
in designing and
implementing volume
reduction programs.
2. Whether grants would go
to all local governments
(67 counties and 392
cities) or whether
resources would be
focused on larger cities
and counties.
3. Ways to cause polystyrene
foam products and plastic
products to be recycled or
degraded. The concern
here was more for the
litter aspects of these
products than for the total
volume they represented
in the waste stream.
4. Whether local
governments should be
required to develop
extensive implementation
plans as a prerequisite for
receipt of grants.
5. Whether the funding
source for the legislation
should be based on tin;
allowance merchants
retain for sale tax
collections or based on a
workers' compensation
type mechanism that
charges businesses a fee
based on the number of
workers. We ultimately
agreed on about $30
million dollars of
recurring revenue each
year.
6. Creation of a broad-based
advance disposal fee on
containers to be effective
in 1992. rather than a
container deposit (bottle
bill) feature limited to
beverage containers. This
has the potential to odd
another $75-100 million
dollars to pay for
recycling infrastructure.
These issues were finally
resolved by a conference
committee during the last
week of the legislative
session. The compromise
measure was enacted and
became la\v on October 1.
1988. Florida's legislation
was designed to change
people's disposal habits, to
provide incentives for
recycling, to assist in
informing the public of the
true costs of solid waste
management, to make sure all
users pay their fair share, and
to emphasize the importance
of protecting the
environment.
We probably made some
mistakes, but it has been my
experience that timing is
critical to the passage of
difficult legislation. Senate
Bill 1192 is probably the
most comprehensive
legislation dealing with solid
waste and all its aspects vet
passed by any state
legislature in ihc United
States. Our window of
opportunity was there, the
time was right, and with a lot
of great work from our staff
and the other participants \vi>
were able to got it all done at
one time. I am sure we will
be fine-tuning this legislation
for years, but the die is cast.
It is hoped thai by starting
this aggressive program now,
Florida will not be faced
with the overwhelming solid
waste crisis now confronting
many other states, a
(State Senator Kirkpatrick
was Chairman of the Florida
Senate Select Committee on
Solid Waste Management in
1987-1988.)
MARCH/APRIL 1989
-------
Islip, New York
by Frank R. Jones
March 22, 1987. To many
the day has no
significance. But to the
residents of the Town of islip
it marked the beginning of a
saga that would thrust our
community into national
prominence. It was that day
when a group ol garbage
disposal entrepreneurs
launched from Long Island
City, New York, a barge
laden with
refuse—destination Morehead
City, North Carolina. That
vessel would come to be
known as the "Islip Carbage
Barge" and, while all of its
cargo was not from our Long
Island town, to the rest of the
nation wo became a symbol
of the national, indeed
international, problem of
solid waste disposal.
\\'i! have often said that the
Islip barge was the Paul
Revere of garbage, with its
not too subtle message, "the
garbage is coming . . .the
garbage is coming!" In
retrospect, however, the
barge's voyage was a blessing
in disguise because it
enabled our town
government to rally our
residents and get them to
participate in recycling to
reduce our solid waste
disposal problem in a way
not achieved before by any
municipality in the United
States.
Now, two years later, the
Town of Islip is known to
many as the recycling capital
of the United States. CNN,
ABC World News Tonight,
and NBC] News have all
focused on Islip and the
impressive fact that, on an
annual basis, we now recycle
almost 40 percent of our
refuse. Our success as
recyclers is due in large part
to the attention focused on
the problem by the infamous
barge, and residents of Islip
wanted to do something to
help restore our proud
community's good name.
They were eager to
participate in our expanded
WRAP (We
Recycle.. America...a ml
Proudly) recycling program.
In May of 1987, in
response to dwindling
landfill space, and the fact
that all Long Island landfills
were under orders from New
York State to close by the
end of 1990, Islip developed
an expanded mandatory
recycling program, and
enforced it.
A major factor in the Town
of [slip's ability to recycle its
garbage is the special WRAP
containers provided to every
town residence. These beige
and green twenty gallon lid
containers were distributed
free of charge to each
residence. Citizens are
required to put them
curbside every Wednesday.
They are used to collect
glass, metal cans, and paper
recyclables, which are picked
up by garbage trucks and
taken to our recycling center
where they are sorted out
and readied for transport to
the various brokers and paper
brokers. WRAP inspectors
tour our town each
Wednesday and issue fines of
up to $250 to those who
ignore warnings to "recycle
or else."
Fully 95 percent of all of
Islip's residents now place
their recyclables out for
collection each week and are
quite dedicated to the
project. If those recyclables
are not collected in what the
taxpayers feel is a timely
manner, they are on the
phone to my Town Hall
office expressing their
concern that the recyclables,
if not picked up on
Wednesday, will become
mixed in with their regular
household trash collection
the next day. We currently
collect 50,000 tons of
residential and commercial
paper, glass, and metal
recyclables yearly.
To complement the
Wednesday WRAP program
success, in September, 1988
Islip embarked upon a
program to recycle yard
waste. On Mondays and
Tuesdays, every resident in
Islip is provided a special
yard waste collection. We
collect all grass clippings,
leaves, brush and branches
and bring the material to a 30
acre composting site. Islip is
the first municipality in the
nation to operate a compost
facility where more than
60,000 tons of yard waste is
turned each year into fresh,
fertile compost by using
nature's own system.
(c) 1987 Audrey C Ttetndn, Newsday
Workers preparing a ramp to unload the widely traveled
barge that carried garbage from Islip, New York.
As with our WRAP
collection, we knew that
making participation easy for
our residents was essential to
the composting program's
success, so we developed a
process that enables everyone
to continue to use plastic
bags for yard waste
disposal—the very same kind
of bags residents have been
using for years. This system
makes it convenient for
residents to place their yard
waste material curbside for
pick up. We separate the
plastic from the yard waste at
the site, before processing.
Currently we are using the
compost material to provide
cover for our dwindling
landfill while also making it
available free of charge for
residents to reuse in their
home gardens.
The final element in our
program will be our
waste-to-energy resource
recovery plant. When the
plant goes on line in June of
this year, with some
additional burning capacity
to be added later, it will burn
that portion of the town's
solid waste that can not be
recycled or returned to
nature as compost. The plant
will be revenue-producing,
and will generate enough
electricity for 9,000 homes in
our community of 73,000
homes. Of course, it will also
produce ash. Right now,
working with experts from
the State University of New
York at Stony Brook, we are
hopeful that we will be able
to also re-use the ash for road
or building construction
material. When that
technology is perfected, we
will then be able to recycle
and re-use our entire waste
stream.
Thus, in just two short
years, the town of Islip has
progressed from being an
exporter of garbage to being
its foremost recycler. With a
tip of the Islip hat to the
garbage barge, we intend to
remain just that way! D
(/ones is the Supervisor of
the Town of Islip.)
40
EPA JOURNAL
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How Japan Is Handling
Its Solid Waste
by Joanna D. Underwood
Fewer than 6,500 municipal solid
waste landfills operate in this
country, and half of these, it is
estimated, will be closed or filled
within the next two years. As landfills
are shut down at this alarming rate,
community leaders face urgent
decisions about what to do with their
garbage.
Many municipalities have decided
that incinerators, particularly those that
burn garbage for energy, are the
solution, and are going full steam ahead.
As of 1987, 107 energy recovery plants
Japan has been a pioneer in
integrating use of waste
burning with maximum
materials recycling.
had been built in the United States, and
another 50 were under construction or
in advanced states of planning. Hut
these plants are encountering a great
deal of opposition around the country.
Community concern about these
facilities centers on their safety and
whether, and to what extent, they are
needed. (Are there better ways to handle
garbage?) If incinerators are built, what
steps can be taken to ensure the cleanest
possible operation?
In recent years, Japan, Sweden, and
West Germany have been among the
countries leading the way in developing
incinerators, and Japan has been a
pioneer in integrating use of waste
burning with maximum materials
recycling. Japan may have the most
sophisticated overall system for
managing solid wastes of any country.
The impetus for developing Japan's
system was clear: They virtually ran out
of landfill space 35 years ago. Their
population of 120 million (half that of
the United States) is jammed into an
INFORM photo D< All
island nation the size of California, o!
which only 21 percent of the land is
habitable. Today the Japanese have over
1,400 people per habitable acre. We in
the United States have 50.
My firm— INFORM, Inc.— made a
two-year study of the Japanese
approaches and described them in
Garbage Mami»eni
-------
Cartoon
drawings help
keep Japanese
aware of the
importance of
recycling.
INFORM photo Di Allen HershkowiU
are achieving impressive recycling
levels of 50 percent or more.
Second, Jiipiin—as well as some of the
European countries studied by
INFORM—identifies hazardous elements
in its trash, such as flashlight and watch
batteries and certain plastics, as
materials that require special treatment
or disposal. These are difficult to
recycle and are considered undesirable
to burn because they may produce
dangerous Has and heavy metal
emissions. (Because of such concern
over toxicitv, the Swedes have banned
use of cadmium in all consumer
products.)
The third category is garbage that is
appropriate for direct
landfill ing—non-com bust ible, non-toxic
materials such as ceramics and
nonrecoverable glass that can't be
recycled.
What remains are "soiled
combustibles," including organic
kitchen waste, yard waste, light plastics,
and soiled paper. Most of this—about a
third of all the country's solid waste—is
burned. (Recognition of problems of
nitrogen oxide emissions related to
burning yard wastes have recently led a
growing number of U.S. cities to
promote composting of yard refuse.]
The Japanese prefer incineration to
direct landfilling of "soiled
combustible" wastes because
incineration reduces the volume of
material going to limited landfill space.
It also reduces the risk of toxic elements
in raw waste contaminating ground
water by percolating down through
They follow the theory that
every piece of waste has its
proper place.
landfill sites, or causing air pollution
via gaseous emissions.
In order to plan for future waste
management needs, the Japanese
inventory their wastes very carefully.
Detailed national statistics on materials
collected and recycled are kept
continuously. They track the amount of
incinerated wastes coming from the
country's 3,255 municipalities by such
measures as weighing trucks as they
deposit loads at local incinerators.
This careful materials inventorying
allows the Japanese to assess how much
landfill space or incinerator capacity
they may need. Such detailed
composition studies are only beginning
to be conducted in the United States.
Waste Separation and Recycling
The remarkably high—50 percent or
better—recycling rates accomplished by
most Japanese municipalities are
achieved mainly by use of extensive
waste separation programs at the
household level. To gain a concrete
picture of how waste separation and
collection are accomplished on this
level, INFORM studied practices in
Machida. a typical medium-sized city
with a population of 320,000 (smaller
than Boston, but larger than New
Haven.) Machida's citizens routinely
separate waste in their homes. They
separate:
• Bottles, papers, and cans to be reused
or recycled.
• Poisonous or hazardous materials
(including batteries, solvents, paints,
etc.).
• Bulky, broken objects, such as old
furniture, bicycles that can be repaired,
and other non-combustibles, such as
broken glass, scrap metal and hard
plastics that go directly to landfill.
• "Soiled combustibles" to be
incinerated.
EPA JOURNAL
-------
The city has a well organized system
for moving these materials to their
proper destinations. Over 103 civic
groups and resource recovery dealers
pick up recyclables and sell them back
to companies that reuse them.
Municipal officials collect bulky objects
and take them to local "cultural centers"
where they are repaired to be sold. The
repair work is done by senior citizens or
people in need of therapy, a process
that gives people productive work as
well aS*creating saleable products.
(During 1985, in Machida, more than
1,500 items, such as bicycles, furniture,
and books were sold.) Municipal
officials collect soiled combustibles that
go to incineration several times a week,
and they pick up dangerous materials
from homes upon request.
Key to the success of community
waste separation in Machida and
hundreds of other Japanese cities is
diligent public cooperation. A Japanese
woman, when asked by INFORM what
would happen if she and other families
didn't separate materials, responded
plainly: "But we do." This is a way of
life. Children in their earliest school
years are taught about waste and its
management. They often tour their local
garbage burning plant where workers
give them lectures on proper waste
management.
The Role of Garbage Burning
The approximately 33 percent of Japan's
wastes comprising the "soiled
combustibles" portion that were burned
in 1986 went to a total of 1,915
incinerators, 362 of which recover
energy. The Japanese realize that
burning garbage produces a range of
problem-causing emissions, including
acid gases, heavy metals, and toxic
organic chemicals, and that studies
correlating these emissions with human
health effects leave much room for
disagreement on the safety of
incineration.
Their response to this dilemma has
been to require use of all possible
operating practices and technologies
that reduce risk most effectively.
Under optimal circumstances seen at
plants in Japan, West Germany, and
Sweden, 99 percent of all measurable
pollutants are removed, with the
exception of mercury, which can be
controlled at a range from 91 to 97
percent.
Key to the success of
community waste separation
in Machida and hundreds of
other Japanese cities is
diligent public cooperation.
The Japanese achieve high
environmental standards with six key
pollution-control and worker-training
measures. They:
• Equip their plants with acid gas
scrubbers which help condense metals
and control acid gases, as well as with
high-efficiency electrostatic precipitators
or baghouses, which collect
contaminated airborne particles.
• Remove non-combustible materials
that would both upset furnace
operations and increase air pollution
levels.
• Monitor combustion conditions
constantly to maintain temperatures best
suited to minimize organic pollutants.
• Give plant workers extensive formal
training.
• Monitor plant operations in keeping
with strictly enforced environmental
standards. In Japan and much of
Europe, violations of air standards are
punishable by fines, plant closings, and
in some cases jail sentences for
company officials.
• Manage the ash residue from
incinerators carefully. The amount of
ash is less than that generated by U.S.
plants because so much noncombustible
material is removed beforehand. Large
incinerators (those burning 200 or more
tons of waste a day) are required to
produce no more than five percent ash
by volume of the garbage burned. (U.S.
facilities, which generally burn
unsegregated garbage, generate from 10
to 15 percent ash, by volume.)
To avoid exposing workers and the
public to the ash which they consider
toxic, the Japanese use enclosed
conveyor systems and transport the ash
to landfills in covered trucks. The
ash—often solidified into cement
blocks—is disposed of in lined landfills
that have leachate collection systems
and wastewater treatment plants.
It is worthwhile noting that few
Japanese programs have teen developed
to reduce at the source the amount of
waste generated by households or
businesses.
However, by the combination of
public involvement in sorting and
recycling garbage, conducting extensive
recycling, and using state-of-the-art
technology and careful worker training
in incineration, Japan has been in the
vanguard of nations that are coping with
municipal wastes, economically
conserving resources, and protecting the
environment.
For U.S. policy-makers and the
hundreds of American communities
now struggling with their own waste
management, a look at what the
Japanese have accomplished should
both encourage and inspire our own
efforts toward developing integrated
solid waste management, o
(Underwood is President of INFORM,
Inc., a nonprofit environmental research
and education group in New York City.]
MARCH/APRIL 1989
43
-------
Making It Pay To Cut Waste
by Alyce M. Ujihara
and Paul R. Portney
Americans are producing more
solid waste—garbage, to put it
colloquially—than ever before. Graphs,
bar charts, and tables from a variety of
reports all confirm what our eyes and,
all too frequently, our noses tel! us
about the accumulated by-products of
modern life. In the space of a few short
years, most citizens have become aware
of a problem that had heretofore only
registered in those places where an
occasional strike by municipal workers
had left garbage piling up on streets and
sidewalks. This awareness has been
heightened by the saga of a hapless,
wandering garbage barge, the sight of
Americans have been and
continue to be prodigious
users of resources. This is as
true of the energy we consume
as it is of the garbage we
generate.
medical wastes washing up on public
beaches, the closure of long-time
landfills, and the acrimony surrounding
efforts to site new waste incinerators.
Just why we are now confronting this
problem is less clear. Two apparently
competing theories seem to hold sway.
The first—which we refer to as the
"cowboy" hypothesis—holds that
Americans have an almost ingrained
use-it-up-and-toss-it-out mentality that
will make it difficult, if not impossible,
to reverse the growth of municipal solid
waste. A competing view—the so-called
"rationalist" perspective—is predicated
on the belief that individuals respond in
a more or less calculating way to the set
of incentives they face. According to
this view, the costs associated with a
"toss it out" approach have historically
been quite low: householders have paid
very little for garbage collection, so
there was little reason for them to cut
down on their effluvia.
Something may be learned from both
points of view. Americans have been
and continue to be prodigious users of
resources. This is as true of the energy
we consume as it is of the garbage we
generate. And part of this may well be
traceable to our national origins: we
were, after all, a frontier society in
which it was literally possible to pick
up and move on when things ran out or
we had made a mess. This was both the
blessing and the curse that a vast and
bountiful land conferred. Thus, a sort of
horn-of-plenty mentality may have
become ingrained in us all.
On the other hand, one can view this
historical pattern as a natural response
to the availability of land for waste
disposal. Unlike Europeans, we could
almost always find new landfilling areas
even as our large cities grew. It made
little sense to spend $100 on recycling
and waste reduction when waste could
be discarded for a $5 disposal fee (when
/ye were unaware of the external costs
hat have now come home to roost in
the form of ground-water contamination
and other problems.) According to the
rationalist argument, then, we may well
have had a cowboy mentality when
solid waste disposal was virtually free,
but this should change as the cost goes
up.
Regardless of one's preference
between these competing theories,
developments on both fronts point in
the direction of less waste disposal.
Recycling, source reduction, and other
measures are becoming more and more
popular. At the same time, and, not
coincidentally, economic factors are
pointing in the direction of less waste
generation and reduction.
Recycling is viewed by many as a first
line of defense in the battle to reduce
solid waste. Nationwide, we currently
recycle only about 10 percent of the
municipal solid waste we produce,
primarily newspapers, bottles, and cans;
but this is sure to increase because more
and more voluntary recycling programs
are popping up. The organizers of these
programs seek "converts" through
education campaigns and by making
collection points as convenient as
possible. For example, recycling rates
are higher when the programs provide
"curbside" pick up rather than offering
only "drop-off" centers. Typically, these
programs have householders separate
recyclable waste from other garbage and
this waste is kept separate when
'collected. As more people learn about
opportunities for recycling, it should
continue to grow in popularity.
Although these voluntary programs
seem to be working well in some places,
in others, programs may not grow fast
enough to make a dent in the solid
waste problem. As a result,
communities are turning to more
coercive measures to advance recycling
goals. Jn a few places, participation in
the local recycling program has become
mandatory. Residents in these
communities must, at a minimum,
separate recyclable items from their
garbage for curbside pick up. If they fail
to do so, they may face a stiff fine (the
heavy hand of the rationalist!) or, worse
yet, the hauler may not pick up their
garbage. Needless to say, these
mandatory programs have much higher
participation rates than voluntary ones.
Moving more in the direction of
incentives rather than volunteerism,
deposit laws or "bottle bills" provide a
direct monetary incentive for
households and others to recycle
beverage containers. Nine states
currently require consumers to pay a
small deposit at purchase—up to 10
cents for each bottle or can—that is
refunded when the empty container is
returned. On the whole, such deposit
44
EPA JOURNAL
-------
systems have greatly encouraged
recycling. EPA estimates that beverage
container return rates are typically 85 to
90 percent. For this reason, some have
proposed expanding the deposit-refund
system to include other types of waste.
In particular, this approach would be
attractive for ensuring that potentially
toxic items, such as car batteries and
household hazardous wastes, are
recycled or disposed of properly.
Even with successful recycling
programs, some wastes will need to be
discarded and the costs of doing so are
increasing. A survey conducted by the
According to the rationalist
argument, then, we may well
have had a cowboy mentality
when solid waste disposal was
virtually free, but this should
change as the price goes up.
National Solid Waste Management
Association showed that average
"tipping" fees for landfills—the charges
paid by municipal or private trash
haulers to dispose of solid wastes—rose
more than 50 percent from 1986 to
1987. Fees will continue to climb in
anticipation of stricter federal standards
for solid waste landfills. But these
higher tipping fees won't have their
desired incentive effects unless they are
passed on to those actually producing
the garbage. Unfortunately,
householders typically pay flat disposal
fees that are based on factors other than
the quantity of waste they generate.
Because these fees do not decline if
households produce less garbage, there
is little economic incentive for them to
rin sn
The obvious solution is to link the
disposal fee to the amount of garbage a
household produces. Charging by the
bag for trash or garbage can provide a
direct incentive to reduce, and a
number of communities are considering
such an approach. Under one variant,
residents buy stickers that must be
affixed to garbage bags before they will
be picked up by haulers. The concept of
variable disposal fees can also be
combined with recycling efforts. For
example, in Palo Alto, California,
residents who recycle receive free
passes good for disposing of their other
garbage. However, one concern is that
higher disposal fees will have an
undesirable effect: increased costs to
consumers may encourage "midnight"
dumping of solid wastes as some fear it
has already done for hazardous
chemical wastes.
Costs to consumers also may rise as a
result of proposals for taxes aimed at
solid waste reduction. Taxes targeted at
non-recyclable items combined with a
lower tax or exemption for reuseable or
recyclable items, would provide an
economic incentive to generate less
waste. While many states are
considering solid waste reduction taxes,
only a few have actually instituted
them. Rhode Island, for example,
promotes the use of paper bags by
exempting them (but not plastic bags)
from a state tax. Florida will begin
collecting a one cent tax on containers
that do not sustain a 50 percent
recycling rate as of 1992.
Believing, perhaps, that the habits of
some cowboys will never change, many
states are considering outright bans on
Scott Wilts cartoon, Copley News Service.
certain types of waste. As with solid
waste reduction taxes, only a few have
been enacted. Most likely to be singled
out for such bans is packaging that is
considered excessive or unnecessary,
and for which environmentally more
benign substitutes are readily available.
New Jersey, for example, is considering
a ban on styrofoam egg cartons.
Anything thought to preclude recycling
efforts may also be the target of a ban.
The plastic can is one such example.
Because it would have been very
difficult to recycle and would have
displaced the recyclable aluminum can,
two states banned the plastic can and
several others proposed similar
legislation. These actions called a halt
to the can's introduction into U.S.
markets.
In its recent "Agenda for Action",
EPA has established a national goal of
diverting 25 percent of the waste stream
through recycling and source reduction
measures by 1992. Even though a
number of successful recycling
programs have already surpassed this
level, meeting the goal nationwide will
not be easy. But understanding the
cowboy and rationalist in us all
provides insight into how we might go
about finding workable solutions to the
mess. And some of the options
discussed here hold promise for that
change. Q
(l/jihara is a researcher with the Center
for Risk Management at Resources for
the Future, a non-profit environmental
research organization. Dr. Portney is the
Director of the Center.)
MARCH/APRIL 1989
45
-------
Mediation:
How It Worked
in East Troy, Wisconsin
by Patti Cronin
Robert 1 McCoy p/ioro
Few communities want a landfill, i
long as they are necessary, Wiscon
believes residents should havo a say in ;;i
selection. Mediation sot'1'.
dispute in East Troy, \\
One of the positive results of a
proposed solid waste landfill is that
it brings people together. Neighbors who
haven't spoken to one another in years
suddenly talk for hours about their
opposition to THE HUMP. Their
frequent battle cry of "Not in my
backyard", also means not in my front
yard, side yard, on my street or in the
vicinity of my eye, ear, nose or throat.
And going for the throat was the
reaction on the day when, in 1982, a
second large landfill was proposed in
Walworth County, in the town of East
Troy, Wisconsin.
East Troy, a town of about 3,000 in
southwestern Wisconsin, "is a very
quiet rural middle-class community
surrounded by three clear lakes and is
,111 ideal simuiHT escape for lolks from
Chicago. It's the last place in the world
you need a second large clump."
according to one of its residents.
To protect its idyllic: surroundings,
Walworth County had in place, at that
time, a solid waste management plan
approved by the state. The plan allowed
only one large landfill to operate in the
county. The remainder of the waste was
to be handled by recycling and
incineration. Creidanus Enterprise
operated the one large existing landfill.
All was well until Residuals
Management Technology (RMT)
proposed building a second large
landfill in the county. To no one's
surprise, the county and its residents.
not to mention Greidanus, strongly
opposed a second largo landfill ami
argued that it was "totally
inappropriate, unnecessary and
unwanted," to use the printable
adjectives.
While strongly opposing the proposed
landfill, both Walworth County and East
Troy, the only political jurisdictions
affected by it, complied with
Wisconsin's newly enacted law. Each
passed a resolution stating its intent to
negotiate and, if necessary, arbitrate
with RMT all of the social and
economic concerns created by the
proposed landfill. All concerns could be
negotiated except the need for the
landfill, which would be determined by
the state's Department of Natural
Resources (DNR). In short, DNR would
determine need and engineering
soundness, while the local citizens,
• Hi
EPA JOURNAL
-------
through negotiation, would determine
the social and economic issues.
Wisconsin's landfill law, requiring both
state and local approval, was, and
continues to be, unique.
To negotiate with RMT, the county
and city formed a local committee of six
outspoken members. By law, the county
was allowed two members and
appointed Neal Frauenfelder, a planner
for Walworth County and Derald West,
an architect with an environmental
background and a member of the
county's solid waste board. The town
This is not to say that
residents like the landfill, only
that negotiations can work to
address and resolve many
issues and concerns created by
the landfill.
could appoint four members. The town
appointed Maxine Hough, an
elementary school teacher and
principal; Roman Henningfeld, a long
time farmer and town board supervisor;
Ellery Clayton, the vice-president of
Waukesha State Bank; and Kurt
Davidsen, a nearby property owner who
according to Maxine "was the only
member more crazed than I." The local
committee then hired a local attorney
from a small firm. RMT hired its own
attorney, but from a large law firm in
Madison. Then nothing happened,
which was just fine with the local
committee, but not with RMT.
Because nothing happened, RMT
charged that the local committee was
purposely delaying the negotiations to
delay operation of the landfill. The local
committee argued its members were just
plain ordinary folks trying to educate
themselves on landfill issues. At the
request of RMT, the Waste Facility
Siting Board, the state agency which
oversees the negotiation-arbitration
landfill law, intervened, met with the
parties and arranged a first negotiation
meeting to be held in January, 1983.
And just as negotiations got underway,
DNR, after a public hearing, ruled that
RMT's proposed landfill met the state's
test for engineering soundness.
But after 12 months, negotiations
were not going well, and both sides
were frustrated. To move things along,
RMT decided to hire a new lawyer, this
time from a very large firm in
Milwaukee. The dress code for the
negotiations changed from flannel shirts
to three-piece suits. RMT's new lawyer
immediately withdrew all previously
negotiated items and the parties were
back to square one, further apart than
ever, if that was possible.
Meanwhile, DNR decided that despite
the county plan, a need for the second
landfill existed. RMT now had the
necessary state approval, but local
approval seemed impossible.
RMT had an idea. If they could prove
that the local committee's failure to
reach a negotiated settlement was
deliberate, repeated and flagrant, the
local committee would lose all right to
negotiate and RMT could build its
landfill without local approval. This
course of action had obvious appeal. So
RMT filed a petition, and the Waste
Facility Siting Board conducted a
hearing. The Board, however, failed to
find the local committee in default.
Not about to let such a good idea pass
them by, the local committee
immediately filed its own petition and
charged that because RMT had
withdrawn all previously negotiated
offers, RMT was not negotiating in good
faith. If found in default, RMT could not
construct the landfill. This course of
action had even greater appeal. The
Waste Facility Siting Board
recommended that a second hearing be
postponed to allow tempers to cool, the
Christmas holidays to pass, and the
executive director of the Board, who
arranged all hearings and wrote all
proposed decisions, to give birth.
Despite the festive parties in many
Wisconsin homes, holiday cheer
escaped the two contending parties and
they remained frustrated and
uncharitable. RMT asked for a mediator.
The local committee argued such a
request was premature until after the
second default hearing. The executive
director tried, without success, to
resolve the differences from the
maternity ward. The Waste Facility
Siting Board subsequently failed to find
RMT in default and negotiations
continued, but progress was slow.
Late in May, 1985, three years after
the initial proposal for the landfill, both
parties agreed to mediate the remaining
issues of monetary compensation by
RMT to the town and reopening
negotiations for any proposed expansion
of the landfill. The Board appointed a
mediator, Ed Krinsky, who was
satisfactory to all parties. This was no
easy selection, and it helped
enormously that Mr. Krinsky had no
past experience in landfill mediation.
Finally, in January, 1986, RMT and
the local committee signed a forty-one
page negotiated agreement that was
binding on both parties and enforceable
in court for the life of the proposed
landfill. After three-and-one-half years,
RMT had both state and local approval,
and the landfill was licensed and began
operation.
It was not an easy negotiation. Most
residents of East Troy still believe a
second large landfill in their community
is inappropriate. Ironically, RMT's first
lawyer now agrees, though perhaps it's
because he recently become legal
counsel for the owners of Walworth's
County's original large landfill.
To end on a bright note, it is fair to
say that if residents of East Troy must
have a second landfill, most would
choose the RMT landfill because it
provides monetary compensations and
numerous stringent safeguards over and
above those required by the state. This
is not to say, however, that residents
like the landfill, only that negotiations
can work to address and resolve many
issues and concerns created by the
landfill.
It may be light years before any
community or more specifically, the
residents of any community, welcome a
landfill. But as long as landfills exist,
Wisconsin believes residents must have
meaningful and constructive input into
their existence. Wisconsin's unique law,
however, requires that such
participation be at a negotiating table in
an open meeting. Only then will
residents begin to accept landfills as a
necessary community service. Only then
will landfills not become the other
memorable "L" word, Q
(Cronin is Executive Director of the
Wisconsin Waste Facility Siting Board.)
MARCH/APRIL 1989
47
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About Medical Waste
by John A. Moore
During the summer of 1988, medical
wastes moved to center stage in the
nation's environmental consciousness.
Local and national news media reported
numerous incidents of syringes, blood
vials, and other medical-related waste
being found on beaches along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts and the shores
of the Great Lakes.
In response to concerns about
possible health threats, many beaches in
New York and New Jersey were closed
on several occasions, causing substantial
losses to the tourist industry.
The U.S. congress held public
hearings on the issue and passed the
Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988 to
help ensure the proper disposal of
certain kinds of medical wastes.
Now, in the midwinter of 1988-1989,
the public furor has died down. The
beaches are closed, and news reports of
medical wastes found onshore are rare.
EPA is in the process of developing
regulations to implement the new
medical waste tracking law; those
regulations should be in place by the
time the beaches reopen for 1989. It is a
good time to reevaluate what happened
last summer and look at what EPA
expects to accomplish with the new
law.
As we look at last summer's events it
is important to put the medical waste
problem into proper perspective.
Medical waste makes up only a small
fraction—by most accounts, about one
percent—of the floatable garbage that
pollutes our nation's beaches. And the
improper disposal of medical waste is
not limited to beaches; such waste is
also being found on city streets, in
vacant lots, in ditches and alongside
dumpsters in the alleys behind doctors'
offices. In other words, medical waste is
a subset of the nation's solid waste
problem; wherever solid waste is
thrown or dumped or washed up, some
medical waste probably will be found.
Although it is only a small percentage
of overall solid waste, medical waste
causes a disproportionate amount of
public concern. First, is concern about
possible threats to public health. There
is very little scientific evidence to
suggest that medical waste—with few
exceptions—is any more infectious than
typical household waste. Nevertheless,
some of the syringes and blood vials
that turned up on beaches were
contaminated with AIDS or hepatitis
. . .we have to take special
care with certain kinds of
medical wastes to ensure that
they do not show up on our
nation's beaches and streets.
viruses, and Americans seem unwilling
to tolerate even a remote possibility of
contracting such diseases through
contact with medical wastes.
Second, medical waste causes concern
about public safety. Syringes and
scalpels found on beaches or in
dumpsters are dangerous even if they
are not contaminated. This past
summer, the American public was
surprised to discover that the disposal
of medical "sharps" is not regulated in
any comprehensive way by federal,
state, or local governments. It seems
clear now that the public will not
tolerate disposal of sharps intermixed
with other solid wastes.
Third, medical waste causes concern
about environmental and aesthetic
quality. Any improper garbage disposal
degrades the environment, but
'discarded blood and other body fluids
and tissues are especially repugnant.
People do not want such medical wastes
intermixed with the typical solid-waste
stream, and they are especially sensitive
to the degradation of recreational areas
like beaches, that can result when such
wastes are not properly disposed of.
In short, medical waste may actually
be a very small part of our national
solid waste problem, but it has a very
big potential to cause public concern
and outrage. It seems clear that we have
to take special care with-certain kinds of
medical wastes to ensure that they do
not show up on our nation's beaches
and streets.
To that end, Congress passed the
Medical Waste Tracking Act of 1988.
The new law requires EPA to establish a
two-year demonstration program to
track medical waste in ten states: New
York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
(However, under the terms of the law,
those ten states can choose to opt out of
the demonstration program, and other
states can choose to opt in.)
The demonstration program is
intended to track several categories of
medical waste, defined in the law, from
generator to actual disposal. Any
hospital, doctor's or dentist's office,
veterinarian, research facility, etc., that
generates more than 50 pounds per
month of waste in those categories must
participate in the tracking system.
In operation, the mandated
demonstration tracking system will be
modeled after the systems already being
implemented in New York and New
Jersey. Medical waste generators in
participating states will have to fill out
a four-part manifest whenever they ship
any of the wastes defined in the law.
The generator will keep one copy; the
waste transporter will keep one copy,
and the waste disposal facility will keep
one copy and send the fourth copy back
to the generator. If that fourth copy does
not come back, the generator must
notify enforcement officials.
48
EPA JOURNAL
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*r
According to the law, EPA must have
the regulations in place by May 2, 1989;
participating states have; 90 days after
that to implement them. Because even
that very tight schedule would mean
that a demonstration tracking system
might not be ii place in some; states
until August 1989—well into the
summer beach season—the Agency is
moving more quickly than the law
requires. Federal regulations published
in February 1989, will enable
participating states to have their
tracking systems in place before beaches
open up for the summer.
EPA is committed to making a success
of the medical waste tracking system.
We are strongly encouraging the ten
-states named in the law to stay in the
system, and we will welcome any other
states that may want to opt in. We
intend to keep the tracking System as
simple as possible, and we will
minimize the reporting required of
•V ••-
C. f-ranz photo
medical waste generators, transporters,
and disposal facilities. The Agency's
goal is simply to ensure that, at least in
those states participating in the
program, medical waste the public finds
most offensive, is disposed of properly.
As the tracking system begins to take
effect this spring and summer it is
important to remember that it is only a
two-year demonstration program at the
end of which EPA will report to
Congress on the extent of the
medical-waste problem, the potential
threat it poses to public health and the
environment, and the effectiveness of
the demonstration tracking system. The
experience with the tracking system
should also help in development of an
effective national medical-waste
disposal policy for the long term.
It is also important to remember that
this tracking system may not be entirely
successful in keeping all medical waste
off streets and beaches because
Medical wastes at the Fresh Kills landfill on
Staten Island. Part of the national solid waste
problem, medical waste has been causing
public concern and outrage.
individuals who are users of medical
supplies, whether legally or illegally,
will not be involved in the tracking
system. A substantial share of the
medical waste that washed up on U.S.
beaches last summer was originally
generated by individual diabetics or
illegal drug users: it is likely that the
same type of waste may show up again
on beaches this coming summer.
If that happens, it will reemphasize
that the medical waste problem, like the
larger problem of municipal solid waste
disposal, will never be completely
solved until millions of people change
their behavior patterns. Everyone
involved in this issue—government
regulators, health care professionals,
community leaders, waste haulers, and
the managers of waste disposal
facilities—must work together to
educate the public that individual
behavior is a large part of the problem
and a large part of the solution.
In other words, effectively tracking
medical waste is going to pose a major
challenge to medical facilities and the
waste management professionals who
serve them. And managing the overall
medical waste disposal problem is going
to pose a major challenge to everyone in
the country who uses medical supplies.
Both challenges can be met. Successful
implemention of the demonstration
tracking program will be an important
first step. D
(Moore is Acting Deputy
of EPA.)
Administrator
MARCH/APRIL 1989
-------
The Case for
Pollution Prevention
by Joel S. Hirschhorn
The author believes pollution prevention is
preferable to dealing with waste after the
fact. Ion exchange recovery units of the sort
pictured here remove heavy metals from
aqueous wastes generated in electroplating,
metal-finishing, and electronics
manufacturing.
A,
the recent talk about escalating
and even global environmental
problems - such as acid rain, global
warming, garbage crises, and infectious
waste—lias failed to crystallize national
interest in preventing pollution rather
than controlling it. The nation's focus
on using more and better technology to
control pollutants after they have been
produced has weakened taboos against
producing pollutants.
Negotiating safe or acceptable levels
of pollution institutionalizes approval to
produce it. Yet the failures of this
pollution control strategy, and the
resultant environmental policy gridlock,
have not sparked a major policy debate
focussing on the choice between
prevention and control. The upcoming
20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990
offers an opportunity to put the policy
spotlight on pollution prevention.
Calls for more recycling of garbage
and toxic waste miss the point that any
handling and management of waste is
never as safe or certain in its benefits as
avoiding the generation of the waste in
the first place. Discussions of finding
substitutes for chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) to combat stratospheric o/one
depletion fail to articulate the solution
to the problem in terms of prevention
and do not acknowledge thai control
measures used after CFCs are produced
are far less effective. In the debate on
how to reduce coal power plant
emissions to fight acid rain, the choice
between burning dirty coal and
controlling air emissions versus using a
cleaner raw material or energy source to
eliminate them—another pollution
prevention tactic—is not fully described
by comparative analyses which ignore
the fact that the options are different
qualitatively.
Negotiating safe or
acceptable levels of pollution
institutionalizes approval to
produce it,
Waves of bad environmental news
and conflict between environmental
fears and economic concerns create an
opportunity for all concerned to rally
behind prevention as a way to revitalize
environmental protection programs.
Here are some factors that limit interest
in pollution prevention and some that
describe its complexity.
• An inescapable disadvantage for
pollution prevention is the historic
domination of the pollution control
paradigm. This means that people think
and speak in terms of pollution control
and also explain and understand
environmental protection in terms of
pollution control.
• Our society has learned to value
preventive health care benefits in
comparison to traditional curative
remedies, but we have not applied those
lessons to the environment. Disease
prevention does not sacrifice our
standard of living. The same is true of
increased material and energy
efficiency: the ends remain the same,
but the means change.
• The practice of pollution prevention
by individuals can be attractive from a
moral perspective—out of concern for
others, acceptance of limits to
individual rights, or religious beliefs.
Individually and collectively.
prevention may offer a moral benefit
independent of any comparative
environmental and economic advantage
over pollution control. The pollution
control strategy ignores the moral
dimensions of environmental protection.
• There has been little discussion of the
difference between the technical means
of implementing pollution prevention
versus pollution control. For example.
technology such as incineration or
wastewater treatment plants, which
control and limit releases of hazardous
substances into the environment, is
fundamentally different from changing
processes to reduce the amount and
toxicity of materials requiring such
treatment.
There are now hundreds of examples
of successful industrial pollution
prevention actions. For example, 3M
has replaced a chemical process to clean
flexible metal electronic circuits with a
strictly mechanical process. Similarly,
many companies are finding it possible
to use non-hazardous biological solvents
instead of traditional solvents which
inevitably generate hazardous waste or
toxic air emissions. And the Air Force
has developed a mechanical paint
stripping process to replace the
traditional chemical process.
• Many people who do understand this
technical difference fear a shift from
end-of-pipe controls to prevention. This
kind of shift inevitably means changes
in what we produce and how we
produce it—possibly through what
people in industry perceive as intrusive
and inflexible government regulation.
• Prescriptive government regulations.
however, are not feasible or practical for
promoting pollution prevention. A
number of studies have indicated that
technical assistance and education are
more effective public policy tools for
prevention. The problem is existing
environmental policies and
organizations are not designed to
promote prevention through
non-regulatory measures.
• It is difficult to acknowledge the
negative aspects of all pollution control
technologies and strategies, which
in)
EPA JOURNAL
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cannot be avoided or accurately
assessed and anticipated. These negative
aspects include:
—Intrinsic flaws (e.g.. human error and
transferring pollution from one
environmental medium to another)
—Uncertain effectiveness (e.g..
incomplete health effects data)
—High long-term costs (e.g., cleanup).
For example, the control of many1
volatile organic chemicals means
nothing more than letting those wastes
enter the municipal wastewater
treatment plant, where they vaporize
into the air rather than get destroyed. It
is even more difficult to accept the
ineffectiveness (e.g., loopholes) and
inefficiency (e.g., uneven enforcement
and tolerable penalties) of the regulatory
system used to implement the pollution
control strategy. In California, about halt
the regulated hazardous wastes are
subject to regulation based on the state
rather than the federal definition of
what constitutes a hazardous waste. Hut
how many other states provide that kind
of safety net?
• Prevention is threatening. The
adoption of a prevention strategy to
guide both government ami private
sector programs and policies would
represent a major cultural change. It is
therefore resisted by many existing
public and private institutions already
committed (explicitly or implicitly) to
the original control strategy. Some of
America's largest companies have
recently decided to go into the waste
management business. Pollution
MnTAP photo
prevention also means personal
behavioral change either as workers or
(as we focus more on garbage)
consumers. The prospect of changing
products to reduce post-consumer waste
makes American manufacturers and the
packaging industry nervous.
• The marketplace does not efficiently
promote pollution prevention. Waste
generators can respond to rising
regulatory compliance and waste
management costs with actions other
than pollution prevention (e.g.,
replacing landfilling with incineration).
Pollution control shifts long-term costs
to the general public and increases the
environmental deficit for the nation
(e.g., Superfund). Continued spending
on pollution control (i.e., sunk
investments) increases the opportunity
costs of ignoring or under-utilizing
pollution prevention solutions. Poor
information and analysis as well as
competing priorities and investment
opportunities mean that everyday
decisions are often inconsistent with the
research finding—and the experience of
several major companies—that pollution
prevention increases profits.
• The natural alliance and synergism of
pollution prevention and increased
industrial process and product
innovation, energy conservation, and
international competitiveness are
usually overlooked. Few companies are
using pollution prevention measures as
a way to gain competitive advantage by
appealing to environmentally conscious
consumers, producing innovative
products, developing clean technologies
for export, or cutting production costs.
The most effective, expeditious
reductions in pollution have
always come from practicing
prevention.
The most effective, expeditious
reductions in pollution have always
come from practicing
prevention—notably through banning
chemicals and products, such as DDT,
PCBs. and leaded gasoline. Despite
concerns about severe economic
dislocations, there is little evidence that
such consequence have occurred. Even
now, the replacement of CFCs seems to
be moving rapidly, The practice of
pollution prevention does not mean that
a threat to health or environment must
be predicted. Pollution prevention can
be used successfully after an
environmental threat is identified, if
preventive measures can be conceived
and differentiated from control
measures. Moreover, an emphasis on
prevention would also favor monitoring
and analytical efforts to detect problems
early, before they become acute.
If pollution prevention became the
environmental protection paradigm,
then it would he routinely used to
respond to environmental threats.
Pollution control measures would be
seen as inferior and used only' in those
cases where? preventive measures hail
not yet been identified. Commitment to
pollution prevention does not imply a
belief that all pollution can be
eliminated.
If pollution prevention were easy, we
would already be practicing it. Because
prevention is not easy to implement, we
need to make it an issue of public
policy debate, to make room for it on
crowded agendas, and to acknowledge
that we need a better, more
cost-effective strategy and paradigm to
MARCH APRIL 1989
51
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achieve comprehensive environmental
protection. Pollution prevention needs
to cease being a theoretical,
philosophical concept sometimes
invoked in an atmosphere of crisis and
evolve into an explicit, commonly
valued and applied tool used for all
environmental problems.
Two recent actions at EPA, following
several reports on waste reduction and
pollution prevention by it and several
other organizations, are positive signals
thai this evolution is beginning. A
recent report entitled Future Risk:
Research Strategies For The 1990s,
issued in September 1988 by EPA's
Science Advisory Board concluded:
In addition to the current
emphasis on federally mandated
controls that are put in place to
clean up pollutants after they have
been generated, the Agency must
develop a strategy that emphasizes
the reduction of pollution before it
is generated. A strategic shift in
emphasis from control and
cleanup to anticipation and
prevention is absolutely essential
to our future physical,
environmental, and economic
health.
Even before the report was issued,
EPA had formed an Office of Pollution
Prevention—an idea embodied in
several bills introduced in Congress.
Funding for the office is low, however.
Now, the challenge is to build
nationwide support for these initial
steps. If public and private resources
shift from control to prevention, then
we will have more tangible evidence
that the prevention paradigm is taking
hold. In the coming months there is a
historic opportunity for leaders in
government, industry, and public
interest groups to select pollution
prevention as the theme for the 20th
anniversary of Earth Day in 1990. This
could rekindle the spiritual and moral
uplift Earth Day gave the nation, firmly
plant pollution prevention in the
national consciousness, and overcome
lip service to it in key institutions.
Fearing that technology may not be
harnessed fast enough to avert
catastrophe and lacking confidence in
current environmental programs,
Americans are ready for pollution
prevention. D
(Hirschhorn is Senior Associate at the
Congressional Office of Technology
Assessment. The views expressed here
are the author's and not necessarily
OTA's.)
Letter to the Editor
EPA Journal
I want to talk to you about an idea I had when I was
with my Mom driving to the Post Office one day. I said I
disliked all the trash I saw all over the street and
sidewalks. 1 thought it was terrible that people would
not care about their neighborhoods. My Mom and 1
talked about it, and I thought up the idea of having a
Holiday called National Clean Up Day, just like we had
when 1 was little and lived in Sandpoint, Alaska. We all
got garbage bags and spent most of the day cleaning up
the city. It was like a holiday because a lot of people
were outdoors picking up trash, and afterward we had a
big BBQ, played games, and were awarded prizes for the
garbage we had picked up.
Some people would not participate, but some would
feel the same way I do. I know that my family and I
would participate in this activity.
It is up to all of us to keep our country clean and I
think a Holiday called National Clean Up Day, where
everyone cleans up is a good idea. How can we make
this happen?
Sean D. Rosen
P.O. BOX 802
Lynnwood, WA 98046
52
EPA JOURNAL
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