Peace and Environment News* February 1994
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Peace and Environment News * February 1994 |
by Marti Mussell
Throughout history, humans have buried their wastes. Most of these wastes, whether solid (e.g., household refuse) or liquid (body wastes), would decompose in the soil when buried in shallow pits. Nature would take care of the nutrients, recycling them into other life forms. This system worked reasonably well until we started synthesizing chemicals, and the era of toxic waste production—and the problem of toxic waste disposal—began.
For the nearly fifty years following World War II, we have continued to bury our toxic materials in the ground. And it hasn't been in complete ignorance of the consequences. According to Rachel's Hazardous Notes, "industrial chemists knew what they were doing; they knew it was dangerous but it was cheap, and America was on a blind binge of growth and affluence. The modern formula for success became 'Haste plus waste makes profit.'"
Unfortunately, toxic wastes have contaminated every landfill where they have been buried. According to Rachel's Hazardous Waste News, tests show that leachate from a solid waste landfill has about the same amount of toxicity as does the leachate from a landfill especially designated for toxic industrial chemicals. Leachate is created when toxins react with moisture to create compounds.
Alternatives to in-ground landfill
Aboveground storage facilities for waste materials are being promoted by a number of groups as an alternative to landfills. According to a study by Battelle Northwest, construction costs for above- and below-ground landfills are about the same. However, the potential cost of groundwater cleanup makes the above-ground facility much cheaper in the long run.
A study of four modern landfills found that the only one to pose no risk of contaminating groundwater was an above-ground, undrained facility in Marathon County, Wisconsin. The leachate removal system of an above-ground facility works by gravity and functions continuously so there is no leachate accumulation in the liner.
Incineration became industry's high tech answer to decreasing landfill space and increasing waste. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jumped on the industry bandwagon and promoted incineration just as they had previously supported landfills. Incineration appeared to be a simple solution. Just as you once threw waste into the ground, you could now throw wastes into a furnace. Incineration has two attractive features from an industry standpoint. Wastes put through an incinerator cannot be traced back to their source. Incinerators can be made to seem like complicated, complex technology with regulations full of the latest engineering language, and this discourages public intervention. As long as the public is kept in the dark, industry can have a free rein.
Problems with incineration
Five recent studies linking health effects to incinerator exposure found significantly more emphysema, pneumonia, sinus trouble, asthma, allergies, neurological symptoms and disease and more emotional rage reactions in people who had worked at or lived near or downwind from a hazardous waste incinerator.
The complex regulations governing incinerators do not affect the ever increasing production of waste, nor do they protect public health. In fact, incinerators are called landfills in the sky because of the complex soup of gases they create. This combination of toxins results in new mixes even more deadly than the original compounds. In addition to air pollution, one third of the materials incinerated remain in the form of toxic ash, which in turn must be down away with—usually in a landfill.
Because of bad experiences with landfills, the public was more vigilant when incineration began being promoted. Public NIMBY (not in my backyard) reaction to incinerators grew quickly.
Some other ideas
This has left municipal governments, who bear the responsibility for waste disposal, scrambling for ways to deal with the over 60 million tons of waste we generate annually in Canada. Clearly, the tried and true methods are not getting us anywhere. It's about time that we started looking at the waste disposal strategies used elsewhere in the world.
One of the most promising initiatives is in Germany. In 1991, faced with decreasing landfill space and public opposition to incineration, Germany passed a decree called the German Ordinance for the Avoidance of Packaging Waste, which required manufacturers to re-use packaging or assume the cost of having it recycled. The manufacturers set up an industry organization (DSD) to handle their own waste, identified by a green dot. In this system, manufacturers were responsible for taking back packaging and components of their product and recycling them.
As the Green Dot program got underway, an unexpectedly large volume of waste packaging found its way back to the manufacturers. Much of this waste, particularly plastic, was dumped into the oceans and in the world's poorest countries. To combat the dumping problem, the DDS contracted a technical surveillance company to conduct inspections of technologies ranging from automobiles to nuclear power plants.
The German grocery shopper has begun to notice packaging being pared down to its essentials in more and more products. Reusable plastic shipping containers are also replacing cardboard and wooden pallets. To facilitate plastic recycling, manufacturers are considering standardizing the numerous plastic mixtures into three.
Stopping waste at the source
Manufacturer responsibility may be particularly relevant in North America where packaging has become the fastest growing portion of the waste stream. Packaging waste has more than doubled since 1960 due to cheap materials and a system that gives manufacturers little incentive to reduce packaging. Packaging makes up one third to one half of municipal waste streams, according to the 1993 September/October issue of Worldwatch.
In the US, according to a recent edition of Environmental Action, the plastics industry is charged with dragging its heels in meeting its own goals of 25 percent recycling of plastic bottles and rigid containers. Environmental Action quotes a Dow chemical employees as saying that the American Plastics Council made a bad business decision in setting the 25 percent recycling goal.
Allen Hershkowitz writes in the June 1993 Atlantic, that the current economics of waste management are unfair. Manufacturers are free to market a diamond ring in a refrigerator box and leave the cost of collection, recycling, burning or landfilling that box to the local taxpayer whose solid waste bill subsidizes the whole process. Consumers who seek out products that are less wasteful and more recyclable continue to pay the same taxes as their wasteful neighbours.
Taking Back toxic waste
Dow Chemical Canada has considered taking back the hazardous wastes produced when manufacturers use Dow products. Dow would assume full responsibility for recycling, storing and disposing of the hazardous waste produced by Dow customers.
The problem with Dow's proposal is that it does not reduce production of toxins. Toxin buildup is especially troubling because chlorine, for example, a major environmental contaminant, can stay in the environment for decades or even centuries in some cases. A more responsible attitude for Dow would be to find safe alternatives for chemicals such as chlorine.
Recycling
In Manitoba, a joint industry and government recycling program is being established. Industry will support the capital and operating costs associated with setting up the recycling infrastructure, expanding existing systems and developing new markets for materials collected through the system.
Although the present Blue Box Program is very popular with the public it reduces waste disposal by only 10 percent, on average, across Ontario. Municipalities have a major role in determining the variety of materials picked up. In some localities, the Blue Box program picks up plastics as well as magazines and boxboard. Recycling may need to be standardized provincially.
The Town of East Hampton, Long Island, in New York State, has set up an intensive recycling project. The results of the project showed that 84.4 percent of the original residential waste collected could be converted into compost and secondary materials.
Public pressure needed
The research indicates that there is no quick fix to the problem of waste disposal. The most important step is still reducing consumption: buying less in the first place.
It is also important to reduce packaging waste. It is unreasonable to expect consumers to absorb the costs and responsibility when they often do not have an environmentally preferable alternative. It is up to us to push for legislation that will make manufacturers accept more responsibility for their products. Product stewardship needs to include reusing existing products, increasing recycled content, and taking responsibility for finding alternatives for toxic products.
The Three R's
We also need to change our mind set about waste and view it as resources. In China, over 80 percent of the paper pulp produced is from rice, barley, bamboo and hemp waste. The Chinese found that they producing fibrous waste that was not being fully utilized and that they needed to meet a growing demand for paper. The best approach to waste reduction would be to meet an existing need with surplus resources. In North America we have started to view food waste as an important source of non-chemical soil conditioner.
If industry is left to regulate itself, it will focus on Recycling rather than the more important Reduction and Reuse. Recycling requires no fundamental changes in operation and does not affect production and profits. Without strong legislation mandating the amount of recycled content used in manufacturing, recycled materials will languish and ultimately need to be disposed of in our existing unsuccessful systems.
However, even recycling can be facilitated if materials are separated at source, and easily accessible through aboveground storage facilities.
Marti Mussell is a PERC volunteer working on waste issues.
Converted January 17, 2001 - Lg
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