=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #203
—October 17, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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THE CENTRAL ISSUE OF OUR TIME.
Two new toolkits for solid waste activists have just been
published. One is from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), one from
Greenpeace, and both contain tools and weapons that can help
local activists fight for waste prevention and reduction,
increased recycling and composting, and an end to incineration
and dangerous landfilling. Each toolkit contains useful
information available nowhere else, and we recommend them both
highly.
EDF’s contribution is a 320-page book called RECYCLING AND
INCINERATION; EVALUATING THE CHOICES and it will help you and
your local officials do just that–evaluate the choices between
recycling and incineration. Where the EDF study places least
emphasis–on solid waste prevention–the Greenpeace offering is
strongest, so between them they give activists a powerful and
fairly complete new set of tools to use at the local level. The
Greenpeace package is called Greenpeace Action Garbage Prevention
Plan. The text of the Greenpeace Plan is only 15 pages but it is
accompanied by copies of nine local ordinances that your town or
county government could adopt to prevent the garbage problem
rather than manage the garbage problem.
The problem of garbage has become the central issue of our time.
Taking out the garbage is the activity in our lives that brings
each of us face-toface with the destruction of our planet. The
unraveling of earth’s ozone layer, global warming, regionalscale
destruction of forest, lake and farm by acid rain, and a thorough
dousing of the entire planet (and contamination of our own
bodies) with pesticides, industrial solvents and toxic
metals–all have occurred in the name of giving consumers a “high
standard of living.” But focus carefully on the leftovers from
your high standard of living–in your garbage pail–and you will
find yourself face to face with the crack of doom. To avoid the
end of life as we know it, we must each rethink, item by item,
the materials we buy, use, and discard…. Some things we can
change by making different choices in our personal lives and at
the store, but some things will require us to look upstream,
toward the source of these problems in the manufacturer’s Board
room, to find out how things got the way they are.
The fundamental problem is private decisions to use toxic
materials that have very far-reaching public consequences. The
use of toxic materials in the manufacture of household goods
poisons workers, produces hazardous industrial wastes, introduces
toxic fumes into our homes, and ultimately makes landfilling
dangerous, which in turn forces some people to look (mistakenly)
to incineration for solutions. The choice to use toxic materials
in consumer goods is made by private manufacturers for private
motives (most of which boil down to monetary gain) behind closed
doors. The further people look into the garbage problem, the more
they realize that almost none of us participated in the basic
decisions that created the problem to begin with–a handful of
people, operating behind veils of power and wealth, set us all
upon our present course of planetary decline. And more and more
thoughtful people are realizing that for these problems to be
solved, private decision-making will have to be opened up to
public scrutiny and public involvement. EDF sees the need for
fundamental reforms: “EDF… believes… we need to fundamentally
reform the political institutions, economic ground rules, and
environmental regulations that govern solid waste management.”
(pg. 14) For starters, EDF suggests, manufacturers could be
forced to label their products regarding their recyclability,
their recycled content, their “other environmental consequences,”
(pg. 15) and “the presence of hazardous substances in packages
and products” (pg. 48). Using the example of a manufacturer’s
decision to employ cadmium (a toxic metal) as a coloring agent in
a plastic product, EDF suggests that the use of heavy metal
colorants in manufacturing could be “restricted” because “only
comprehensive source-based strategies are likely to prove
successful in achieving significant reductions in the metal
content and toxicity of our waste….” This “comprehensive
source-based strategy” is the manufacturers’ worst nightmare–EDF
scientists and ordinary householders examining the raw materials,
the manufacturing processes, in some cases even the choice of
products to be made… all with the goal of making private
decision-makers publicly accountable. These are truly “radical”
ideas (in the literal and hopeful sense of that term–getting to
root causes), forced upon us by the environmental crisis and the
need to survive… and it is in this sense that garbage has
become the central issue of our time.
Most of the EDF book and the Greenpeace package are focused not
on the “comprehensive source-based strategy” that we need but
rather on the here and now–the choices that communities can
make, and are making, to manage solid waste. And though we need
thoughtful work on the bigger picture, it is still wonderful to
have these practical toolkits. The Greenpeace package gives you
model ordinances for (a) establishing a moratorium on
incineration; (b) establishing a recycling and composting program
complete with mandatory sourceseparation, drop-off centers,
buy-back centers, material recovery facilities, and more; (c)
requiring environmentally acceptable products and packaging and
prohibiting disposables; (d) requiring municipal procurement of
recycled products; (e) developing markets for recycled materials
and products; (f) prohibiting radioactive BRC (“below regulatory
concern”) wastes from entering your community; (g) requiring
newspaper publishers and vendors of paper to use “the highest
percentage of recycled materials practicable;” (h) requiring your
local government to establish “policy direction for solid waste
system alternatives to be included in your county’s solid waste
management plan”; (i) restricting the production, use and
emission of ozone-depleting compounds.
The EDF book contains a wealth of useful information on the
problems of incineration and the promise of recycling and
composting. It contains excellent, detailed chapters on the
economics of incineration vs. recycling (incineration costs
roughly two to three times as much)–clearly-explained analyses
and calculations you’ll find nowhere else.
It also contains an excellent chapter on “permitting and review
for incinerators” suggesting places in the permitting process
where citizens might intervene effectively. And there’s a model
resolution that your local government could adopt before
beginning to negotiate a contract with an incinerator vendor. The
resolution says (1) local government is free at any time to
reduce the amount of garbage provided to the facility when the
reduction is the result of recycling; (2) the incinerator owners
and their successors bear all direct and indirect costs
attributable to the production and disposal of ash; and (3)
citizens themselves have a right to enforce air pollution limits
to be written into the contract–if the facility fails to live up
to its permit, citizens can shut it down.
The disposal of the toxic ash from incinerators is given a
thorough treatment (don’t overlook Appendix B). EDF’s scientists
examine and reject schemes for the “re-use” of ash for making
roads or buildings.
Another good chapter is “Important Elements of a Solid Waste
Plan” which can help you and your local government plan out a
waste avoidance and waste management strategy.
It is clear from this book that, though EDF does not take an
anti-incineration position, very few–if any–incinerators would
be built if citizens and local officials read this book and took
it seriously. For out-and-out incineration fighters, it’s a gem.
Get: Richard A. Denison and John Ruston, editors, RECYCLING AND
INCINERATION; EVALUATING THE CHOICES (Washington, DC: Island
Press, 1990); paperback, $19.95; phone (800) 828-1302 or (202)
232-7933. And: Greenpeace Action Garbage Prevention Plan
(Washington, DC: Greenpeace [1436 U St., NW, Washington, DC
20009; phone (202) 4621177], 1990); they ask a $5.00 donation for
the package.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: edf; waste reduction; msw; waste disposal
technologies; policies; economics; toxic substances; greenpeace;