The residents of Argyle and Greenbush recently won a major victory for their communities when they stopped a plan to build a new landfill in the Penobscot watershed. The Oct. 9 BDN editorial on the subject rightly identifies the need for a long-term solution.
The Environmental Protection Agency keeps track of trash on a national level, and the numbers are staggering. Americans generated 251 million tons of trash in 2012. On average, each of us makes 4.38 pounds of trash per day. Compare that to the number from 1960 when each of us was making 2.68 pounds of trash per day.
Not only are we making more trash, the trash we make is more toxic. A lot of Mainers have recently learned about chemicals like phthalates and BPA. These hormone disrupters are found in the normal household products we use, then dispose of, every day. The known toxins in consumer goods plus the tens of thousands of untested chemicals currently on the market add up to a hazardous waste stream that steadily flows from our cities and towns. But where does it go?
My dad’s generation of Mainers had two options for waste disposal. Burn it in the backyard or take it to the town dump. Nowadays we like to think that we are more enlightened. We either enjoy curbside pickup or we take trash to a transfer station. From there our trash is either buried in a landfill or burned in an incinerator. Both are dangerous and unhealthy options.
While modern landfills have more controls than the town dumps of the past, they still pose serious threats to human and environmental health. The EPA has stated that all landfills eventually leak. Landfills threaten groundwater and also pollute the air. Studies in the United Kingdom have found increases in serious birth defects in babies born to moms who live near landfills.
Incinerators are no better. Trash burned in an incinerator does not simply go away. Heavy metals and other toxins are emitted into the atmosphere, essentially creating a “landfill in the sky.” The ash that remains after combustion is also highly toxic and is inevitably buried in a landfill. The true solution to waste rests not in more advanced facilities for burning and burying but in reducing the volume and the toxicity of our trash. The generalized term for this is “zero waste.”
Zero waste is not any single technology, program or policy. Zero Waste is a goal, a process and a vision that shifts how we think about and use resources. It is an approach that works to change the way materials flow through our economy.
Our current practices move raw materials from the environment to the factory to the consumer to the landfill. A zero waste mindset looks at both the front end (production and design) and the back end (reuse and reprocessing) of material flow and connects the two. Zero waste centers around reducing needless consumption, minimizing waste, maximizing recycling and incentivizing the manufacture of products that can be intentionally reused, repaired, or recycled back into the marketplace.
Traditionally we think of the trash that we throw away as something with little to no value, but many items have value to other people, businesses, and communities. For instance, organic waste can be the feedstock for a commercial composting operation, turning food scraps, leaves, brush and manure into compost to feed the soil at farms and residential and business landscaping projects.
Other states are moving ahead toward implementation of zero waste policies. For example, the Vermont Universal Recycling Law passed that state’s legislature unanimously in 2012. More than just a guideline, the law bans yard waste from landfills, mandates commercial food scrap composting and institutes statewide unit-based pricing for garbage. Massachusetts and Connecticut have passed similar policies in recent years.
Ideally, Maine’s waste disposal system would incentivize recycling and composting of waste. Right now, the waste industry has a financial incentive to burn and bury as much as it can. This perverse incentive is what brings out-of-state garbage to our state’s landfills and incinerators.
Maine does need a solution to the problem of trash. However, suggesting that a bigger landfill is a good solution to the trash problem is like saying a bigger pair of pants is a good solution to the obesity problem. I urge Maine policymakers to continue to shift away from bury and burn and towards reduce, reuse, recycle and a zero waste plan for Maine.
Andy Jones is Maine community organizer for the Toxics Action Center, an organization that works on pollution-prevention efforts across New England.