Waste Management: Recycling
Introduction
Garbage 101
To say that "Garbage is a dirty business" is to be both trite
and true. A visit to your local landfill will tell you that it is not
only a dirty business, but a smelly business, as well. In the early days
o
countries with high population densitiesIn the U.S., a country
that is blessed with many wide-open spaces, garbage has always
been a "somebody else's" business, as well. For most of our
history, we have treated garbage the same way: dump it somewhere
away from our towns and cities. For cities near the ocean, this
has meant dumping it at sea, or possibly close to shore if
land was being reclaimed. For inland cities, this has resulted
in burying it in open pits. As long as the citizens of the
cities or towns did not have to see it, there was no problem.
As cities and towns grew, and as the products that went into
the waste stream became more toxic, concern began to escalate.
The growing cities meant that people were moving out closer
to the dumps, and that the amount of waste that was going
to the dump was expanding. The increasing toxicity of products
going into the dumps meant that local groundwaters were becoming
polluted with leachate that had passed through the landfill.
With growing legal issues and tougher environmental laws on
pollution of groundwater, changes in how garbage is disposed
of have been taking place over the last several decades. A
modernized landfill, with barriers to leachate and methane recovery
systems, is a vast improvement to the old style dump.
Recycling
But even a modernized landfill does not get to the heart of
the matter. As long as people continue to produce garbage
at the rate that they are, we are going to continue to run
out of places to put it. In high-density population centers
along the northestern seaboard, this situation is becoming
more critical every day. Nothing better epitomizes the situation
in this area than the barge
full of trash from Long Island in 1987
that could not find any takers. After a 3,000-mile trip down
the eastern seaboard and into Mexico, the barge had to be
returned to New York because no other city or state would
allow the shipment to be dumped in their landfill. While the
situation in Long Island has improved, other municipalities
find themselves in similar situations today.
The solution to this problem of what to do with waste is rather
simple: reduce, reuse, and recycle. This simplistic mantra
is really quite powerful, but it takes a change in lifestyle.
Usually, the change only comes about when the situation becomes
critical. In high population density areas such as Japan and
certain countries in Europe, systems of laws and fee penalties
exist to force the citizens to limit how much garbage they
throw away. This causes people to reconsider how much packaging
is involved when they buy something and to recycle as much
of their waste as possible. This situation is beginning to
occur in the U.S., as well. As we can see in the Long Island
garbage barge story, the shutting down of all landfills in
1990 and the refusal of other communities to take their garbage
forced the local system into greater recycling (about 35%
of the waste is now recycled).
The sites below contain information on solid waste and recycling.
Solid Waste
Office
of Solid Waste (EPA)
Landfill Regulations (EPA)
State Agencies
Recycling
National Recycling Coalition
Recycling (EPA)
Waste Wise
After reading through these and any other sites that you might
find, answer the following questions
- The EPA website shows that the U.S. went from 2.7 pounds
of solid waste per person per day in 1960 to 4.6 pounds
per person per day in 1999? During this 40 year period,
educational and advertising programs were spawned to get
people to create less waste and to recycle. While recycling
rates did increase, the per capita waste almost doubled.
Why do you think that this occurred?
- Voluntary recycling programs have been met with mixed
success. What actions do you think could be taken to increase
the participation in recycling? How would these actions
be an improvement over most current programs?
Now that you have read about landfills and
solid waste, it is time to experience it firsthand by taking
a trip to the closest landfill. If you do not know where
this is, you can check with your local city or county government
offices to find it. While at the landfill, consider the
following questions.
- How would you describe the smell in the
air near the landfill?
- What method is being used at the landfill
to ensure that trash is not flying away in the breeze everyday?
- Do you see any attempts to use modern
methods of protection at the landfill, i.e. leachate recovery
pipes, methane recovery system, landfill liner, etc.?
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