GARBAGE Living in a throwaway world

Forest and Bird, Volume 21, Issue 1, 1 February 1990, Page 22

GARBAGE Living in a throwaway world

By

Andrea Lomdahl

R ECENTLY I MADE ONE of my regular pilgrimages to the local landfill to dispose of the household waste products which I had not been able to recycle or fit into the plastic rubbish bags the local council provides. Recycling facilities at the landfill are rather limited, consisting simply of three bins in which to put green, brown and clear glass containers. One would think that people would find this system fairly simple to follow, but I discovered when I went to recycle my bottles that the different colours of glass had been well mixed up in the bins, and all sorts

of other unsavoury rotting rubbish had been thrown in as well. I have observed on many other occasions that the valiant recycling efforts that manage to get off the ground in our society are often thwarted by ignorant behaviour of this sort. This set me thinking about the problems of dealing with the huge amounts of the waste we generate, and how one might encourage some sensible reduction in this waste quantity. It is clear firstly that we should all take a hard look at ourselves and our own wasteful habits.

Golden Rules

The four principles of dealing with rubbish should be: use less, re-use, recycle and dispose of safely — in that order. We are all part of a disturbingly wasteful consumer society that seems determined to use the Earth's resources as fast as possible. We readily bow down to the demands of fashion, changing our clothes, car, household fittings and anything else we think might not measure up to the standards set by our neighbours. That is of course if we have the money to do so. Otherwise we simply wish we had the money to be wasteful like everyone else. I attended the inaugural conference of the Institute of Waste Management recently, and one of the speakers, Alastair Gunn of Waikato University, said in response to a question, that in his view the meaning of life to most children was "shopping". No doubt the remark was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there is also a considerable amount of truth in it. On the one hand we berate the Government and local authorities for not doing enough about "The Waste Problem", and on the other hand we bring up our children in the same image of ourselves, that is as materialistic consumers. We all think environmental problems should be solved, but preferably by others, and that gets me back to recycling. It takes a little bit of effort to separate out the brown, green and clear bottles, and obviously some people are not able to make this effort. There are also those who would deliberately thwart such initiatives by throwing in any old rubbish, and very little can be done about these people.

Everyone's Responsibility

It takes an effort to make recycling successful, and this effort must in part at least be at an individual level. Each one of us must take responsibility in some small way for the global environmental crisis, for it is simply the outcome of the collective selfishness and greed of many millions of people. This is not to say, however, that all levels of government should not be making much more effort to promote waste reduction and reuse and ensure wastes are managed properly. Politicians are certainly raising environmental issues regularly at present as these issues are popular ones. It is to be hoped that very soon the actions on resource conservation start following the words. One example is the report on "Packaging and the New Zealand Environment" produced recently by the Ministry for the Environment. It was generally a well-written report which outlined some useful initiatives, but it backs away from the real interventions needed to have a strong impact on the way we manage waste. It sets a target for a 20 percent reduction in solid waste volumes by

1993, but it does not give any convincing ways for achieving this target. There are very good reasons for actively encouraging waste reduction and recycling. We thereby conserve resources, promote a conservation approach, reduce pollution associated with disposal of waste, and, most importantly to some, we can save money by reducing the quantities of refuse that need to be disposed of in expensive landfills. There are also plenty of opportunities for recycling, for example glass, plastics, paper, aluminium cans, other metals, oil, solvents, textiles. In some cases such as oil and scrap steel, government changes to cost structures have indirectly worked against recycling. Last year 10 million litres of lead-contami-nated oil was dumped or burned in New Zealand because it was supposedly more economic to buy new oil from the Middle East rather than collect it from around the country for recycling. Deregulation of the scrap industry has been good and bad news for recycling. Good quality scrap steel is vigorously pursued and often exported, whereas unprofitable low grade steel is often neglected, although to the credit of both landfill operators and the scrap metal industry, some efforts are being made to recycle unprofitable or marginally profitable scrap steel. Before 1983, all car batteries were New Zealand-made and recycled to recover and re-use lead. The industry was protected by special licences and by duties on imported batteries which cannot be recycled. The licences and duties have now been lifted and

imported batteries have flooded into the country. In 1983, 4644 batteries were imported but this rose to 72,543 in 1988. Today few batteries are recycled — many are probably sitting in sheds, backyards or at the tip leaking lead and other toxic chemicals into the environment.

Recycling Wrongs

If the opportunities are there, and the reasons are there, what is going wrong? There are a number of successful recycling ventures, but many others have been attempted and subsequently abandoned because there was no money in it. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that prices do not reflect the true value of raw resources, and that true costs of landfilling are often not reflected in setting landfill charges. There are also technical difficulties in reusing many wastes, and often a lack of information and awareness about waste reduction and recycling. There are also the difficult problems of individual selfishness and laziness I have already mentioned. A United States pilot study has shown that much more waste can be recycled than is done currently. New Zealand's waste recycling record is nothing to be proud of in comparison to Japan, for example, which recycles 50 percent of its waste. Barry Commoner of New York's City University carried out a study to get the most out of people's garbage. He showed that you can recycle 84 percent of people's rubbish. The people involved in the study kept three different containers in their homes — one for food

scraps, another for recyclable paper, cans and bottles, and a third container for non-recycl-ables — and the containers were picked up by trucks with separate compartments. The food scraps were taken to a composting plant, and the other products recycled.

Rubbish Mountain

In the United States, and other countries running out of landfill space, such an approach might have to be compulsory in the years to come. In 15 year's time when a New York landfill site is full, it will be the highest point on the eastern seaboard between Maine and Florida! Even if we became a far less wasteful society there will inevitably still be wastes that will need to be landfilled. There are very good public health reasons for removing refuse away from people in a clean efficient manner and landfills should be recognised as very useful amenities. Landfilling of refuse which cannot be reused can be regarded as a type of recycling in itself. Proper selection and management of landfill sites and proper planning for the use of completed sites can result in conversion of poor quality land (not wetlands or important shrublands!) into useful land and facilities. Former landfill sites can be used as parks and industrial land, and lead the way into the development of residential land. It has been interesting to note that as the standard of landfill management has improved so that these facilities have been changed from dumps to landfills, the opposition to their construction has increased rather

than decreased. This is not surprising if one considers the past record of the old dumps. Landfills require close control of leachate, litter, and fires. They must be carefully operated with good cover and tight control of the tipface, and they should be well-screened from view. Access roads to the landfill should be kept clean. There is now a new imperative on landfills for control of landfill gas. This gas can be dangerous and cause explosions, and methane, its main constituent, is a very serious contributor to the greenhouse effect. The gas can also smell and be toxic. Most people accept the need for landfills, particularly if everything has been done to reduce and reuse the wastes prior to landfilling, but no one seems to want these facilities anywhere near them. The only way around such attitudes is for the operators of these facilities to improve their records and demonstrate to the public that the landfills can be run without causing nuisances and environmental degradation.

Hazardous Wastes

Another matter which needs urgent attention is the disposal of hazardous waste. Over the last few decades the chemical industry has thrived, producing a whole range of products which have become eagerly accepted by our consumer society. Many of these products are very useful and contribute much to our present standard of living. Many others may be of doubtful use. The production of hazardous waste is a problem that has crept up almost unsuspectingly on this thriving industry. Disposal of these wastes and the clean-up of contaminated sites are now presenting enormous and costly difficulties and much environmental degradation has occurred. In New Zealand the amounts of hazardous waste being generated are not large, but they present some difficult disposal problems and these wastes are not generally being properly managed. The main types of industry which produce hazardous waste in New Zealand are the timber treatment, metal finishing, chemical processing, tanning, and petroleum/oil industries. These and other industries produce a wide range of wastes, including heavy metals (for example arsenic, chromium, cadmium), acids and bases, cyanides, pesticide wastes, phenols and other organic substances such as PCBs. In Auckland the degradation of the Manukau Harbour with contaminants such as the pesticide chlordane, and contamination of sites in Penrose and Onehunga and elsewhere has focused attention on the problems of hazardous waste disposal. There are around 2500 industries in the Manukau catchment. 160 of these have been required to upgrade their work practices or facilities to prevent pollution. Controls to deal with hazardous waste could take the form of licensing disposal sites, a manifest system for transport of hazardous wastes to ensure such wastes do not get "lost" en route, strong penalties for unsatisfactory disposal, and an effective programme for notifying and cleaning up contaminated sites. Clear guidelines and a good advisory service are also needed. The Government has decided to set up a Hazards Control Commission to manage hazardous chemicals and other hazardous substances such as genetically modified organisms.

Inside the Domestic Rubbish Bag

Stacking Up NZ’s Rubbish Mountain

Action Needed

If our ever-diminishing resources are to be conserved and serious pollution of our environment avoided, then much more satisfactory management of our waste is needed. We need firstly to look at ourselves and curb our own untidy and wasteful habits and the consumer drive which is behind such wastefulness. There must be more to life than shopping! We must then look to our political leaders to give some clear direction for sound waste management, with some practical initiatives which encourage maximum waste reduction and reuse, with environmentally sound disposal of wastes that cannot be reused. Local authorities are in a good position to start waste reduction and recycling programmes. A catchy name for a programme that has been successfully tried overseas is the "4R Programme" — reduction, recycling, reuse, recovery. This would involve: ¢ Careful analysis of the waste stream to understand where reduction and reuse can be best practised. e Careful and hard examination of ways to reduce waste. e Identifying, publicising. and promoting recycling opportunities. e Promotion and establishment of collection systems. e Examination of "separation at source methods", with door-to-door collection of different recyclables. e Promotion of "waste reduction at source" in industry through such methods as better housekeeping, process modification and internal recycling. e Provision of assistance to recycling industries. e Setting up recycling centres. e Establishing well-managed recycling at landfills with appropriate receptacles which are Clearly marked. @ Setting up programmes in schools both for education and fundraising reasons. e Production of a recycling handbook which is updated regularly. e Establishment of a regional waste exchange. ¢ Giving awards for good waste reduction and reuse initiatives. e Ensuring the region's local authorities and the regional authority reduce and recycle their own wastes responsibly. ¢ Lobbying central government to take much needed national initiatives such as the imposition of product charges, and mandatory deposits where appropriate, the provision of carefully-targeted subsidies and grants, and provision of advice and encouragement. Only those wastes that cannot be dealt with by the 4Rs should then be sent for disposal. This disposal should be carried out in an environmentally sound fashion. #&