Should
We Stop Recycling?
By J. Winston Porter
(as published in Newsday, 9/6/96)
Long island is an example of why trash management should be tailored to local conditions. With aquifers as the source of drinking water and a state law virtually banning new landfills, Long Island has only three major options: recycling, waste-to-energy incineration, and transporting the garbage somewhere else.
According to the Waste Reduction and Management Institute at Stony Brook, recycling handles about 25 percent of Long Island’s 9000 tons a day of trash, waste-to-energy incineration burns about 50 percent and carting to other regions takes the remaining 25 percent.
Of
course, Long Islanders should continue to improve their recycling efforts.
But, people need to be realistic, because recycling will not solve more than
about a third of the Island’s garbage problem. And that would still be
better than the nation has as a whole.
The country is now recycling approximately 25 percent of its waste. I think that’s a reasonable amount—it’s a goal I proposed in the late 1980s when I was the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s solid waste administrator and the plight of Long Island’s notorious garbage barge was making front-page news.
Some will ask, “Why not 40 or even 50 percent recycling?” Just one problem—without huge amounts of public funding, such goals are unreachable.
For openers, about a fourth of trash is virtually non-recyclable; including such items as dirt, kitty litter and food scraps. So, to reach a 50-percent rate, you have to recycle about three-fourths of the “recyclable” items, higher than any material has been recycled. Also, only a few of the 50 or so items in trash are present at significant percentages—cardboard boxes, for example, comprise 13 percent and newspapers 6 percent—to make recycling those materials worthwhile. To increase the rate, we would have to go after dozens of “one-percenters” at great cost and inconvenience.
Waste-to-energy incineration is very important on Long Island, with five combustors handling the area’s garbage. Also, it’s much more efficient to burn some wastes—mixed plastics are the best example—to make electricity rather than sort them for recycling.
Exporting trash is a seductively simple option for Long Island—and probably a major growth opportunity for hard-pressed communities outside our region willing to put up with our garbage—but its not going to be easy.
If Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill really closes by the year 2001, as promised by state and city officials, then New York City will have to find a new home for the 13,000 tons of municipal solid waste city residents generate each day—an output that dwarfs Long Island’s solid waste stream. Soon, it’s likely that landfills within several hundred miles of Manhattan will be stuffed with city trash.
What Long Island could do is encourage cooperation among municipalities and businesses to get a better share of the market for recyclables. More than half of all national recycling is in just three items: cardboard boxes, newspapers, and office paper. Long Islanders should focus on the most abundant and valuable recyclables materials and de-emphasize the economic losers.
Yard waste is generally the largest item in a suburban household’s trash. And its moisture can hamper incinerator effectiveness. Therefore, homeowners and others should be encouraged to compost their yard wastes.
And so, Long Island shouldn’t stop recycling, but it should make it more cost effective. Doing this will require a high degree of cooperation among local governments, citizens and businesses.
©J. Winston Porter 2001