Getting rid of our solid waste

With six billion humans on the planet, the problem mounts of what to do with all our wastes. We have two essential interlocking challenges - to dispose of our trash with the least possible harm - and to minimize the amount that we need to dispose of. This Yodeler looks at some of the problems of solid waste and some of the solutions, both potential and in some cases already happening.

Starting in the Bay Area, we see how Alameda County recycling activists compelled the world's largest garbage company and elected officials not to import out-of-county wastes to the Altamont landfill - and to compensate the impacted communities with fees to acquire habitat and open space and to teach children about recycling. Across the Bay, San Francisco is considering ways to reduce the number of shopping bags given out by stores and entering the waste stream.

Some of our most important solid-waste problems stem from modern electronic technology. Sierra Club California has been working, with partial success, to limit the quantity of mercury entering the environment from switches, fluorescent lights, and dentists' wastewater. Nationally and internationally, discarded computer equipment is a major source of toxic wastes. Today most of these wastes are exported to Asia, where they are processed under hazardous conditions. Environmentalists are working to get the manufacturers to take responsibility.

Modern technology offers new ways to dispose of wastes, but the waste industry is not always forth-coming about hazards. Sierra Club California is working for careful oversight of new "waste-conversion" technologies to make sure that they aren't allowed to become major new sources of toxic pollution.

For the immediate future we live in a world full of landfills, both closed and still operating, and with their toxic content, they form a significant hazard. We discuss financial mechanisms to prepare for dealing with the range of potential problems and catastrophes.

We close the section with two articles that look forward. The Zero Waste movement aims not merely at incremental reductions in solid waste, but at new ways of manufacturing and consuming to bring wastes down close to zero. And "The pro-manufacturing environmentalist" considers recycling as a major industrial land use that we must make room for in our communities.