College Trash Habits Cause Concern, as Does Incinerator in Chester

- by Bob­by Zipp, Novem­ber 20, 2014,  Swarth­more Phoenix

Two weeks ago, a group of the Green Advi­sors con­duct­ed a waste audit of Kohlberg Hall and the Sci­ence Cen­ter. The pur­pose of the annu­al audit is to cre­ate a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the amount of waste pro­duced by those build­ings and test how well the Swarth­more com­mu­ni­ty knows what to com­post, recy­cle and put in the trash. Spear­head­ed by Green Advi­sor coor­di­na­tors Kel­ley Lang­hans ’16,  Indy Reid-Shaw ’17 and Lau­ra Lader­man ’18, a team of GAs spent a day sort­ing through the 347 pounds of waste that was pro­duced by Kohlberg and the Sci­ence Cen­ter on a sin­gle day and record­ed the amount of waste in each of the three cat­e­gories that was incor­rect­ly dis­posed of. They found that out of every­thing that had been placed in trash bins, 35.3 per­cent of it was actu­al­ly trash, and the rest could have been com­post­ed or recy­cled. Trash at Swarth­more is burned at Cov­an­ta Waste facil­i­ty in Chester, the largest ener­gy-from-waste incin­er­a­tor in the coun­try, which is locat­ed about eight miles away from the college.

The incin­er­a­tor is cur­rent­ly respon­si­ble for incin­er­at­ing all of the trash in Delaware Coun­ty, and also receives ship­ments of trash from New Jer­sey, New York and Delaware. In the process of incin­er­at­ing all this trash, the incin­er­a­tion plant emits tox­ic gas­es into the air. Some stu­dents in the Swarth­more com­mu­ni­ty, as well as many envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, say that these emis­sions pose an immi­nent pub­lic health threat.

“The trash is reduced to only 30–50% of its orig­i­nal amount, leav­ing ash­es that are loaded with tox­ins such as diox­in and par­tic­u­late mat­ter,” wrote John Lim ’16 in an email. He also explained how eas­i­ly these tox­ins could affect Delaware Coun­ty residents.

“These tox­ins are released into the air as a result of the incin­er­a­tion. Diox­ins are fat-sol­u­ble and thus can find their way into us through the con­sump­tion of local foods,” Lim said. He cit­ed World Health Orga­ni­za­tion find­ings that pro­longed expo­sure to diox­in has shown to increase rates of can­cer, dam­age the immune sys­tem, inter­fere with hor­mon­al sys­tems and cause devel­op­men­tal prob­lems. Fur­ther­more, Lim wrote that these health effects are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly felt by peo­ple of col­or, regard­less of eco­nom­ic class.

Health issues for res­i­dents of Chester include the high­est per­cent­age of low-weight births, 60 per­cent high­er rates of lung can­cer and high­er blood lead lev­els than any­where else in the state of Penn­syl­va­nia, accord­ing to the Del­co Alliance for Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice. Addi­tion­al­ly, res­i­dents com­plain fre­quent­ly of noise pol­lu­tion and unbear­able smells from trucks bring­ing waste through the town.

Some stu­dents point to a cul­tur­al problem.

“I don’t think Swarth­more has an ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ist cul­ture’ among the entire school’s pop­u­la­tion,” wrote GA Olivia Ortiz ’16. She said she feels stu­dents do not ade­quate­ly dis­pose of their trash due to a lack of knowl­edge or ambivalence.

“Peo­ple are real­ly unaware of what can be com­post­ed or real­ly apa­thet­ic to the idea of car­ry­ing their food scraps and com­postable cups and plates around until they’re near a com­post bin,” she con­tin­ued. Ortiz explained that var­i­ous groups, such as Earth­lust and the GAs, have tried edu­cat­ing peo­ple and chang­ing cam­pus cul­ture. These groups have also been pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on how people’s deci­sions about waste impact oth­ers, but Ortiz felt that it is not hav­ing as big of an effect as it could.

“Hon­est­ly, peo­ple come in with cer­tain knowl­edge [and] habits about waste dis­pos­al, and it’s hard to change those,” she said.

Reid-Shaw also believes that pro­mot­ing a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly cam­pus cul­ture is a necessity.

“This waste audit demon­strat­ed that there needs to be a great deal of more edu­ca­tion and behav­ioral change for our com­post­ing sys­tem to work prop­er­ly,” wrote Reid-Shaw. She said that there are sev­er­al ini­tia­tives cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing on cam­pus, ini­ti­at­ed by the Green Advi­sors and in part­ner­ship with Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Direc­tor Lau­ra Cacho, to improve com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers’ com­post­ing habits. Among these ini­tia­tives is a con­tract­ing deal with a com­pa­ny that col­lects Swarthmore’s organ­ic waste to be used as fer­til­iz­er at Linvil­la Orchards, a fam­i­ly farm in Media, PA. Larg­er com­post deposit­ing sta­tions have also been cre­at­ed near LPAC and Essie Mae’s, and Green Advi­sors no longer take com­post to the sta­tion behind the ath­let­ic bleach­ers. There is also a pilot study hap­pen­ing in McCabe Library to see how well com­post­ing works in a library, and the team hopes to start a fac­ul­ty Green Advi­sor pro­gram to incor­po­rate more of the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty into the sus­tain­abil­i­ty initiative.

The GAs and Cacho are work­ing towards greater sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts on cam­pus pri­mar­i­ly to divert as much waste as pos­si­ble from the large-scale trash incin­er­a­tor run by the Cov­an­ta com­pa­ny in Chester. Accord­ing to the Delaware Coun­ty Alliance for Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice web­site, the plant cur­rent­ly run by Cov­an­ta has been repeat­ed­ly fined for vio­lat­ing emis­sions lim­its on some of these tox­ic gas­es, and it con­tin­ued to vio­late those lim­its. Addi­tion­al­ly, in July 2013, Cov­an­ta signed a con­tract to burn over 800,000 tons of waste from New York City over the next 20 to 30 years, accord­ing to the Delaware Coun­ty Dai­ly Times. Sev­er­al protests by res­i­dents resist­ing the increase in trash incin­er­a­tion have occurred. Only 1.5 per­cent of the waste burned in Chester is actu­al­ly gen­er­at­ed by the town, with the con­tin­u­a­tion of the facil­i­ty depen­dent on waste from exter­nal locations.