Waste Done Right

- by Ruth Tyson, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

In 2012, Amer­i­cans dis­posed of 251 mil­lion tons of trash, accord­ing to the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA). The Sto­ry of Stuff Project neat­ly lays out the way mate­ri­als move through our econ­o­my from extrac­tion to pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, con­sump­tion, and dis­pos­al. Most con­sumers don’t think beyond the “con­sump­tion” step. Once the unde­sir­able mess is tossed from house­holds, it might be con­sid­ered “out of sight, out of mind” as long as it’s not seen or smelled. But where does it all go? Where should it all go?

With the finite space for land­fills run­ning out, dis­cov­er­ing ways to deal with our waste prob­lem is imper­a­tive. The trash incin­er­a­tion (a.k.a. “waste-to-ener­gy” or WTE) indus­try would like to per­suade the pub­lic that they’re the answer. How­ev­er, incin­er­a­tors cause more prob­lems than they solve, and are the most expen­sive way to man­age waste or to cre­ate ener­gy. Incin­er­a­tion reduces every 100 tons of trash to 30 tons of tox­ic ash that must be dis­posed of landfills.

Incin­er­a­tors also cre­ate a demand for waste to feed their stream and com­pete with sus­tain­able alter­na­tives, which is the oppo­site of the solu­tion to too much waste.

The true solu­tion is zero waste, “a goal that is eth­i­cal, eco­nom­i­cal, effi­cient and vision­ary, to guide peo­ple in chang­ing their lifestyles and prac­tices to emu­late sus­tain­able nat­ur­al cycles, where all dis­card­ed mate­ri­als are designed to become resources for oth­ers to use.” This means that answer­ing the ques­tion of what to do with our waste is a lot deep­er than where we should put it. It’s about dis­pos­ing of cir­cu­lat­ing mate­ri­als prop­er­ly and sus­tain­ably while also ensur­ing that that amount con­tin­ues to decrease until the ulti­mate goal of zero waste pro­duc­tion is reached. Our zero waste hier­ar­chy con­sists of reduc­ing, reusing, and source separating.

Man­ag­ing waste looks dif­fer­ent depend­ing on the type of mate­r­i­al being dis­posed. In gen­er­al, the best way to reduce waste is to use and buy less. Prod­ucts can be redesigned so that they are more durable and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able. This also means reduc­ing the use of tox­i­cs in pro­duc­tion and replac­ing them with non-tox­ic alter­na­tives. What’s left once a prod­uct has reached its poten­tial should then be eas­i­ly repur­posed or recycled. 

Recy­clables (met­als, glass, plas­tics, paper) should be source-sep­a­rat­ed by mate­r­i­al so that they are not con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and can be eas­i­ly sold to their respec­tive mar­kets. Organ­ics should be col­lect­ed week­ly to be com­post­ed, a bio­log­i­cal process that decom­pos­es the mat­ter so that it can be returned to the nat­ur­al cycle. Since the major­i­ty of waste in the U.S. comes from food and yard scraps, com­post­ing can divert a large per­cent­age of waste typ­i­cal­ly sent to occu­py space in land­fills. Any­thing that remains in the waste stream after recy­cling and com­post­ing should be researched to find the source and how to elim­i­nate it fur­ther upstream. Through bans and account­abil­i­ty for man­u­fac­tur­ers, resid­u­als can be reduced even further. 

What about the rest? There will still be “left­overs” after all of these steps have been tak­en. As demon­strat­ed by Eco­cy­cle, the best way to han­dle such waste is through Mate­r­i­al Recov­ery Bio­log­i­cal Treat­ment (MRBT). Every­thing remain­ing should be sent to a MRBT facil­i­ty where any recy­clables that weren’t prop­er­ly sep­a­rat­ed at the source are mechan­i­cal­ly recov­ered in the “mate­r­i­al recov­ery” stage of MRBT. These recy­clables are then sent to the appro­pri­ate facil­i­ty for it to be used. 

The left­overs will be things like dirty dia­pers, tox­i­cs and oth­er unus­able mate­ri­als. In the bio­log­i­cal treat­ment stage, this sludge will go through either anaer­o­bic diges­tion or com­post­ing to be fur­ther con­densed and release any methane that could be pro­duced before land­fill­ing. Anaer­o­bic diges­tion is a process where the organ­ic mat­ter is bro­ken down by bac­te­ria and chem­i­cal process­es release the gas­es from the sol­id mate­r­i­al with­out the use of oxy­gen. The fin­ished prod­uct is an odor­less and less dense, sta­bi­lized soil-like sub­stance. How­ev­er, this sub­stance is high­ly tox­ic and should not be treat­ed as fer­til­iz­er. The remain­ing mat­ter should be sent to a prop­er­ly lined and man­aged landfill. 

Zero waste solu­tions are not only the best way to man­age waste for the envi­ron­ment, but also for peo­ple. There are a pletho­ra of jobs involved in every step of the process. With all of these steps tak­en and a com­mit­ment to a more sus­tain­able lifestyle as indi­vid­u­als and soci­ety as a whole, we can achieve the goal of zero waste.

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