Municipal Solid Waste Management and the Throwaway Society

The Municipal Solid Waste Management (MWSM) system was established a century
ago to protect public health. It has been modified during the past 40 years in pursuit of
public policy objectives of pollution control, resource conservation and, most recently,
sustainable development. This report examines the successes and failures of
“integrated waste management” in reaching those public policy objectives.
The key finding is that the MSWM system has been least effective in reducing
manufactured product wastes, and most successful in managing certain communitygenerated
biowastes. The waste stream managed by local governments changed from
one dominated by coal ashes and relatively homogeneous food wastes a century ago, to
one dominated by product wastes today. Currently, product wastes comprise 75
percent of MSW by weight, and 89 percent by volume. We suggest that the emerging
policy approach known as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) may be more
effective for product wastes and that the MSWM system should shift its focus to nonproduct
wastes. Policy approaches within the MSWM system are proposed that support
and complement EPR.
As the 20th Century advanced, product waste presented unforeseen challenges to the
MSWM system. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s polluted, overflowing municipal
landfills began to be perceived by the public as a “crisis.” Citizen pressure and senior
government mandates compelled thousands of local governments across North America
to decommission local landfills and build or find new ones that adhered to design
criteria intended to contain contaminants. Local governments also invested public
resources in recycling programs that would reduce the flow of MSW to landfills and
incinerators. To find out how effective these efforts have been, we analyzed U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s waste characterization data over the 41-year period
from 1960 to 2001 to compare patterns in the generation, recovery and discards of
product and non-product wastes.