USA – making Zero Waste part of the plan

An article from Dr Maggie Clarke of Maggie Clarke, a long-time New York City-based solid waste scientist, researcher, educator, and activist.



Amid the pages and pages of ideas and proposals to move New York toward sustainability in “PlaNYC”, there is barely a mention of solid waste. Even though solid waste has a huge environmental impact, PlaNYC ignores both the problem and the new movement toward zero waste.



Meanwhile, the extension of the few, current, pilot-sized initiatives in the city‘‘s most recent long-term solid waste management plan will do little to prevent. It only tentatively addresses a small portion of the 40 percent of total waste of the waste stream that is the organics fraction. Just a tiny fraction of the sanitation department‘‘s more than $1 billion budget goes to waste prevention.



Other forward-thinking countries, states and communities have already set a goal of zero waste and are aggressively implementing programs, legislation and incentives to achieve it. Widely misunderstood, zero waste simply means that our discards are recycled, composted, reused or not created in the first place. None of these materials should be disposed of in incinerators or landfills or exported, as New York currently does with almost 85 percent of its waste. The Impact of Garbage



PlaNYC showed the volume of greenhouse gases that cause global warming emitted from within the city‘‘s borders. Providing that information is a great accomplishment. But the report does not go far enough. It only counts the gases actually emitted in the city, ignoring all the greenhouse gases that result from producing products and packaging that New Yorkers use and from bringing those goods to us.



New York City‘‘s carbon footprint (the total amount of greenhouse gases produced to support human activities here) should extend to the activities and communities that supply and manufacture the things that we demand. Various estimates show that “upstream” impacts account for 70 percent of emissions caused by products and materials that eventually become waste. Logging, mining and manufacturing towns have a huge carbon footprint totally disproportionate to their populations. Much of it derives from goods they provide to us. Not taking responsibility for these carbon emissions is wrong also because we then have no impetus to innovate and pursue measures to reduce them (i. e., zero waste initiatives).



The report also ignores the carbon emissions and other impacts of getting rid of waste. It does not include the emission deriving from the disposal of New York City‘‘s waste at incinerators in Newark and elsewhere, in Pennsylvania and Virginia landfills or transporting the materials (most of which is recyclable, compostable and/or would not have to be created in the first place) to these facilities.



The city‘‘s carbon footprint report indicates that buildings create 79 percent of the carbon emissions, while solid waste was responsible for only 3 percent of the city‘‘s greenhouse gas emissions in 1995 when the Fresh Kills landfill was open and zero after that. For all the reasons mentioned, this is an inaccurate estimate.



The effects of landfills, the most common waste management practice used by New York City, are particularly damaging, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. “It results in the release of methane from the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials. Methane is 21 times more potent a GHG than carbon dioxide,” the agency has found.



Incineration creates toxic ash that must be disposed of. Despite significant technological advances in reducing emissions of toxic gases, greenhouse gases are emitted from waste-to-energy plants, and the amount of energy they generate is less than the amount required to log, mine, manufacture and move new materi