Garbage In, Garbage Out: Solving the Problems with Long-Distance Trash Transport

CHAPTER 1 All Garbage Is Local: Trash Management in the United States

CHAPTER 1 All Garbage Is Local Trash Management in the United States Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill was fond of saying that ‘‘all politics is local.’’ With this pithy phrase Mr. O’Neill was conveying both an observation and a prescription. First, he was stressing that local and regional concerns are often key factors in national elections. And, second, he was observing that politicians must consider those concerns as they craft national policies.∞ In a variant of Speaker O’Neill’s observation, we might also say that all garbage is local. Trash management is overwhelmingly under state and local control in the United States. As such, any analysis of municipal solid waste management in the United States must start and end with federalism, for American waste management is highly decentralized and as a consequence it varies widely from locality to locality. For more than a century operational responsibility for municipal solid waste collection and disposal has fallen on cities, townships, and counties.≤ States develop environmental standards for landfills and incinerators that must be at least as stringent as those established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. But for the most part 12 Garbage In, Garbage Out there is little national oversight. Municipal solid waste management in the United States is overwhelmingly a local and state concern. Despite this constant of political decentralization, new variables are transforming the American waste management equation.≥ Waste disposal is becoming increasingly privatized and regionalized and, as a result, trash is moving over long distances and across state lines as never before. These trends have not gone unnoticed by members of Congress, many of whose constituents are frustrated that their states have become the trash capitals of the country. This chapter provides basic information on MSW’s composition and environmental impacts, and it describes how MSW is regulated and managed in the United States. I then discuss trends in garbage transport and the connections between those trends, more stringent environmental regulation, and increasing privatization of MSW disposal. Environmental Effects of MSW ‘‘Solid waste’’ is a broad term, including discarded hazardous and nonhazardous materials in solid or liquid form. Interestingly, while municipal solid waste has been the focus of much policy and regulatory activity, it represents but a small fraction of the overall solid waste generated in the United States. Informal EPA estimates show that approximately five billion tons of ‘‘non-wastewater waste’’ are generated in the U.S. every year, an amount that includes 214 million tons of industrial non-hazardous wastes.∂ Some industrial waste is discarded on site (e.g., through land application), and some is reused (e.g., scrubber sludge can be used in gypsum production, and fly ash from municipal waste incinerators can be used to fill old mines). The hazardous fraction of industrial waste is sent to special disposal facilities, in accordance with federal regulations. Because the controversy over interstate waste transport is about municipal solid waste (MSW), I focus on this subset of overall solid waste, and I use ‘‘MSW’’ interchangeably with ‘‘garbage’’ and ‘‘trash.’’ With all three terms I refer to the kinds of things we discard in our daily lives, such as product packaging, newspapers and magazines, yard waste, food scraps, clothing, old appliances, batteries, and the like. Residences, commercial enterprises, and industrial operations all make MSW. Some components of the MSW stream—solvents, pesticides, computers, fluo- All Garbage Is Local 13 Table 1 Municipal Solid Waste in the United States (2007) Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ‘‘Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2007 Facts and Figures.’’ Note: Figures represent MSW discarded before recycling or composting. rescent lightbulbs—would be subject to hazardous waste regulations if discarded on a large scale by industrial generators. However, the household hazardous waste exemption allows Americans to throw into their residential trash bins annually about 1.6 million tons of products containing hazardous materials. EPA’s figures indicate that in 2007 Americans produced about 254 million tons of MSW overall, or 4.6 lbs/person-day. Table 1 shows how this waste breaks down by type. According to EPA, this national breakdown has not varied much since 1960. However, these figures represent national averages, and many local waste profiles look quite di√erent, especially for areas with especially low or high amounts of yard waste.∑ Even though MSW might seem relatively innocuous by comparison to industrial hazardous waste, when buried or burned MSW can...