The Road to the Problem

First a little history: World War II was the driving force in pushing Americans out of the Great Depression. The government poured money into the economy to make military equipment. When WWII ended, Americans used their revived economy (since Europe wasn't very economically stable at this point in history) to produce more and more goods. Urban growth accelerated at an astounding rate, and with it came the "refuse generation".

As people became concerned with the air pollution that came with burning garbage, more and more of the waste ended up in landfills. These landfills were very primitive back in the mid-1900's. For example, a landfill in California studied by the University of California in 1949 was basically a scattering of trash over a large area, allowing scavengers easy access and pigs were often let out in the landfill for some free overnight feeding. People came to realize that letting pigs eat pure trash was highly unsanitary, and the government worked to make a "sanitary landfill". They researched through the 1940's and 1950's. Slowly, the modern landfill came out. The most obvious difference between this sanitary landfill and other dumping methods is the daily cover that they put over the trash (1). However, this cover restricts air flow, so decomposition occurs very, very slowly. In fact, newspapers over 40 years old have been found in landfills so well preserved that you can still read off of them (2). In 1965, the federal government passed the Solid Waste Disposal Act in an attempt to introduce sanitary landfill practices. Fast forward to 1976 when Congress realized that the landfill issue needed more attention, and directed EPA to specify criteria for classifying landfills under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. From there on, the EPA made little major decisions concerning landfills, focusing more on the non-landfill methods of managing wastes (1). Here we are now, with more trash than ever and a steadily decreasing amount of places to put it.

1) http://www.forester.net/msw_0001_history.html

2) http://www-esd.lbl.gov/ECO/smart_store/problems.html

The Current Situation

Nobody wants a pile of garbage in their backyard, so when the government decides to build a new landfill, the hair starts flying. People are very willing to fight against trash, and trying to get a new landfill regulated and construction started can take years of bureaucracy (the regulations have been getting stricter over the years, see them at the EPA site). In the end, the poor minority people have no choice but to take up the burden, since they don't have much influence in politics. In New York, the Fresh Kills Landfill was scheduled to be shut down in 2001. Where was the trash going to go? Almost all of the 85 stations in New York ended up in the industrial zones by the waterfront that is home to many low-income minority neighborhoods. A neighborhood mostly full of Puerto Ricans and blacks (Hunts Point) sees 40% of the city's privately collected trash every day. The huge number of trash that goes through the neighborhood has caused asthma rates to skyrocket in the last decade. To see the full article, go here.

Not a very pretty picture, is it?

Statistics show that the average American is producing more and more trash. According to the EPA, in 1960, a person made around 2.7 pounds of trash per day. In 2005, that number rose to 4.5 pounds of trash per day. When you factor in population growth, the difference in the amount of trash America as a whole produces from 1960 to 2005 is staggering.

Here's a little trivia. Landfills are closing at about a rate of 1 landfill per day. There was more than 18000 landfills in 1979. By 1995, there was only about 3000 landfills. While there was a 84% drop in the number of landfills in those 16 years, there was a 80% increase in the amount of trash. It's clear that if we don't take care of our growing trash problem soon, we'll be buried in it ourselves, and the first people to be buried will be the bottom of society.

Big Solutions

It's obvious that the country's landfills must be upgraded in order to protect the environment from leachates (liquid, mostly water, that seeps out of landfills or composting material) leaking into our rainwater or groundwater.

Smart Storage is a company specializing in managing landfill waste, and has designed a new kind of landfill that will optimize decomposition of waste and stabilize waste so that it is non-toxic and could even be mined for metals, glass, and soil. However, reducing what goes into the landfills in the first place is the best way to solve our landfill problems (the basic design is shown in the corner). The United States Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) considers "source reduction" (that is, changing the design, manufacture, or use of a product to reduce the amount and toxicity of what gets thrown away) as the preferred method of dealing with the landfill problem, followed by recycling (which diverts items away from the waste stream so that the items can be resold as a new product). Source reduction and recycling helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduces pollutants, saves energy, conserves resources, and reduces the need for new landfills and combusters. The EPA reports that in the year 2005, Americans diverted more that 79 million tons of waste from the waste stream, up from just 15 million tons in 1980. However, more than half of all waste is still being dumped into landfills (54% in the same year, according to the EPA). If anything, the government should keep pushing for people to reuse and recycle. The money spent teaching the public now will be nothing compared to the money used to keep building more and more landfills (this article shows the rising cost of landfills frustrating the citizens of Northampton County).

Force companies to change their materials. Toxic materials have a huge impact on the environment, and we shouldn't tolerate big companies adding dangerous materials to our products. As technology quickly advances, electronics like cell phones end up in landfills very quickly (approximately 130 million cell phones a year), and in those phones is a combination of toxic material, like arsenic, brominated compounds, and lead. These materials are harmful to humans, and can cause nervous system damage, reproductive and developmental problems, and cancer. Is this health hazard something we want around us? Read on, if you dare, at the Grinning Planet. If you want to get rid of your old phone safely, consider contacting the Call2Recycle program, a non-profit organization that helps people recycle their phones safely. These are all ways to help protect our environment from the wastes that we produce.

Simple Solutions

So what can you do to solve the growing landfill problem? Just take simple steps! Take notice of how much trash your family generates in a week. Is there anything you're throwing away that could be recycled? Why use plastic cups and throw them away in one use when you could just use a regular glass cup for years? Take a large cloth bag to the grocery store. You don't even have to sacrifice any style for your eco-friendly decision either; just take a look at these fashionable grocery bags:

Talk to people. Spread the word. Landfill shortages affect all of us living here in the states. Talk to your senators. Ask them questions. You can find all their contact information listed on the government website.

Buy used items, not new items. Replace the disposables with reusables (like the grocery bags above). Get rechargeable batteries. Donate items to charities, like the Salvation Army, which has locations all over the United States. Send your Christmas tree to Treecycle, which will recycle your tree and make paper out of it. Borrow books at your local library instead of buying new books at bookstores. Got an old computer? Donate it! There's a list complete with locations in which states at Share the Technology. These steps are not hard. They are just little adjustments to your life which can in turn lead to large results at the dump. Being conscientious is the best way to go.

If the people in this country don't wake up and smell the garbage, the next landfill can be right in your backyard. Harmful chemicals from all the trash could quite possibly leak into the ground below, contaminating the area for years around. We need to act to improve the way our waste management system works now, before the consequences become so severe that we irreparably damage our planet. A full report about the environmental impacts of solid wastes can be read here.

History

1)
Anyone could tell you that at some point solid waste disposal would
become a huge problem on this island and for the state. We live in the
most isolated island chain in the world, so yes, at some point we would
have to run out of space. Generally, we have never been big on
reducing, reusing, or recycling. We get almost all of our food and
commercial products shipped or flown in from the mainland and we are
ignorant of the labor that is put into each thing. The “throw away
society” began after WWII. During the war virtually everything was
recycled: rubber, paper, any scrap metal, tin cans, and fats, to help
the war effort. It diverted about 25% of the waste from the waste
stream. When the war ended companies took advantage of the optimistic
and commercialized public. They began making one-use products so people
would have to keep buying them again and again, and they used the
newest ways to advertise them. In the years 1958 to 1976 the amount of
packaging produced and disposed of in the United States increased by
67%. That major increase set up Hawaii for trouble, and the lack of
any major war-time conflicts since then allowed that same consumerism
attitude to trickle down through the generations. Without any major
recycling programs or alternatives to sanitary landfills, most everyone
should have known that one day soon, at the rate we were going, the
dumps would all fill to the brim.

Hawai'i nei

2) “And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and
the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate and the disposable bottle,
and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy
his food all in one place and he could save that which was good to eat
in his refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And
pretty soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans
and paper plates and disposable bottles, and there was nowhere left to
sit down or to walk. And Man shook his head and cried, ‘Look at all
this God-awful litter.’” –Art Buchwald, 1970. Now it is the year 2007
and not much has changed. The island of O’ahu produces about 1.3
million tons of waste annually from commercial, industrial, and
residential sources. That is 2,600,000,000 pounds--over two
billion!--of trash that needs to be put somewhere each year. Where is
all of this trash going? Currently, it goes to the almost-filled
Waimanalo Gulch Landfill which is scheduled to close next year. But the
mayor has applied for a two-year extension of the landfill that is
almost at full capacity. It is the only municipal landfill in the city
and the state seems to be stuck on what to do next. The landfill has
already been cited for eighteen violations over the last two years and
the city is being fined $2.8 million , money that could have been used
to fund a new, sustainable, waste disposal project. Because we know
that the landfill will be closing within a matter of months, the state
has inevitably been investigating other sites for the new landfill.
Particularly in Wai’anae. No one wants the city’s giant garbage can in
their back yard, so when Mufi Hannemann went to a town meeting to
discuss the project, he was met with even more disapproval from the
community (including residents and homeless) than he probably expected.
But I think the recent political activity of the public, and the
backlash from this proposal has done some good in creating more
incentives to invest in alternatives to landfills, like recycling.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a recycling program has sprouted in Hawaii
Kai and Mililani, and the success of it could spread it to all parts of
the island. This would be the first curb side recycling pickup in the
history of Hawaii.

Someone do something!

3) If I had the power and resources to do anything I wanted with this
situation I would have people recycle all plastic containers, glass
containers, aluminum, tin, paper, cardboard, and metals, and have
mandatory compost piles in all communities. The actual recycling of the
products would produce no air pollution, and I would turn any excess
trash into a non-carbon emitting fuel for cars. But, although such a
world does not exist, that does not mean that there are not more things
that can be done. The “powers that be” should be investing more time in
broader recycling programs and stress the necessity of reducing and
reusing. I have already seen commercials telling people to conserve
water, so why shouldn’t we have more for reducing and reusing in Hawaii?

Ahorita! (Right now!)

4) Individual action is very easy. It can be as easy as recycling your
bottles and paper, or bringing your own bag to the supermarket. I
honestly believe that these kinds of practices along with other
environmentally sound practices make a small impact, even if it is only
realized by the people in your household. But, if things continue the
way they are now, the amount of trash produced per year will continue
to grow, and we will have a very big problem facing the city in terms
of what to do with it all. Will we ship it to the mainland to let other
people deal with it? Will we burn it? Recycle it? Or just put another
landfill in Wai’anae? It is as much the public’s choice as the states.