Time to Redress Flawed Public Policy
Friday, December 31, 2010
By John Trotti
As those who have kept up with my Web musings, www.mswmanagement.com, of late will attest, I’ve been having difficulty distinguishing between Greenwash and Hogwash when it comes to some of the recycling claims we hear these days. Truth be known, I was coming to believe bad things about the people responsible for these claims until a couple of weeks ago when I found that I was focusing my attention on the wrong target. The issue, I came to recognize, isn’t one of veracity or overzealousness, as I had mistakenly concluded. Rather, it is the result of flawed policy fomented by politicians and policymakers who have forgotten—or perhaps have never known—what MSW management is about in the first place.
The source of epiphany was a meeting of solid waste professionals—private as well as public sector representatives—before whom I had been asked to give a luncheon talk. Ready to do battle, I led off with the question as to how many of the 50-or-so attendees believed the recycling figures they were hearing, expecting solid agreement in my skepticism. Instead I was greeted with mild acknowledgement that while some claims might be optimistic, most reflected solid achievement in meeting the mandates.
My first sensation was one of disbelief, but as I pressed the issue, questioning whether materials outsourced to destinations beyond our control could truly be considered as recyclables, it became increasingly obvious that I was barking up the wrong tree. MSW managers were doing exactly what they were required to do by edicts established by higher authorities…and there’s the rub.
I’ve always assumed that the premise on which municipal solid waste management is founded is the preservation of public health and safety, and that if this were not the case there would be no reason or benefit for public sector involvement.
The public places in our hands the responsibility for managing materials that, were they left untended, would seriously compromise the quality of life within an urban environment. While the materials themselves may be handled, in part or whole, by private sector contractors, the public sector cannot outsource its fiduciary responsibility for fate of these materials, whether through disposal or diversion.
Subtitle D holds our feet to the fire when it comes to landfill disposal, and a host of air-quality regulations do the same with WTE, but when it comes to recyclables, all too often we find ourselves trusting to the good intentions of those in whose hands we place materials, content to take their money while reaping whatever diversion credits apply.
Is this what the public expects when it places its materials in our hands? I don’t think so. Even if no greater expectation of MSW management than its scheduled disappearance from the curb is involved, the fate of those materials is in our hands until they no longer represent a threat to public health and safety, no matter on whose turf the threat exists, whether it be ours, China’s, or the denizens of the bottom of the deep blue sea…and this is what our public policymakers appear to have overlooked.
The primary responsibility is not recycling; it really is public health and safety.
There are some materials for which mature markets exist without prodding. For many other materials, however, the situation is sketchier, often for the lack of local markets or processing capabilities. Outsourcing has in many instances crippled the development of local markets, at the same time removing effective accountability for the fate of materials labeled at some point in the process as “recyclables.” In my humble opinion, the latter is worse than the former.
Therefore, it stands to reason that policies that these public-policymakers develop, should promote rather than get in the way of sound MSW management practices, and to this end, they should begin by mandating the same level of accountability for recyclables as they do for other materials in the municipal wastestream.
Hats off to SWANA’s Technical Divisions…Please
All of the articles in this year’s Elements issue are the work of SWANA’s Technical Divisions, which serve the Association and the waste management community in a number of ways. Not only are they the repository of a prodigious amount of corporate knowledge that will provide guidance for us as we move forward, they offer opportunities for members to trade insights that will pay extra dividends to themselves personally and the profession as a whole…both excellent reasons, for those who are not part of SWANA, to join the Association. Their upcoming WasteCon event (Aug. 15-17 in Boston) is the best investment you can make in your own professional development this year—if you have not already registered, sign up now at www.WasteCon.com.
Author's Bio: John Trotti is the Group Editor for Forester Media. |
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