September 11, 2001, was a wakeup call for all of us to the realization of just how vulnerable we are to a vast array of threats we’d managed to ignore for decades. We were rocked not merely by the violence of the terrorist attacks but by the seeming ease with which they were carried out.
Much has changed in the intervening years, the consequences wending their way throughout the entire fabric of our society so that no part of it, no matter how tenuous the connection might seem, has remained untouched. Certainly this is true in the waste industry where many of the frontline impacts of the catastrophe were fielded, absorbed, and translated into operating plans and processes. Throughout the country, waste managers have had to face up to the unthinkable. “It can’t happen here” has been replaced with the uncomfortable realization: “It really can, and we have to be prepared.”
Already we are seeing the effects of this new vision, not only in landfill operations but in how we accept, sort, and transfer waste. For certain we know more about the materials that pass through our hands today than ever before, and where we are in this now is a small step in what will no doubt prove to be a very long journey. Not only is the transition difficult and costly, but it will take us into areas in which we have moved with less than can be considered success in the past…energy from waste being a case in point.
For the umpteenth time I’m going to jump up on my soapbox to suggest that the energy policy of America is summed up in the all-but-universal assumption that when you flick the switch, then the lights, the TV, or the boom box darned well better go on. “Forget the slogans. Forget the rhetoric. Forget high-flying principles. Just get the things I’ve come to rely on to work.”
So what does this mean for us? As citizens, it means that we’re going to have to find ways to shave our energy needs and look for offsets for the remaining demand. As waste managers controlling materials that one way or another can significantly affect the energy balance equation, should we be less responsive? I think not.
Determining the highest and best use of the different materials that come into our possession via various wastestreams is no simple matter, particularly when we have little to guide us other than our own best judgment. Because most of the regulations that govern our activities come via the United States Environmental Protection Agency and its offspring, over the past few years we’ve tended to establish our goals and objectives on environmentally rooted principles, leaving other concerns to fall into line as best they can. But now we face—and I believe it is an opportunity rather than a flat challenge—the need to focus increased attention on societal goals and sustainability, particularly in the area of energy.
Because of the shared bond between renewable energy and distributed energy resources, waste managers have an opportunity to take a leading role in the administration’s National Energy Policy by dedicating a portion of their wastestreams for fuel for off-grid systems. For most of us, this will require new ways of thinking and a realignment of priorities. But we cannot do this in the face of public policy held captive by interests locked in the activist visions of the 1960s. It’s not our priorities that need reshaping, nor those of the nation at large. Rather, it’s time for those in charge of the regulatory environment to fit themselves and their actions into the needs of the future rather than the agenda of a bypassed era.