The Blogger
MSW Editor's Blog
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MSW Editor's Blog
John Trotti is the Editor of MSW Management magazine.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013 3:01 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of the fact that while waste is the subject, our business is mainly about people. Obviously, we wouldn’t have our jobs were it not for the people who hire us to provide a needed service; most certainly, our customers define our tasks. But in the final analysis—and this may to some seem at first blush to be politically incorrect—it’s the people in our organization on whom we depend to accomplish those tasks who deserve our full and unwavering a... More...
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 2:59 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
We at MSW Management are truly stoked by the appointment of Sara Bixby, former SWANA International Board member, executive committee president, and life member, as the organization’s deputy executive director, carrying the title of deputy executive director for administration, information technology, and financial management. Bixby, who is currently director of the South Central Iowa Solid Waste Agency at Tracy, IA, began her career in solid waste management as a consultant in the early 1990s, and has b... More...
Tuesday, May 07, 2013 11:18 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
All aviators know that the most worthless things in the world are (1) the runway behind you, (2) the air above you, and (3) the fuel in the pump, and that’s what I feel about the value of stranded investment when it comes to our waste management practices. Normally the term is applied to equipment whose worth has declined through age or, more likely, has been rendered irrelevant to the tasks at hand. But the context that I have in mind lies not in the mechanics of our operations, but between our practic... More...
Tuesday, April 30, 2013 12:57 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As you are reading this, I am in Rockport, ME, where I’ve been asked to address the Maine Resource Recovery Association’s annual conference. Before getting down to business, let me tell you of my expectation and the reality. I seriously wondered before departing sunny Santa Barbara whether I should invest in gloves and mukluks. Imagine then my surprise to arrive on what in any venue has to have been among the finest days ever…bright sunlight, soft breeze, and temperature in the low 60s. And it’s gotten ... More...
Tuesday, April 23, 2013 1:01 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Santa Barbarans get into Earth Day with nearly the same enthusiasm as they do Halloween, complete with costumes, happy faces, and an all pervading sense of goodness designed to capture the heart of even the meanest of curmudgeons (me). Thus it was with the expectation of redemption from all of my earth-destroying transgressions for the past 12 months that I made my pilgrimage to the city’s locus of salvation, Alameda Park. Believing devoutly that through suffering comes salvation, I figured that since m... More...
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 12:44 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As our springtime hearts turn gaily to “Ahh yes,” and “Oh my,” please keep in mind what disasters lie in wait for us by reviewing plans for how to deal with them so that we can reasonably expect to be able to dig out, police up, rebuild, and in time overcome the terrible consequences of natural or unnatural catastrophe. But is that enough? We would all probably agree that emergency plans should be living documents rather than monuments to some statutory requirement that resulted in a tidy paper drill in... More...
Tuesday, April 09, 2013 1:13 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
It’s a popular saying that “things happen,” but how many of those “things” really just happen? Except for 20-ton rocks shooting through the atmosphere at mach 50 and other such out-of-the-blue “acts of God,” I happen to believe the saying is a favorite mantra of the CYA brigade. Lurking somewhere beneath the surface of the vast majority of what we call accidents, you’re almost certain to find a chain of events leading inexorably to what amounts to a preordained conclusion. It’s all a matter of looking w... More...
Tuesday, April 02, 2013 3:13 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In the modern sense and despite their relative youth, recycling practices and their achievements have managed to become pretty much set in concrete. In the process of their maturation, investments in traditional recycling as well as its principal markets have reached a point of marginal return, signaling the need for expanding our horizons if we are to move genuine diversion past the 50% level. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward, but it isn’t. Partly the situation reflects a disconnect between wha... More...
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 3:45 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Back when I wore a flight suit to work, a good day at the office included a couple of hours of paperwork in my collateral duty (typically you begin your squadron career handling all those nasty little tasks that seniority places happily in your wake while you graduate to more fulfilling duties), another couple of hours counseling troops or working on deployment schemes and, interspersed, a couple of hops to hone my flying skills. Pretty cushy schedule, you might think—four hours of work and a couple of ... More...
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 11:51 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Anaerobic Digestion, that is. Last Tuesday (March 12) I had the opportunity to visit the Monterey Regional Waste Management District’s brand new AD facility that is in the process of becoming operational. In point of fact, as I toured the plant, a starter batch of digestate was being pumped into underground tanks, awaiting its introduction to a mixture of food- and greenwastes. The AD process goes through several stages, commencing with that of bacterial hydrolysis , in which such organic materials as c... More...
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:06 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Remember your thoughts when you first viewed the stunning NASA scene, titled Earthlights , that circulated the Internet a decade ago? Initially, I was drawn to the mosaic out of curiosity and by the sheer beauty of the familiar yet haunting pattern that showed the purposeful hand of man, so I installed it as my computer’s wallpaper. Over time it became a talisman of sorts, in much the same way I’ve come to regard the mountains embracing my town…a presence that is at once comforting and challenging. Ques... More...
Tuesday, March 05, 2013 4:37 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spent last week in Atlanta at back-to-back SWANA symposia whose aims and practices (diversion versus disposal) would seem to cast them as strange bedfellows. First out of the gate was “The Road to Zero Waste,” whose major thrust lay in looking beyond traditional diversion programs and practices in order to maximize the potential of materials placed under our control. Barely had the chairs at Atlanta’s Embassy Suites had a chance to cool before the Landfill Symposium was off and running, and surprising... More...
Tuesday, February 26, 2013 6:29 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
With SWANA joining NSWMA in the realm of safety, the stage is set for resolute efforts to raise waste management from the cellar in which it resides to a level more befitting an activity as seemingly routine as any in our society. For all of the chaos and employee turnover involved in construction activities, the field has experienced genuine improvement in its safety performance over the past several years, quite possibly because a company’s survival is inextricably linked to its safety record. So why ... More...
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 1:06 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
According to an exclusive article in the February 13 edition of PublicCEO.com , a local government news site dedicated to providing a statewide perspective on California’s cities, counties and special districts, there is. Researchers in a new study produced by the Institute for Law and Economics—a joint project of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the Wharton School, and the Department of Economics in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania—found a significant increase... More...
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 12:54 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
When SWANA first hooked its Recycling and Landfill Symposia together a while back, I had my doubts as to the fit. But in retrospect I’ve decided that in linking them back-to-back, as SWANA has fashioned for the end of this month, attendees have been offered a wonderful opportunity for meaningful dialog between these two disparate members of the MSW community. The key questions are those of (1) how many attendees will recognize the opportunity and (2) seize it as a steppingstone to better understandings ... More...
Wednesday, February 06, 2013 11:30 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As I warned several weeks ago, I had accepted the invitation to deliver the keynote address at this year’s LMOP Conference and Expo in Baltimore, a city in the throes of anticipation of the upcoming Super Bowl. The total experience was something of a mixed bag, the low part being my talk, which was a mere shadow of the one I had polished to perfection in the security of my room. Though I fumbled my way through the recitation, no one threw a tomato my way, as had been the case once in Provo, UT, in 1981,... More...
Tuesday, January 29, 2013 2:53 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
“Jumpin’ Jehosaphat!” Gramps bellows across time and space from his perch within the Naval Air Safety Center. “Any dad-burned idiot knows you can’t fly with the wings folded!” That, along with a thousand more rants, was leveled by the salty curmudgeon for more than 20 years, and though they had an effect on the naval aviators of the day, it paled by comparison to NATOPS, the six-letter acronym for the Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization launched in 1961 to increase combat readine... More...
Tuesday, January 22, 2013 1:04 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This past week I attended SWANA’s 2013 Senior Executive Seminar in Tucson, AZ, an event I’ve always found stimulating, but never as much as this one, which seems to me to have achieved an epitome in the way of critical mass. Ideas were fissioning at a rate that overwhelmed the time allotted to the program, making me wish that it could have lasted for at least another day. I was privileged to take part in a panel discussion on nurturing leadership in our operations and found myself thinking of a variety ... More...
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 2:40 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For those of us who have wondered just how California has managed to move itself to the back row of states looking to increase their diversion rates by means of conversion technologies, allow me to share with you the thoughts of the Los Angeles County Solid Waste Management Committee Integrated Waste Management Task Force on the matter. In a letter to Ms. Caroll Mortensen, director of the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (formerly the California Integrated Waste Management Board), Ma... More...
Tuesday, January 08, 2013 12:24 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
January 24, 2013 at 2:00 pm [EST]; 1 hour; 1 PDH / 0.1 CEU Want to know how to gain a competitive advantage with your refuse collection equipment? Join Phil Dybing and Scott Kanne to explore how to drastically reduce your fleet’s fuel consumption and related CO 2 emissions, run quieter, increase productivity, and improve truck up-time. In this webinar from MSW Management’s stable mate, Forester University, Dybing and Kanne will discuss the challenges in refuse collection equipment, the opportunities ava... More...
Wednesday, January 02, 2013 12:02 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Hard to believe, but less than a month from now—January 29–31, to be more precise—the Hilton Hotel in Baltimore, MD, will play host to LMOP’s 2013 Conference and Project Expo. As I’ve said on several occasions in the past, in my humble opinion, LMOP would do well as the model for many of the EPA’s programs. Rather than considering itself the authority on landfill methane issues and practices, LMOP’s remarkably small staff proceeds on the premise that it is there to meet the needs of its partners…truly a... More...
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 11:22 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This is my last web log for 2012, and you will be relieved to know I have neither the talent nor inclination to try and put the year into some sort of perspective other than that it seemed to lack the balance most of us might have preferred. But as we go about summing the plusses and minuses, let’s spare time to consider the balance sheets of the men and women serving in our behalf throughout the far-flung reaches of our planet, separated from family and loved ones not only by distances measured in mile... More...
Tuesday, December 11, 2012 12:18 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my web log of November 20, I asked you to take a very short survey, forgetting that the newsletter in which it appeared would not be sent until November 21, when many of its recipients would be preparing for the Thanksgiving holidays. As a result, the response to the appeal fell short of what I had hoped, so I’m going to give it another shot. Here’s what I had to say: I’ve been asked to take part in a panel at SWANA’s 2013 Senior Executive’s Seminar, discussing what I will call, in its loosest form, ... More...
Tuesday, December 04, 2012 1:38 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Look around at your own community and tell me what systems are held together with baling wire and duct tape. Chances are your MSW system is relatively free of such make-do fixes, and even if things turn to worms, you can probably find the means for getting the trash off the curb and out of sight without declaring an all-out emergency. But can you say the same about your water conveyance systems? Your electrical grid? Your streets, roads, and highways…systems that have evolved over generations and will t... More...
Tuesday, November 27, 2012 4:51 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This past September, I visited Japan as a member of the UCLA Recycling & Municipal Solid Waste Management Advisory Board, to see firsthand how far the island nation has come in achieving its unique vision of zero waste…the virtual elimination of landfiling those materials with any vestige of value remaining. Similar to the waste management hierarchy in the US, Japan’s policy is based on the 3R model of reduce, reuse, recycle, but with a significant difference. In their plan, energy recovery is house... More...
Tuesday, November 20, 2012 5:01 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve been asked to take part in a panel at SWANA’s 2013 Senior Executive’s Seminar, discussing what I will call, in its loosest form, human resource development in MSW systems . I have to admit I find it a daunting task. Not that there’s a dearth of learned discourse on various aspects of the subject; it’s rather that I’m struggling to come to grips with what the needs for both categories will be and then how to ensure their availability and readiness to meet the challenges they’re likely to face. So I ... More...
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 11:53 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I can’t imagine that I’m the only person relieved that the country’s quadrennial madness is once again in our wake and that for at least a year we can concentrate on some real issues, free from the cumbersome burdens of political expediency and candidatorial hyperbole. (OK, so maybe there’s so such word in the dictionary, but there ought to be, and besides, you know what I mean.) What no one at the federal level wanted to talk about this past season was the precarious situation in which—lacking the “cur... More...
Tuesday, November 06, 2012 12:54 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
To a viewer on one of Jupiter’s moons, it might seem that what’s happened to the global economy is the result of not paying attention to lessons of the past, high among which is the reminder that “there ain’t no free lunch.” Viewed in the context of waste management, you have to wonder whether to the extent we’ve adopted the role of being greener than the most green, we’ve allowed the basic tenet of our existence—the preservation of public health and safety—to suffer from neglect. Part of the problem is... More...
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 4:40 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Waste workers are still involved in one of the least safe environments in the country…this despite years of trying to change things. Several times in the past, I’ve offered the suggestion that we take a tip from some of our construction contemporaries and make safety the focal point of our contracting activities. EMR—Efficiency Modification Rating—is the system developed by the insurance industry to measure one activity’s safety performance relative to all others with the same SIC. While the methodology ... More...
Tuesday, October 23, 2012 10:32 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
That’s what my lady friend calls the voice in my automobile GPS telling me what’s upcoming, when to turn, and in a variety of ways where to get off. Could I do without either of them? No way, which shows that I was born to be led. I am presently motoring through the Midwest, having begun my sojourn in Peoria, IL, at a Caterpillar introduction of its new hydraulic hybrid Cat 336E H hybrid excavator along with the 966K XE medium wheel-loader with advanced powertrain, a prototype 160M3 motor grader, and th... More...
Tuesday, October 16, 2012 10:34 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This past week, I spent a day getting my few remaining grey cells whipped into confusion by attending a seminar on what’s happening in the world of digital wizardry, and while there was lots of food for thought, I came away with no fuzzier feeling for the lot than before. Being something of a techno junkie, I’ve ridden the personal computer wave from the arrival of the MITS Altair 8800 in 1975, a wonderful but practically useless box, but one whose front panel programming switches and some blinking red ... More...
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 2:17 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As we’ve noted in previous web logs, many of the most pressing challenges we face have little or nothing to do with waste—human resource issues, environmental regulations, public resistance to facilities and activities, and overextended municipal budgets in which, often as not, waste winds up as a general fund donor. Perhaps the most “at-risk” element of integrated solid waste management is diversion. The good news is that per-capita waste generation seems to have stabilized over the past several years,... More...
Tuesday, October 02, 2012 11:06 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In last week’s newsletter and web log, I spoke of my trip to Japan as a member of UCLA’s Recycling and Municipal Solid Waste Management Advisory Board, explaining the twofold purpose: (1) visit a number of energy-from-waste plants employing different technologies, and (2) view the debris management activities in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the Sendai region on Honshu’s exposed east coast. Because I had not had time to review my site visits to the energy-from-waste facilities, I c... More...
Tuesday, September 25, 2012 4:56 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I have, and it isn’t pretty. I spent last week in Japan as a representative of UCLA’s Recycling & Municipal Solid Waste Management Advisory Board headed by the MSW Management Editorial Advisory Committee member, Dr. Eugene Tseng, professor of environmental law and representative of Los Angeles’ Law Enforcement Agency. The purpose of the trip was twofold: (1) to visit a number of energy-from-waste (EfW) plants employing different technologies, and (2) to view the debris management activities in ... More...
Tuesday, September 18, 2012 10:29 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Occasionally I go back through my Editor’s Comments to see how well they’ve weathered the test of time, and the honest answer is that some haven’t, but others have. In the latter category is one from May 2010, in which I focused on the legacy of Rick Brandes, former chief of the Energy Recovery and Waste Disposal Branch, Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, of the EPA, who was retiring after 31 years with the agency, Among the several stunning thoughts Rick presented in his Guest Editorial for ... More...
Tuesday, September 11, 2012 11:54 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In a time in which uncertainty grips most of the nation—for private industry on one hand, but even more so regarding public-sector entities, many of which are stretched to the limits of their ability to provide the merest basics of their duty-bound services—what does the future hold in store for waste management? Indeed, you don’t have to look far to find municipalities hovering on the brink of bankruptcy, a precipice over which some have already tumbled in the last several months. In our neck of the wo... More...
Tuesday, September 04, 2012 10:17 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Sometime back, in regard to assessing the fate of waste and recyclable materials managed by or turned over to private operators: “Why don’t municipalities make accurate accounting a contractual requirement?” The more I’ve thought about this over the past week, the more I’ve come to believe that this is not merely a novel idea, but one fundamental to the premise on which solid waste management is founded: public health and safety. The public places in our hands the responsibility for managing materials t... More...
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 12:28 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This past Wednesday I received what has come to be pretty much a monthly masterwork I’m asked to review, most often a learned tome on some esoteric aspect of waste management into which I can hardly wait to sink my teeth. Well maybe my excitement has tighter bounds, but you get the picture. So it was with something less than extreme enthusiasm I unwrapped this most recent offering that turned out to be a book by Jeanne Marie Laskas, the director of the writing program at the University of Pittsburg (no ... More...
Wednesday, August 22, 2012 2:16 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
It seems that California’s Senate is determined to apply the coup de grace to what was once viewed as the turning point in the state’s longstanding opposition to granting conversion technologies equal standing with other diversion practices. Fueled by CalRecycle’s rescission of its previous approval of its project with the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority, Plasco appears ready to fold its battle-worn tent and take its business elsewhere. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’m going to present the conte... More...
Tuesday, August 21, 2012 12:53 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This is really meant for those of you who missed this year’s event that took place at the Gaylord Hotel and Conference Center in National Harbor MD, so let me begin with the weather, which at ~90° and less than 100% humidity was rather wonderful for the DC area this time of the year. It’s not that attendees needed to concern themselves with it if they stayed within the confines of the venue, fully enclosed and isolated in much the same manner as its sister properties (Opryland Hotel Nashville and Gaylor... More...
Tuesday, August 14, 2012 11:44 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve been known to resort to hyperbole from time to time to sanctify what was (or is) an unsubstantiated belief. Not only can I virtually promise that we haven’t seen the last of such stratagems on my part; I’m also willing to bet the same is true of you. Face it: It’s hardwired in our genetic framework. For example, while I take some measure of pride in my one-time pronouncement that “17.2% of people in Ojai, CA, believe that tarot cards have the ability to foretell future events,” even I know that it’... More...
Tuesday, August 07, 2012 11:35 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This time next week I will be deeply involved in WASTECON doings, seeing old friends, making new ones, and taking part in a wide array of events and activities that are the hallmark of the industry’s banner waste management event. Not to short others, the event closest to my heart is SWANA’s Young Professionals (YP) Monday night get-together. While billed as a “social event,” Olivia Williams of the YP’s steering committee, has arranged for Suzanne Rudzinski, director of the EPA’s Office of Resource Cons... More...
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 11:00 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In his Beyond the Pail article in our January 2002 issue, Bill reminded us, “We all understand that to make a difference—to recycle efficiently, to burn safely, and to cut down on waste in all MSW management—we need systematic, scientific studies to design waste handling systems and consumer education programs that work as they are supposed to.” Now, a decade later, how much farther down the line from that vision have we marched? I happen to think we’ve come a long way in our scientific assessments of w... More...
Tuesday, July 24, 2012 5:02 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Bill Rathje was one of my favorite people…a true original whose unique vision of waste was merely a subset of his view of archeology, the field in which he was renowned for several landmark achievements. One of these was his Garbage Project at the University of Arizona at Tucson, where he was a professor of anthropology, while another was his seminal works on Olmec and Mayan cultures in Central America. Archeology, he pointed out with relish to colleagues, students, and friends alike, was in fact the st... More...
Tuesday, July 17, 2012 12:42 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
StormCon 2012, August 20–22, Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Denver, CO I can think of few terrors matching that of being in the path of a rampaging wildfire, but one of them is having deal with the aftermath, as those who have had to do so will attest. Fire damage and debris management; human desolation and confusion; displacement of people, families, even entire communities; health and safety concerns in the face of water and sanitation challenges; and then the granddaddy of them all, the specter of r... More...
Tuesday, July 10, 2012 11:23 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Technologies we let loose on the world a half-century ago have flourished on every corner of the globe, but nowhere so dismally as here at home. Instead of using these as springboards to even greater achievement, we plucked at the apocryphal “low hanging fruit” while listening to the woeful pleas of the purported victims of that dreaded institution-bound affliction, “stranded investment.” Worse still, we let them get away with it, acting instead as if we were waiting for another technological revolution... More...
Tuesday, July 03, 2012 10:58 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Last fall I wrote a blog about drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace, admitting at the outset that we don’t like to think about it. The concerns that prompted it have not changed; so let me repeat them: * Workers’ Compensation: 38% to 50% of all Workers’ Compensation claims are related to substance abuse in the workplace. Substance abusers file three to five times as many claims. * Medical Costs: Substance abusers incur 300% higher medical costs than non-abusers. * Absenteeism: Substance abusers are 2... More...
Tuesday, June 26, 2012 11:12 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
How long does it take for something to go from concept to reality in your community? It really depends on what you’ve got in mind, how great a departure it represents from the way things are done at present, and what the cost is relative to the benefit. If you’re talking about replacing existing carts with similar equipment and the issue for all intents and purposes is cost, then the factors affecting lead time come down to: (1) doing the analysis, (2) selling the decision makers, and (3) implementing t... More...
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 11:22 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’m busy girding my loins for a trip to the American Public Works Association’s Sustainability Conference 2012, which will take place next week (June 25–27) at Pittsburgh’s Omni William Penn Hotel. To be frank, prior to the 2011 conference I found myself a bit skeptical about the term sustainability , not to mention how people envisioned achieving it or what constituted success, but I came away from the event with the recognition that many in the public works domain had good ideas in each of these. But ... More...
Tuesday, June 12, 2012 5:25 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
The MSW Management Master Series, a three-part webinar on contracting, by Constance Hornig, got off to a great start last week with Part 1, Negotiating with Haulers . Participants were treated to Constance’s rare gift of leapfrogging the obvious hurdles and getting down to concerns that are all too often overlooked in negotiations…the “what happens if” issues such as strikes or situations approaching force majeure territory that can tear the heart out of what may have seemed to have been a wonderful con... More...
Tuesday, June 05, 2012 12:17 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Module 1 of our MSW Management Master Class Series this Thursday (June 7) at 2 p.m. EDT For those who know Constance Hornig, there’s no need for an introduction, as you’re already aware she’s the reigning authority on waste services contracting as well as among the most interesting people on the planet. For those to whom her name is unfamiliar, allow me to tell you that Constance is the reigning authority on waste services contracting, among the most interesting people on the planet, and one of th... More...
Tuesday, May 29, 2012 11:43 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Just to throw something out to jump-start the discussion, I’m going to propose that every dollar carries with it a 20-cent environmental burden as a function of the creation of its assumed value, but I wouldn’t argue with estimates of either half or double the amount. The point I want to establish is that of the baggage itself—we’ll save haggling the amount for later. What brought this line of thinking to the fore once again was a recent conference on sustainability, hosted by APWA, in which presenter a... More...
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 4:08 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Diesel prices are down pretty much everywhere except, of course, here in Santa Barbara, where the assumption (probably not altogether without validity) is that there’s no sense changing the pump price mechanism or the signage when the price will be headed up again before we can say “four bucks.” No matter, I spent a good part of last week in Miami, where Volvo used the in-port venue of the around-the-world Volvo Ocean Race event to speak to its North American audience about its sales, equipment, and inv... More...
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 10:33 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
We’re hard at work on a special SWANA’s 50th Anniversary issue that will present highlights stretching from the Association’s 1962 birth in Southern California under its initial banner as the Government Refuse Collection and Disposal Association (GRCDA) to today where as of the end of March 2012, SWANA membership risen to had grown to just shy of 8000, 60% of whom are employed in the public sector, 37 % in the private sector, with the remaining 3% are retired or students. The issue, which will include a... More...
Tuesday, May 08, 2012 2:55 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I hold in memory a number of wonderful cartoons—mostly from The New Yorker —but the one that sits on the top rank shows a line of people awaiting help from a lone lady seated at a department store Information booth. At the head of the line is young seeker of truth who asks, “What is it all about? Why are we here?’ The answer to both, if you’re involved in MSW management, is the protection and preservation of public health and safety. For the public sector, this is a mandate as well as the justification ... More...
Tuesday, May 01, 2012 12:48 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In last week’s blog, I threatened to tweet my way around WasteExpo, but it turns out that won’t be the case, as I’ve been laid low by some sort of huge germ and have taken to my bed until it relents. It’s more the pity, because I truly looked forward to seeing what new equipment and management systems were going to appear on the show floor or be explained in the numerous presentations. High on the list are the vehicle propulsion systems that I will lump together under the term hybrid drive , though I kn... More...
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 1:11 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spend so much time in Las Vegas for various conferences, expos, and other work-related events, that I’m close to becoming a Nevada resident with all the rights, privileges, and tax advantages thereto pertaining. So next week’s sojourn to the stomping grounds of some of the most colorful people in American history (I speak of course of the Paleo-Indians whose indecipherable petroglyphs set the standard for today’s advertising mantra “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”) will move me ever closer to th... More...
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 2:42 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
SWANA’s turning 50, and we need you to be a part of the celebration. Who’d have thunk it back in the waning days of 1961—when six Los Angeles area waste managers sat down to discuss the challenges they faced—that the get-together would spawn what is today SWANA, the world’s largest municipal solid waste association? While it may not be a deep, dark secret, neither is SWANA’s Golden Jubilee the hottest topic on the airwaves, in cyberspace, or even print, so…let’s tell the world about it and take a pat on... More...
Tuesday, April 10, 2012 3:08 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
You may not think of it this way, but for better or worse, training is a part of everything you do or say in front of your people. What you do, they will do. For instance, if you don’t demand that their worksite be well maintained, it’s pretty likely that your people won’t either…in essence a kind of training program headed the wrong way. So how do you set yourself up to deal with background issues—the nonverbal messages you send in seemingly trivial ways—that are an important first step to an effective... More...
Tuesday, April 03, 2012 3:34 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Back when I was a hard-charging young snuffy in a flight suit, a good day at the office included a couple of hours of paperwork in my collateral duty (dirty-little-jobs-officer when I checked into my first squadron, less panic-ridden as I progressed up the ladder), another couple of hours counseling troops or working on deployment schemes and, interspersed, a couple of hops to hone my flying skills. Pretty cushy schedule, you might think—four hours of work and a couple of dinky flights—but that doesn’t ... More...
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 5:05 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
When the subject of SWANA comes up, many of us envision WASTECON, or MOLO, or webinars, or local chapter activities, but to me it’s the Technical Divisions that offer the keys to success in these thorny times. Yes, I know that we are always at a crossroads. It’s always flu season, or we’re facing some sort of dysfunction, or the sky is falling or about to fall if we don’t do something to save us, our planet, the stratosphere, our galaxy…or beyond. But for those of us doing battle in the waste arena, the... More...
Tuesday, March 20, 2012 12:26 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Sometime back, I had lunch with a social media guru…an impresario of the arcane reaches of the Twitter/Tweet/In-Your-Facebook phenomenon that has taken over a significant chunk of the universe with the use of tools that can get lost in your shirt pocket and cost little more than a meal for two at a mediocre diner. Now as then, I am no closer to an understanding of the situation but still convinced that while the promise of something big is there, an important ingredient is missing. As with the computer ... More...
Monday, March 12, 2012 2:43 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
A message just came across my desk saying that oil has risen past $107/bbl, indicating that we’ll see this reflected at the pump … probably before I finish writing this piece. Regardless of what impact it has today or tomorrow, you don’t have to polish up your crystal ball to see where things are headed. Last week’s web log (and my upcoming magazine editorial) talked about the importance of securing enough waste in order to continue to finance your system, so now I’d like to talk about your stuff that’s... More...
Tuesday, March 06, 2012 12:38 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Well, of course, MRFs have been the key to Integrated Solid Waste Management (ISWM) since the term was coined; otherwise, there’d be no reason to interrupt the flow from curbside to landfill other than to consolidate things and save a little wear and tear on collection vehicles. So why bring the subject up now? It has to do with the 65% of stuff that bypassed the sieve and ended up going to the landfill because we had decided there was no reasonable use for it except possibly as compost. Well, it’s the ... More...
Tuesday, February 28, 2012 2:15 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As many of you know—and a few of you may actually remember the birth—the Government Refuse Collection and Disposal Association (GRCDA) sprang into life a half century ago, doing business today as the Solid Waste Association of North America. In 1962 I was going through fuel at an average rate of 400 gallons per hour in my beloved A-4 Skyhawk, a pocket-sized single-seat attack plane so for me, memorable events included carrier ops, hours and hours of ripping along at 500 knots, 50 feet above stunningly b... More...
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 12:30 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Week before last, I attended an Energy and Facilities Management Workshop put on by the Society of American Military Engineers and the International Facilities Management Association. If you’re not familiar with either or both, allow me to suggest that you Google the two and consider establishing contact with them, as it may be to your advantage. Here’s the deal in a nutshell. The DoD is under the gun to reduce the energy needs of itself and its offspring. To put things in perspective, the federal gover... More...
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 3:56 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
SWANA’s 2012 Excellence Awards Program Applications Due: April 13, 2012 Every year, SWANA recognizes excellence in MSW operations at its awards ceremony at WASTECON, an exercise that brings to mind the story of Gilbert, who showed up at the weekly church service one Sunday but, instead of maintaining his normally reserved manner, stunned the congregation by belting out in the midst of a particularly brimstone sermon, “Lord, Lord, please let me win the lottery.” After he had repeated his plea several tim... More...
Tuesday, February 07, 2012 1:22 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This week I’m in Texas—San Antonio—for the Society of American Military Engineers’ Facilities Management Workshop, where our Editorial Advisory Board member, Dr. Eugene Tseng, will speak on the subject from an environmental lawyer’s standpoint. It promises to be interesting, so you have a heads-up on next week’s column. Also, you can bet that I’ll have my ears open to thoughts regarding the US District Court judge’s ruling upholding the injunction against Dallas’s flow-control ordinance. While the rulin... More...
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 1:09 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spent the week before last at SWANA’s Senior Executive Seminar in Miami, FL, in which attendees were asked to lay bare what waste-related problems caused them to lose sleep at night. No surprise that the principal concern had to do with reduced (or segmented) revenues relative to high program costs, many of which were based on unfunded mandates initiated by political and regulatory agencies. It was then up to breakout groups to focus attention on this along with several other concerns. While the subseq... More...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 6:58 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In a previous MSW Editor’s Blog, I passed along a question one of my Editorial Advisory Board members voiced regarding the fate of waste and recyclable materials managed by or turned over to private operators: “Why don’t municipalities make accurate accounting a contractual requirement?” I didn’t get any feedback, making me wonder if I am tilting at windmills again. So I’ll pose the question again, adding to it another of my wonderings…Isn’t this fundamental to the premise on which solid waste managemen... More...
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 6:35 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
That’s what my lady friend calls the voice in my automobile GPS telling me what’s upcoming, when to turn, and in a variety of ways where to get off. Could I do without either of them? No way, which shows that I was born to be led. Developed initially for the military, GPS has been around for nearly three decades and since has been finding its way into a variety of civilian activities in which real-time location information is of value. Led by transportation and construction applications, the demand for ... More...
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 4:08 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Why am I bringing the subject up, you might ask, and what does this have to do with your operation? The answer to both has to do with my recent visit to a local branch of a state government department—no, I’m not going to say which, other than to suggest that it was one in which I had to go through several layers of staff to get permission to do something that affects no one but my own comfort—during which time I began to wonder just what level of Hell I had wandered into. From the first encounter, I wa... More...
Tuesday, January 03, 2012 3:10 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
You may remember my remarks in a previous column on the impact Master Gunnery Sergeant Daly, our nearly monosyllabic drill instructor, had on our recruit platoon. Well, let me add another from my nearly inexhaustible list of “Sir-Yessir” memorabilia. There we were, 30 well-shorn, skinny, worn-to-a-frazzle, not-yet Marines, lined up for a junk-on-the-bunk inspection, when Sir-Yessir informed us that instead of the coziness of our washed, waxed, and groomed barracks, we were going to spend the next ... More...
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 10:51 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
MSW Management Editorial Advisory Board Member, Dr. Eugene Tseng, has conducted MSW Management training courses under the auspices of UCLA’s Extension system and CalRecycle (formerly the California Integrated Waste Management Board)—aimed principally at working professionals in the field. But last week I was privileged to get a glimpse of his Master's of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering Course) level course for students at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), providing much the same... More...
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 11:11 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve been involved with the Virtual Enterprise (VE) program in our local high schools from its beginning nearly two decades ago and am a card-carrying champion of what it brings to the community. I could go on for pages describing what it is, what it does for students lucky enough to become involved, what it means for the community, and ultimately its value to our society so in need of the continuous infusion of young people steeped in the entrepreneurial ethic, but I’ll leave that for another time and ... More...
Tuesday, December 06, 2011 11:12 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Some years ago I found a wonderful piece of property near the town of Weed, CA, and following the dictates of my heart rather than my head, I went ahead and bought it with no certainty as to my ability to develop a secure source of water without drilling clear to China. After receiving the assurance of the two top engineering firms in the area that China might indeed be my best bet, I decided to suspend my natural skepticism toward what I assumed to be the world of the occult, and went to see a water wi... More...
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 11:13 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Year after year, nearly 200,000 crashes involving tractor-trailers occur in the US…a whopping average of one crash every three minutes. This factoid was underscored to me this past Thanksgiving weekend as I had the pleasure of participating in a monumental traffic tie-up on the outskirts of Los Angeles when a truck overturned in the middle of a freeway, blocking three of the four inbound lanes. Now, I didn’t witness the event personally, but the commentator on the traffic channel reported that the truck... More...
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 11:14 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Using 2007 national average diesel costs—a year that experienced a significant leap to $3.30 per gallon—an EPA study determined that a 5% improvement in fuel economy would save an owner $2,800 per year in fuel costs. Today, with average fuel costs at $4.00 per gallon, the savings could be closer to $3,300, a significant amount in anyone’s balance sheet…and that’s only 5%. There are a number of ways to curb fuel use and thus GHG emissions, but none so obvious as by cutting equipment idling time. A 2005 s... More...
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 11:15 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
If it seems to you that the things around you are changing at an ever-increasing rate, you may take some comfort in the thought that much of it is probably illusory…likely the result of dragster-like acceleration into our penchant to achieve higher and higher states of information overload. But real or illusory, the consequences of inattention or ignorance are the same. The only thing you need to establish the velocity of change in all walks of life is to pick any convenient date in your personal histor... More...
Tuesday, November 08, 2011 11:39 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In our companion publication, Grading & Excavation Contractor , we’ve been watching an interesting phenomenon take place: a fiscal sword, wielded by the people with the projects, that is having an amazingly positive impact on safety and on environmental compliance—something that we in the waste industry might find worthy of consideration. First let me pose examples, and then let’s look at how they may be applied to our universe. Hoofbeats of the Dreaded EMR EMR—Efficiency Modification Rating—is the s... More...
Tuesday, November 01, 2011 11:40 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Yes, I know that we are always at a crossroads. It’s always flu season, or we’re facing some sort of dysfunction, or the sky is falling or about to fall if we don’t do something to save us, our planet, the stratosphere, our galaxy…or beyond. But for those of us doing battle in the waste arena, the challenges of the past several years have been particularly thorny…loaded with consequences that leave little leeway for mistake or procrastination in the hope that things will sort themselves out in our favor... More...
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 11:40 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
My last week’s web log called attention to a situation at an Arvin, CA, compost facility involving the death of two workers overcome by a high concentration of hydrogen sulfide in a tunnel they were cleaning. The essence of my editorializing amounted to the following: * I see composting getting preferential treatment when it comes to public oversight. * There was no record of workplace violations at the facility. Does this mean that it wasn’t a problem, or was it that they weren’t looking at composting ... More...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 11:41 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For those who have not heard of the deaths of two young men at a Lamont, CA, composting facility, first let me share the story as reported by John Cox, staff writer for The Bakersfield Californian. Family says Arvin brothers killed, injured at composting site protected only by painters’ masks As federal officials opened an investigation into Wednesday’s [October 12] death of a 16-year-old at a Lamont composting facility, family members complained that the young man and his injured brother had been given... More...
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 11:42 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I doubt that the subject of drug and alcohol abuse is any dearer to your heart than mine, and that’s part of the problem. We don’t like to think about it. So why, if it the subject is not high on our list of favorites, talk about it here? How about: • Workers’ Compensation: 38% to 50% of all Workers’ Compensation claims are related to substance abuse in the workplace. Substance abusers file three to five times as many claims. • Medical Costs: Substance abusers incur 300% higher medical costs than non-ab... More...
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 11:44 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I don’t know how much of our national wealth has been squandered in the past several years year seeking first to obscure a host of looming crises and then to apply a few useless bandages to stanch the bleeding of activities whose basic flaws left them well beyond repair or recovery. My guess, however, is that when historians 100 years hence total up the damage, it will be in the multiple trillions of dollars range, making the bailout figures that our legislators and administrators have owned up to date ... More...
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 11:45 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
At the risk of being pilloried for harboring politically incorrect thoughts, I have to admit to a sense of unease anytime I see the term environmental justice trotted out as the reason to do something (anything), particularly in the hands of the EPA. My immediate response is to ask the question, “Justice for whom?”—which is invariably followed by the answer posited by a good friend whose name shall remain shrouded in secrecy, “Its only justice when I get my way.” Those less than supportive thoughts notw... More...
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 11:45 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Question: What if you train your people and they leave in a year? Answer: What if you don’t train them and they never leave? Human capital : Not only are your employees your most important asset, but they are also a depreciating one that needs continuing investment to achieve its maximum potential. Productivity: If you don’t continually educate your staff, where do you expect increases in productively to come from? Duplication of effort: Correcting mistakes or solving problems come at the cost of time b... More...
Tuesday, September 06, 2011 11:46 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In the past, when we’ve talked about training, much of the discussion has been on classes focusing on the mechanics thereof. For certain, these are vital issues, but they deal with the specialized areas of the business, not the day-to-day aspects of citizenship. You may not think of it this way, but for better or worse, training is a part of everything you do or say in front of your people. What you do, they will do. For instance, if you don’t demand that your facilities be well maintained, it’s pretty ... More...
Tuesday, August 30, 2011 11:47 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
WASTECON 2011 at Nashville's Opryland Hotel was many things, but high on the list in terms of exhibitors, presentations, and conversations were the various approaches to waste conversion technologies...a focus long overdue, in my humble opinion. Though not pitched as such, I view this as evidence that the vision of sustainability is making strong inroads into the waste arena, bringing with it the societal and economic aspects heretofore pushed into the background. Over the next several weeks, I will tal... More...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 11:48 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I just completed the assignment on an organics management article for our January/February 2012 issue, in which I asked its author to consider a change I feel is affecting the way we think about our role in materials management. For the past two decades, institutionalized environmentalism has held the high ground in waste-related resource management discussions, but with the recent emergence of the “sustainability” vision that reinserts financial and societal factors into the equation, we’re seeing the ... More...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 11:49 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
StormCon 2011 begins next week in Anaheim, as many of you who are attending are aware. For those sitting on the rail, there is still time to sign up for many of the events. Among the highlights that are open to all attendees: Panel Discussion At the Opening General Session on Tuesday morning, August 23, five panelists from various areas of stormwater management will discuss “Changing the Rules: How Will New Stormwater Regulations Affect Municipal Programs?” The panel includes • Paul Crabtree, P.E., pres... More...
Tuesday, August 09, 2011 11:49 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Whenever I hear the term “Zero Waste,” I hearken back four-plus decades when it fell to me to put this noble vision to a successful conclusion. Don’t believe me? Ah, ye of little faith, draw near to take advantage of my august experience. When I returned to Vietnam in 1969, I was immediately assigned the title of “Base Development Officer” for the Marine portion of the sprawling Chu Lai Airbase, a hastily constructed enclave on the South China Sea, 100 or so miles south of the city of Hue. What was I to... More...
Tuesday, August 02, 2011 11:50 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Under the corporate banner of Forester University , MSW Management is pleased to begin its webinar offerings with Greening the Fleet with Biogas , an exploration of the opportunities, technology, and potential savings of using biogas to fuel fleets of all sizes, presented by Senior Project Engineer Mark J. Torresani , P.E., of Cornerstone Environmental Group LLC. Through discussion of real-world application and lessons learned from the implementation and operation of the landfill-gas-to-BioCNG system lo... More...
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 11:51 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
We’ve all got a sense of what disasters may lay in wait for us and plans for how to deal with them so that we can reasonably expect that we, much as the recent tornado victims, will be able to dig out, police up, rebuild, and in time overcome the terrible consequences of natural or unnatural catastrophe. But is the issue remediation alone or there other dimensions we should be thinking about? We would all probably agree that emergency plans should be living documents rather than monuments to some statut... More...
Tuesday, July 19, 2011 11:52 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In last week’s web log I gave vent to my concern for the lack of a standardized and verifiable accounting system on which to determine the fate of materials for which we are responsible, and according to the responses it received, I am not alone in my concern. So isn’t it time we do something about the situation? This should not present a door-slamming challenge, since I cannot imagine there to be a single jurisdiction responsible for MSW management that doesn’t go to some pains to document its efforts.... More...
Tuesday, July 12, 2011 11:53 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
If Municipality A says that it collected 100,000 tons, and disposed of 50,000 tons at its landfill, it stands to reason that it has achieved a diversion rate of 50%. So if Municipality B says that it too has collected 100,000 tons and achieved a diversion rate of 50%, then we know that in terms of diversion performance, A and B are similar if not absolutely the same. Really? Call me an incurable skeptic, but how can anyone tell just what the story is if (1) there is no standard accounting system in force... More...
Tuesday, July 05, 2011 11:53 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spent the better part of last week at the American Public Works Association’s (APWA’s) Sustainability in Public Works Conference in Portland, OR, approaching it with some trepidation that it, as so many events in the past, would be dominated by the high-blown rhetoric of visionaries rather than frontline commentaries of those charged with its achievement. Imagine then my enthusiastic astonishment when from the introductory remarks onward, I found myself swept forward in what in all candor was the best ... More...
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 11:54 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In a previous MSW Editor’s Blog, I passed along a question one of my Editorial Advisory Board members voiced regarding the fate of waste and recyclable materials managed by or turned over to private operators: “Why don’t municipalities make accurate accounting a contractual requirement?” The more I’ve thought about this over the past week, the more I’ve come to believe that this is not merely a novel idea, but one fundamental to the premise on which solid waste management is founded: public health and sa... More...
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 11:55 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
A while back, Lanny Hickman, SWANA’s founding executive director, reminded me that engineering schools around the country were having trouble attracting qualified students from the nation’s secondary schools. He went on to say that many of the slots were being filled by foreign students, who were as apt to take themselves and their education back to their homelands, where their skills were eagerly sought after. That brief encounter rekindled all my deep-seated fears and concerns for the future of our pre... More...
Tuesday, June 14, 2011 11:56 AM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
What most people, including members of the press, focus their attention on is the immediate damage, where photos and TV clips of the wreckage and body bags speak more eloquently to the situation than words ever could. Of course, the words themselves—in this instance the number of dead and injured, billions of dollars in lost property, millions of families without utilities—will stick with us at least until the next catastrophe strikes. So will tales of heroism and charity on one side of the ledger—perhap... More...
Tuesday, June 07, 2011 12:03 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As the sun heads for its zenith, I find myself once again propelled by an irresistible urge to drag out my soapbox and hold forth on what I see lying ahead for waste managers. While I don’t expect what I propose here to evoke so much as a gentle “Gee Whiz,” still I’m willing—like the school principal perched above the dunk tank at the homecoming fundraiser—to suffer mightily for my self-indulgence. The splash button is located at editor@forester.net if you think I’ve gone bonkers. Rising costs, decreasi... More...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 12:06 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Curmudgeon that I am, it’s difficult for me to accept the notion that the world of communication I’ve known and lived by throughout my lifetime is now deader than the dodo, supplanted by snippets adopted and perfected by people who are just now entering the workplace. As recently as three years ago, if you had asked me what I thought about these phenomena, I’d have shrugged and suggested that you give it another decade before asking again. But once again in my lifetime of perpetual bewilderment, I seem ... More...
Tuesday, May 24, 2011 12:07 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For some time now, the US Department of Energy has been under mandate to “stimulate the creation and early adoption of technologies needed to make bioenergy cost-competitive in large markets.” Not surprisingly, the federal government is the nation’s single largest energy customer—$10 billion per year—with facilities and offices located in nearly every neighborhood throughout the country. In order to meet its mandate and counter security threats posed by terrorist activities, the DOE has focused its atte... More...
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 12:09 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As Dick Martin of the1960s TV show, Laugh-In, would have said, “You bet your sweet bippy.” Now I have never known what a bippy was, nor do I particularly care, other than to guess you would not bet it on anything but a sure thing … and that about sums up my impression of this year’s WasteExpo in Dallas. Never mind that at 90 degrees it was well past my threshold of pain, or that Thor decided to throw some of his very best hammers one evening just to let folks know that he was pretty excited by the event... More...
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 12:09 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve been working on an assignment for an article on automated collection for an upcoming issue that will assess the state of the state of its acceptance—or lack thereof—in communities throughout the US and Canada. As Lanny Hickman, former executive director of SWANA, points out, a person completing a career humping garbage manually would have accomplished single-handedly a task equal to raising the Titanic—ballast included—to the surface from its watery grave. That’s an impressive accomplishment but no... More...
Monday, May 02, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As some of you may not have heard, last week, California Gov. Jerry Brown put the axe to all state employee travel that is not “mission critical” to the operation of California government. As part of the governor’s program to address the state’s budget woes, Brown said that “Now is not the time to attend conferences, travel to meetings, or take out-of-state field trips,” adding that some inspectors, auditors, tax collectors and others will still be allowed to ply their trades throughout the state. But t... More...
Monday, April 25, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
No sooner had CalRecycle issued a finding that Plasco Energy of Canada, winner of an RFP to build a waste-to-clean-energy facility for the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority, could meet the intent of the existing definition of gasification, did the office of the Senate’s President Pro Tem write to the Natural Resources Agency and the Governor’s Office demanding a rescission of this ruling, thus renewing the state’s dark-ages approach to unrecyclable organic materials management.
More...
Monday, April 18, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Back when I was a hard-charging young snuffy in a flight suit, a good day at the office included a couple of hours of paperwork in my collateral duty (dirty-little-jobs-officer when I checked into my first squadron, less panic-ridden as I progressed up the ladder), another couple of hours counselling troops or working on deplyment schemes and, interspersed, a couple of hops to hone my flying skills.
Pretty cushy schedule, you might think—four hours of work and a couple of dinky flights More...
Monday, April 11, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my lifetime, I reckon I’ve interacted, in one way or another, with a quarter of a million people, and of that number perhaps 1%—2,500—have made an impression on me one way or another. But I have to go down two more orders of magnitude—25 or so—to get to the realm of unforgettable.
Such a man was Master Gunnery Sergeant O’Neil, our nearly monosyllabic drill instructor, as he faced our recruit platoon, dutifully lined up for our very first junk-on-t More...
Monday, April 04, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Years ago, the forever youthful actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor did a series of advertisements for Aamco Transmission in which she toyed with the sponsor’s business by referring to “transmixers” while flirting with the company’s mechanics. Now I’ve always been a stick-shift guy, so her vamping approach wasn’t going to land Aamco any business from me, but I suspect the ad campaign was successful, since I still remember them, her, and the term “transmixer” after 30 or More...
Monday, March 28, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
According to a recently released National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSMWA) study, privatized waste services generate significant cost savings and lower financial risks for budget-stretched municipalities, and they are safer and more environmentally protective than their public sector counterparts. (For the full text of the paper, More...
Monday, March 21, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Remember your thoughts when you first viewed the stunning NASA scene titled Earthlights that circulated the Internet a decade ago?
Initially, I was drawn to the mosaic out of curiosity and by the sheer beauty of the familiar yet haunting pattern that showed the purposeful hand of man, so I installed it as my computer’s wallpaper. Over time it became a talisman of sorts, in much the same way I’ve come to regard the mountains embracing my town…a presence that is at once More...
Monday, March 14, 2011 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
MSW Management’s newest family companion is Forester University, offering online courses and classes on subjects pertinent to our various publications’ areas of interest.
Among the early presentations will be a class titled Designing With Nature. It’s a compost BMP design webinar for green infrastructure and low-impact development, featuring content on:
* Understanding the current state of stormwater management is More...
Monday, March 07, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
You might reasonably ask just how far into the future can we look before we’ve gone from the ridiculous to the sublime? For an answer, I’d like to pose another question…How long does it take for something to go from concept to reality in your community? It really depends on what you’ve got in mind, how great a departure it represents from the way things are done at present, and what the cost is relative to the benefit. If you’re talking about replacing existing carts with si More...
Monday, February 28, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
When the US ran into its first big-time energy crunch and people in cities all across the nation sat in line for hours each week in the hope of reaching the gas pump before the station owner dragged the dreaded “Out of Gas…Try again tomorrow” sign into the driveway, governments and people responded in a variety of ways, some innovative…others not so.
The Issue Was Energy
Remember the “odd-even” scheme based on the final digit of the li More...
Monday, February 21, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
If you wait for opposition to form and come to you, there are two things you can count on: It will…and you may not like the results.
Many readers have concerns with the changes they are experiencing, not only in how they do their jobs but how they view their roles. “The council had already decided on the contract before I presented our staff report,” a municipal health services director in charge of solid waste lamented after he watched a month of hard work and sincere belief More...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In our companion publication, Grading & Excavation Contractor, we’ve focused on five key issues spelling the difference, we believe, between truly successful operations and also-rans. While that publication pays attention to the specific needs of dirt-movers—landfill operators, for instance—if you broaden your focus, I think you’ll agree that they apply to nearly all aspects of the waste business as well. I think you could mix them up and roll them out like dice from More...
Monday, February 07, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
George Washington was a pretty prudent President—certainly the greenest of our chief executives if you consider the number of portraits spawned by the US Treasury Department—so I’m certain he’d be as interested as I in knowing just how much carbon is released into the atmosphere by the industry involved in the creation of the bill’s presumed value.
Just to throw something out to jump-start the discussion, I’m going to propose that every dollar carries with it More...
Monday, January 31, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind and lose sight of the fact that while waste is the subject, our business is mainly about people. Obviously, we wouldn’t have our jobs were it not for the people who hire us to provide a needed service; certainly our customers whom we serve define our tasks; but in the final analysis—and this may to some seem at first blush to be politically incorrect—it’s the people in our organization on whom we depend to accomplish those tasks More...
Monday, January 24, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Waste disposal has always attracted ingenuity, though this may have as much to do with practices for escaping from waste than doing anything about it. However, since the 1930s, we’ve seen a steady stream of advances in waste management focused principally on protecting human health and safety, not just of the public at large but—particularly in the case of automation—of those who handle waste. So what’s next?
Well, for sure, there are right here and now some truly exciti More...
Monday, January 17, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Similar to those of our brothers in the construction industry, waste management activities rarely find themselves extolled as models of safety or environmental excellence. If that seems like a harsh indictment, allow me to remove some of the sting by pointing out that, safety-wise, we rank in the lowest one-third of all occupations, and our environmental record, though demonstrably better than it used to be, falls short of what most of us would like to have chiseled on our professional headstones.
More...
Monday, January 10, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Not long after our now-defunct publication, Remediation Management, blew the whistle on the fuel additive MTBE’s nasty characteristics, I penned the following as part of my Editor’s Comments:
Looking for Opportunities
Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is a colorless, flammable liquid with high water solubility (>4%), high flammability, and extreme volatility. It is resistant to biodegradability in either aerobic or anaerobic conditions, does not ads More...
Monday, January 03, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
From time-to-time I claw my way to the top of my soapbox to preach the virtues of technology in its capacity [among other things] for holding escalating costs in check. As if driven by some circadian twitch, I return again and again to what technology holds in store for the movement of waste…from curbsides to transfer stations or MRFs, and from there to the several points of disposition, whether through diversion or disposal.
I hold constant the belief that the waste side of the materials More...
Monday, January 03, 2011 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
From time-to-time I claw my way to the top of my soapbox to preach the virtues of technology in its capacity [among other things] for holding escalating costs in check. As if driven by some circadian twitch, I return again and again to what technology holds in store for the movement of waste…from curbsides to transfer stations or MRFs, and from there to the several points of disposition, whether through diversion or disposal.
I hold constant the belief that the waste side of the materials More...
Monday, December 20, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my December 1 weblog I spoke of the strategic partnership of a pair of CA–based companies, Waste Connections and Fulcrum BioEnergy, that are developing a biofuels plant near Reno, NV, in which I alleged that, “…the good old-fashioned vision of recycling precludes the adoption of competing diversion processes. This is set in bureaucratic stone by the proscription that while re More...
Monday, December 13, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In our house as I was growing up, January 1 was marked by three major events: the Rose Parade, removal of the Christmas tree, and its replacement by a small statue of double-faced Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings. It was a time, my father informed us with a solemnity quite far removed from the festivities of the season, for assessing the year that had just passed, and then looking to the opportunities that lay ahead. Each of us had to relate an experience and a goal, and since we knew from More...
Monday, December 06, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Nearly 200,000 crashes involving tractor-trailers occurred in the US this past year--an average of one crash every three minutes—and I got to watch one a month ago driving back to Santa Barbara, CA, from an event in Las Vegas. It occurred on the transition ramp from the Westbound Highway 14 to the Northbound Interstate 5, a fairly sharp-climbing, right-hand bend leading out of an equally steep downhill plunge.
I began watching a truck-trailer rig toting a large backhoe-loader about a half More...
Tuesday, November 30, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As I blunder my way into dotage, I’ve come to accept that not only are there an increasing number of things I don’t understand, but I’m probably better served by my ignorance.
Topping the list are about 100 items having to do with Homeland Security, ranging from its very existence to the methods and manner in which it operates. By the time I head for the airport for my annual sojourn to PowerGen at Orlando, FL, later this month, I’m sure I will have tacked on a few more More...
Sunday, November 21, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Who can argue against reducing our dependence on petrochemicals? Even those among us who don’t qualify as dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists shouldn’t have much trouble coming to grips with the understanding that sooner or later we’re going to have to change our ways. As we proceed, the question becomes less and less to what and increasingly how, since there really are limits to the resources based on sequestered solar energy reasonably available to our exploitation. S More...
Monday, November 15, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
A while back I had lunch with a social media guru…an impresario of the arcane reaches of the Twitter/Tweet/In-Your-Facebook phenomenon that has taken over a significant chunk of the universe with the use of tools that can get lost in your shirt pocket and cost little more than a meal for two at a mediocre diner. Still, after I returned to the familiarity of my untidy desk, I was no closer to an understanding of the situation than before, yet convinced that while the promise of something big is ther More...
Monday, November 08, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my previous weblog I discussed the difficulty recycling organizations have in putting together a national group…namely that the differences dividing them are in many cases irreconcilable.
Interestingly, the EPA, with its focus on sustainable materials management, may have provided the disparate groups with a way out of the dilemma. Over the years, this magazine, with its focus on integrated waste management, has pointed out our responsibility to materials I’ve routinely referred More...
Monday, November 01, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As those who have followed my last several Web logs will recall, I was invited to take part in a roundtable of editors discussing recycling issues at last week’s Resource Recycling Conference at San Antonio, TX. Before going any further, let me say that event host, Jerry Powell, and his staff are to be roundly congratulated for the sensational job they did in putting together an extremely interesting and well-organized conference.
There were a number of take-aways that I will be discussin More...
Monday, October 25, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my September 21 posting, I explained that in response to an invitation to participate in a roundtable composed of waste and recycling editors at the Resource Recycling Conference at the San Antonio Marriott, October 26–27, I’ve decided to present some of the questions we will be addressing, along with my first-flush responses, followed with suggestions (occasionally scoldings) of others from whom I’ve sought help. Round II followed a week later. After a week’s hiatus while I wa More...
Sunday, October 24, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
Published: October 17, 2010
Last month a Chinese trawler operating in Japanese-controlled waters collided with two vessels of Japan’s Coast Guard. Japan detained the trawler’s captain; China responded by cutting off Japan’s access to crucial raw materials.
A More...
Monday, October 18, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my posting of September 21, I explained that in response to an invitation to participate in a roundtable comprising waste and recycling editors at the Resource Recycling Conference at the San Antonio Marriott on October 26–27, I’ve decided to present some of the questions we will be addressing, along with my first-flush responses, followed with suggestions (occasionally scoldings) of others from whom I’ve sought help. Round II followed a week later.
After a week’s hia More...
Monday, October 11, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my September 21 post, I explained that in response to an invitation to participate in a roundtable composed of waste and recycling editors at the Resource Recycling Conference at the San Antonio Marriott, October 26–27, I’ve decided to present some of the questions we will be addressing, along with my first-flush responses, followed with suggestions (occasionally scolding) from others from whom I’ve sought help. Round II followed a week later, so now after a week’s hiatus while More...
Monday, September 27, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Last week I explained that in response to an invitation to participate in a roundtable composed of waste and recycling editors at the Resource Recycling Conference at the San Antonio Marriott, October 26–27, I’ve decided to present some of the questions we will be addressing, along with my first-flush responses, followed with suggestions (occasionally scoldings) of others from whom I’ve sought help. So here we go with round two: Question 2 : More than half of Americans live in states with producer-respo... More...
Monday, September 20, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve been invited by colleague Jerry Powell to participate in a roundtable composed of waste and recycling editors at his Resource Recycling Conference at the San Antonio Marriott, October 26–27.
To be perfectly honest, my first inclination was to respectfully decline, because I felt that many of my views on the direction recycling has gone over the last two decades would likely cast me as a heretic if not a downright villain. But the more I thought about it, the more I became intri More...
Monday, September 13, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
You do? Then unless you’re a cow1 you should plan on attending LMOP XIV, EPA’s stellar event in the solid waste (or any for that matter in my opinion) arena.
Once again, the LMOP Conference and Project Expo will take place at the Hilton Hotel in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor this coming January 19–20. We anticipate over 500 attendees, from the United States and internationally.
A block of rooms is being held for conference participants at More...
Tuesday, September 07, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Yikes! Seems like only yesterday I was in Boston taking part in WASTECON 2010—actually it was three weeks ago—and with the jet lag barely over, here we go again preparing for WASTECON 2011 at Nashville, TN, August 23–25, 2011.
The 2011 WASTECON conference program will highlight the innovations and improvements that have significantly strengthened the practice of solid waste management in the 21st century, so SWANA is inviting you to submit an abstract or panel discussion propo More...
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
An August 26 report by online editor Anthony Clark of the UK-housed Plastics & Rubber Weekly caught my attention the other day, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more confirmed I’ve become in my desire to share it with you, so here goes: EuPR Says PET Study unwise and dangerous EuPR [European Plastics Recyclers trade association, representing 80% of the European market] has condemned a PET recycling study by SRI Consulting as "dangerous." The document states that "disposing of bottles in landf... More...
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Last week’s combined WASTECON and APWA Expo was—in my humble opinion—a flat-out winner…one that shows great promise for the future. Despite the fact that the events attracted similar attendees, I saw no evidence that the two shows stepped on each other’s toes…indeed quite the opposite as visitors crossed over the invisible dividing line to check out and talk with exhibitors on both sides.
On my way from Santa Barbara to Boston, I had an hour layover in Salt L More...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
It is with a great sense of loss that I report the death of Durwood Curling. Here is the notice that appeared in the August 9 edition of the Virginian Pilot:
CHESAPEAKE, VA—Durwood Stewart Curling, 76, passed away Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010. Born in Old Norfolk County, he was the son of the late John DeBaun Curling and Rosa Lee Stewart Curling and was predeceased by daughters, Virginia Parham Curling, Carlos Stone Curling and Michelle DeBaun Curling.
In early years, Durwood More...
Monday, August 02, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Being a curmudgeon, I’ve managed to avoid ramming my train into another one while texting a friend from my cell phone. Furthermore, I doubt I’m at risk of succumbing to the joys of tweeting, twittering, or tooting, no matter how many times I’m encouraged to do so, not only by friends and relatives, but also by people of whom I’ve never heard, much less met.
But this doesn’t mean I’m not aware of an entire world of possibilities encapsulated in this wondrous l More...
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’d like to share a response to my Editor’s Comments in the September/October issue and ask for whatever insights you might have on the situation. Just read your article "Crude Thoughts". There is a 5th way to handle this situation and it involves recycling and extremely more cost effective than landfilling. We are a thermal treatment facility in Florida and I was asked by the Florida DEP at the end of April to help in finding a solution for the BP oil spill, if and when the oil came ashore. I sent them... More...
Monday, July 19, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my lifetime I reckon I’ve interacted, in one way or another, with a quarter of a million people, and of that number perhaps 1%—2,500—have made an impression on me one way or another. But I have to go down two more orders of magnitude—25 or so—to get to the realm of unforgettable.
Such a man was Master Gunnery Sergeant O’Neil, our nearly monosyllabic drill instructor, as he faced our recruit platoon, dutifully lined up for our very first junk-on-th More...
Monday, July 12, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Your city council just tasked you with developing a proposal to co-locate a conversion technology (CT) project with an existing transfer station or materials recovery facility (MRF). Your city [you fill in the name] will provide 500 tons per day of its residential black-bin wastestream. A neighboring jurisdiction has agreed to provide a minimum of 500 tons of “nonresidential” waste from its commercial and industrial sectors. Both cities have requested that the “facility” be able t More...
Monday, July 05, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Developed initially for the military, GPS has been around for nearly three decades, finding its way into a variety of civilian activities in which real-time location information is of value. Led by transportation and construction applications, the demand for GPS has emerged as a twenty-first century “must-have,” second only to the cell phone for day-to-day wizardry, and the only wonder is why it seems to have taken many business applications longer than the general public to recognize its val More...
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
We all have our reasons for attending professional events such as WASTECON. For some, it’s the classes and presentations. For others, it’s the networking. For me, it’s these, of course, but even more so it’s the exhibit floor and the chance to chat with exhibitors and attendees alike, getting their slant on what’s going on around the country.
Three weeks from today, I’ll have another chance—my 19th if my addition is correct—to see what’s mov More...
Monday, June 21, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Despite the fact that there appears to be no consensus as to its toxicity, the glop, along with oil-soaked pom-poms and Corexit-laced seawater, are being shipped to various landfills in the areas where they’ve been collected, so I’d like your thoughts on a few questions:
1. If a landfill in question is a Subtitle D, MSW facility, do you feel this a good idea?
a. If you said Yes, would you levy some restrictions on its placement?
More...
Monday, June 14, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
An e-mail totally unrelated to any of the subjects I normally monitor floated up from some unseen hand and caught my attention. The paper had to do with predicting the number of doctors, general practitioners, specialists, nurses, and allied health professionals who will be required to meet health care demands in the future. Not only is the length of clinical training an issue, but advances in medical treatment also can change work-force requirements rapidly.
As case in point, consider how new More...
Monday, June 07, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
It’s at its deadliest when we least expect it.
If there’s one thing in this world I really, truly know, it’s complacency. I see where I’ve been subject to it to greater and lesser extents every day of my life, though I don’t recall giving it much thought before being shackled onto the starboard catapult of the USS Valley Forge, following the sixth arrested landing that was the final hurdle in my quest for the coveted “Wings of Gold.”
The aircr More...
Monday, May 31, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
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 remain More...
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I hold in memory a number of wonderful cartoons—mostly from the New Yorker—but the one that sits on the top rank shows a line of people awaiting help from a lone lady seated at a department store Information booth. At the head of the line is young seeker of truth who asks, “What is it all about? Why are we here?’
The answer to both, if you’re involved in MSW management, is the protection and preservation of public health and safety. For the public sector, More...
Monday, May 10, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For starters, there was the mighty storm covering much of the area east of the Mississippi. My flight from Salt Lake City to Atlanta was diverted several hundred miles to the south of its planned route, skirting a line of thunderstorms that towered nearly to the tropopause…quite an impressive sight. But because of an inordinately swift jet stream—150 knots at its core—we landed a mere 20 minutes behind schedule in sunny but breezy weather. Unbeknownst to me and my fellow passengers, wha More...
Monday, April 26, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Next week’s WasteExpo 2010 in Atlanta will mark my 18th year in attendance…not a record by any stretch of the imagination, but one that puts me closer to the top than many.
I arrived at my first event like a hungry big-mouth bass, ready to listen to and believe anything I was told, and too proud to admit to my informants that I was clueless as to how the business worked or who was important.
Luckily, things were different in those days and my ignorance was undoubtedly lost More...
Monday, April 19, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Has the time come for the state that prides itself in being the mover-and-shaker of environmental concerns to abandon its senseless opposition to waste conversion technologies? We hope so, having thrown out our opening pitch on the subject back in 1966 suggesting that ethanol made from converted organic MSW could replace the MTBE that our then sister publication, Remediation Management, was the first to blow the whistle on.
At long last powerful forces from California's Bioenergy Working Group More...
Sunday, April 11, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This past week the NSWMA comments to the EPA on its proposed rule on the Identification of Additional Classes of Facilities for Development of Financial Responsibility Requirements Under CERCLA Section 108(b) (75 FR 816) argued that currently operated hazardous waste and municipal solid waste facilities should not be required to obtain financial responsibility under CERCLA (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act), because they do not share anything in common with past p More...
Monday, April 05, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
My previous Web log focused attention on Maine’s landmark Producer Responsibility legislation, an action signaling what I take to be increased interest in the topic. What garnered my attention was its fidelity to the model framework provided by the Product Policy Institute that envisions this as a state rather than Federal initiative.
So it was a bit of a surprise when the very first respo More...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve had my reservations about producer responsibility initiatives in the past, and to be honest, I reserve the right to renege on what I’m about to say now, but given their thoughtful assessment and implementation, I think they are a way to replace governmental mandates with an approach straight out of the competitive capitalistic playbook. In short, the costs are borne by those who benefit…the producers or importers for certain, but so, too, the consumers rather than society at large. More...
Monday, March 22, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In recent weeks I’ve used this soapbox to question the validity of recycling figures, basing my concern on often-unsubstantiated data on the ultimate fate of materials shipped to offshore markets. Now, it seems, people elsewhere share a similar concern, as reported in the March 18, 2010, Waste Management World’s E-Newsletter: A new study commissioned by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) in Germany has shown that more than 155,000 tonnes of WEEE are exported to non-European destinations every y... More...
Sunday, March 14, 2010 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Along with 750 other registrants, I spent the bulk of last week in San Diego at the 33rd renewal of SWANA’s oldest and certainly among its most well attended events. Granted, in this era of tough travel times, that the majority of the participants were from the western half of the organization’s constituency, the presentations were by no means parochial, covering such diverse subjects as the changing regulatory environment, renewable energy credits, carbon credits, ARRA, upcoming l More...
Monday, March 01, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I concluded my previous blog with the challenge, “If you agree that the fate of these materials is our responsibility, how can we guarantee their proper disposition?” This raises in my mind the question of just how many of the materials that go out the back door as recyclables are genuine recycling candidates?
There are some materials for which mature markets exist without prodding. More...
Sunday, February 21, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my previous MSW Editor’s Blog, I passed along a question one of my Editorial Advisory Board members voiced regarding the fate of waste and recyclable materials managed by or turned over to private operators: “Why don’t municipalities make accurate accounting a contractual requirement?”
The more I’ve thought about this over the past week, the more I’ve come to believe that this is not merely a novel idea, but one fundamental to the premise on which solid wa More...
Monday, February 15, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I just got finished holding a phone conference with members of my editorial advisory board, looking to pick their brains for editorial ideas…and, boy, were my expectations met.
Of the several topics up for discussion, the most provocative had to do with the difficulty of arriving at a standardized methodology for calculating diversion performance rather than the hodgepodge of practices that seem to do more to obscure than illuminate the situation.
As the discussion progressed, t More...
Monday, February 08, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
True, America has operated in a mixed economic environment for much of the past century, but it appears that the balance between the market and planned economic forces has shifted substantially in favor of the latter. During this time, we’ve seen many of our nation’s institutions and systems fall prey to the agenda of organizations—public and private alike—whose interests are quite separate from the specific purpose at hand. For better and worse, solid waste management is one of t More...
Monday, February 01, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
When you look around at your community, how difficult is it to recognize what infrastructure systems are held together with baling wire and duct tape. Chances are your MSW system is relatively free of such make-do fixes, and even if things turn to worms you can probably find the means for getting the trash off the curb and out of sight without declaring an all-out emergency. But can you say the same about your water conveyance systems; your electrical grid; your streets, roads, and highways … syste More...
Monday, January 25, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
This time every year, SWANA puts on its Senior Executives Seminar that brings together managers, consultants, and financial experts to discuss challenges and opportunities the waste field is experiencing today and/or likely to have to deal with in the future. Over the next several weeks, I will present some of the topics that arose in discussions during the three-day event, but I’d like to lead off with the one I found most provocative…the loss of waste and waste revenues.
Is the dr More...
Sunday, January 17, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Every time I drive California’s Pacific Coast Highway between Santa Barbara and Ventura, I pass by an open flare near La Conchita—the small bedroom community that gets buried by mudslides from time-to-time—and think to myself, “What a waste of perfectly good energy. The gas being flared is a byproduct of on- and offshore oil recovery operations that abound in the area and I haven’t the slightest clue just how much gas is involved, but it bothers me, nonetheless. So does the More...
Sunday, January 10, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Here I am for the umpteenth time at LMOP’s annual get-together, following another transcontinental flight that turned out to be far less of a Homeland Security gaggle than I feared in the wake of the most recent airline fiasco. Nevertheless, the experience got me to thinking about how Homeland Security offers us an opportunity to move beyond our custodial role into the practice of stewardship in combating growing concerns over the security of our various energy distribution networks. For some time More...
Sunday, January 03, 2010 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Hard to believe, but this next week—January 11–13—Baltimore MDs Hilton Hotel plays host to the 13th Annual LMOP Conference and Project Expo.
Heading the agenda is a tour of the US Coast Guard Yard LFGTE Project, the result of a successful collaboration between the US Coast Guard Yard, City of Baltimore, and Ameresco Federal Solutions Group. Under a historic intergovernmental sales agreement, Baltimore is providing landfill gas (LFG) to the USCG from the Quarantine Road Landfil More...
Sunday, December 20, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Vehicle tracking and route management systems are rapidly becoming mainstays in waste fleet operations, so it is only a matter of time before just-in-time (JIT) scheduling becomes as routine on our side of the materials management equation as it already is elsewhere in business. Those who deliver recycled materials back into production channels are well aware of the challenges and benefits of JIT, so we have a good starting point from which to expand the practice. Thoughtless scheduling routines that sen More...
Sunday, December 13, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In our house as I was growing up, January 1 was marked by three major events: the Rose Parade, removal of the Christmas tree, and its replacement by a small statue of double-faced Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings. It was a time, my father informed us with a solemnity quite far removed from the festivities of the season, for assessing the year that had just passed, and then looking to the opportunities that lay ahead. Each of us had to relate an experience and a goal, and since we knew from More...
Sunday, December 06, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Keep America Beautiful (www.kab.org) released the results of its litter study, the largest ever conducted in the US and the first of its kind in 40 years. Details of the study can be found here —so I won’t go into any depth here other than to whet you appetite with some of its significant findings:
Litter conservatively costs our nation $11.5 billion per ye More...
Monday, November 30, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Developed initially for the military, GPS has been around for nearly three decades and since has been finding its way into a variety of civilian activities in which real-time location information is of value. Led by transportation and construction applications, the demand for GPS has emerged as a twenty-first century “must-have,” second only to the cell phone for day-to-day wizardry, and the only wonder is why it seems to have taken many business applications longer than the general public to More...
Sunday, November 22, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Except for those hopefully few souls who view themselves as hapless victims of an unfair destiny, most of us want to feel that our efforts are worthwhile and in fact contribute to the common good, and certainly part of this involves our ability to ensure that those who follow in our footsteps are among the best and brightest of their generation. In the competition for top young talent, we’re up against formidable opponents, and it would be foolish of us not to recognize that waste management might More...
Monday, November 16, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Automated collection has come a long way in the past few years—as so it should. As Lanny Hickman, former executive director of SWANA, points out that a person completing a career humping garbage would have accomplished single-handedly a task equal to raising the Titanic—ballast included—to the surface from its watery grave.
That’s an impressive accomplishment but not necessarily the best utilization of human endeavor when there are better options. True, automated collect More...
Sunday, November 08, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Despite the continuing economic woes and the loss of overseas markets, some jurisdictions appear to be achieving extraordinary success with their recycling programs…notably Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, the last of which claims a 70% diversion rate. This raises a number of questions in my mind, not only about these systems but how representative they are of other systems as well…yours for instance.
To get some handle on this, perhaps you (along with San Francisco) would be w More...
Sunday, November 01, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
The heart of most integrated waste management systems is the MRF. Waste collection and fate—either through diversion or disposal—are its extensions, yet all too often they are brought into existence long after the other pieces have settled into place, a situation that is both bad and good: bad because, in chasing other elements, MRFs rarely are optimized to the task; good because of their proven adaptability to changing situations.
At the moment, waste flows are down, reducing the b More...
Sunday, October 25, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Daylight Savings Time comes to an end this next weekend, ushered in by legions of bright-eyed goblins and (I’m forewarned) perky Hannah Montanas, heralding the coming of winter while nailing shut the coffin of yet another summer. As far back as I can remember, I’ve dreaded the annual return of Standard Time, or, as I’ve preferred to call it, “Daylight Losing Time,” where, instead of the promise of outdoor activities, I emerge from a long day in the office into a world of glo More...
Sunday, October 18, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
First there was RCRA, which addressed the need to improve stewardship over our resources. Then came the US Supreme Court’s decision on United Haulers Association, Inc. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority (Case No. 05-1345, released April 30, 2007) upholding the right of local governments to direct the flow of solid waste to publicly owned waste facilities without running afoul of the Commerce Clause. Now comes the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program (EECB More...
Sunday, October 11, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
All too well I remember how eloquently Master Gunnery Sergeant O’Neil, our nearly monosyllabic drill instructor, put it to our recruit platoon lined up for a junk-on-the-bunk inspection, when he informed us that instead of the coziness of our washed, waxed, and groomed barracks, we were going to spend the next three hours groveling around ice-stiffened mud in our freshly washed, starched, polished, and spit-shined finery.
“In the beginning there was the word,” he explained wit More...
Sunday, October 04, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
MSW Management first turned its attention to the conversion of waste to fuel for energy in November 1996, when our then-companion publication, Remediation Management, blew the whistle on the gasoline additive, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) whose toxicity, coupled with an affinity for water, showed it to be a first-class environmental danger. At that that point I suggested in my Editor’s Comments that this represented an opportunity for converting a lot of organic wastes into etha More...
Sunday, September 27, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
WASTECON 2009 got off to a rollicking start with the Presidential Keynote address by T. Boone Pickens, the 81-year-old, Oklahoma-born Texas oilman and author of the Pickens Plan, bounding around the stage with the energy and enthusiasm of the Music Man, pointing out that we have trouble right here in the US spawned by our dependence on foreign oil. Instead of a marching band, Pickens is intent on recruiting an army of supporters pledged to fight to build a program that will:
More...
Sunday, September 20, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’m off to Long Beach, CA, for SWANA’s annual main event. Chief among issues I’ll be digging into with attendees and exhibitors alike will be diversion in its various forms and how these interact and/or conflict with one another. Since the show is in California this year, it should be a good opportunity to gather firsthand information on the impasse that exists between those favoring and opposing full diversion credit for Conversion Technologies (CTs).
At the center of the con More...
Sunday, September 13, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Once there was the National Recycling Association (NRC), but after years of internecine wrangling over goals and objectives had strained the organization’s economic viability to the point of insolvency, the breech became irreconcilable when, at the eleventh hour, Keep America Beautiful (KAB) appeared at the door, ready to save the day.
In May, NRC accepted a $200,000 operating loan and payoff of $500,000 in debt from KAB in exchange for the rights to America Recycles Day and the right to More...
Monday, September 07, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In 1992, just as I was assuming the editorship of MSW Management, I made the weekly drive from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles to attend a course on municipal solid waste management given by Dr. Eugene Tseng, UCLA law professor, and Gary Petersen, recent member of the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB). Seventeen years later I find myself still involved with the course, which, while undergoing rather significant changes, strives to meet the needs of entry level personnel, supervis More...
Sunday, August 30, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Just after we entered the new millenium, I posed the question, “What will your waste system look like in 2010?”—suggesting that many of the elements were already in place. Well, we’re on 2010’s doorstep, and we’ve been rocked by some rather astonishing events that have shaken our waste practices to the core.
It’s easy to look at the economic downturn with its reduction of waste and recyclable materials coming through the pipeline as the major change age More...
Sunday, August 23, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For a field with few institutions dating back more than 50 years—recycling, in our modern sense, less than half that—our practices have managed to become surprisingly well set in concrete…a situation reflecting the public’s perception of the value of the materials entering the wastestream and therefore the level of acceptable investment in dealing with it. Part of the problem lies in the disconnect between what we acknowledge as waste and the factors that lead to its creation, mak More...
Sunday, August 16, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my previous Web editorial, which
pointed out the change in focus of the EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and
Recovery (ORCR—what was until this year the Office of Solid Waste), I ended with
the suggestion that we should not get hung up debating such irreconcilable
issues as pitting recycling against energy production, but rather we should find
materials management strategies that red More...
Monday, August 03, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Boom or bust times, staff turnover is
a constant challenge…one made all the more critical by changes in the waste
management landscape. Historically the challenge has been met by on-the-job
experience, but I doubt you or anyone else feels this is adequate in bringing
people in sensitive positions up to speed quickly and
effectively.
Prior to this fall, UCLA’s Extension
program offered an on-campus course on MSW and recycling for local area
participants. This effort has More...
Sunday, July 26, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
“It’s
green side out, maggot!” the beetle-browed misanthrope in the Smokey-Bear hat
screamed at me from a distance of what I figured to be about 6 microns. “You
think you’re in the desert?” It was my first day as a member of the Marine
Corps, my informant was our platoon’s drill instructor, and the object of his
fury was the manner in which I had mistakenly donned my just-issued poncho…brown
side out.
The
purpose of Sgt. Miner’ More...
Sunday, July 19, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Last week I received the following from Walmart that is self-explanatory: Walmart Announces Sustainable Product Index Index will drive higher quality, lower costs, and measure sustainability of products for first time July 16, 2009—Walmart today announced plans to develop a worldwide sustainable product index during a meeting with 1,500 of its suppliers, associates, and sustainability leaders at its home office. The index will establish a single source of data for evaluating the sustainability of produc... More...
Sunday, July 05, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Waste
management has always attracted ingenuity, though it seems probable that much of
this had more to do with practices for escaping from waste than doing anything
about it. However, since the 1930s, we’ve seen a steady stream of advances in
waste management focused principally on protecting human health and safety, not
just of the public at large but—particularly in the case of automation—of those
who handle it. So what’s next?
Well,
for sure, there are More...
Sunday, June 28, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I truly believe that we have an
obligation to reduce our footprint on the planet’s resources to the lowest
reasonable level possible, but I find that the mounting use of the term
“sustainability” is having a curious effect on me. I feel myself becoming
“greener” with each encounter, though this seems neither the result of an
elevated environmental quotient nor the product of jealousy. Instead this
verdant adventure stems from the uneasiness I feel when confront More...
Monday, June 22, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
We all are tempted to
blame our present condition on “them,” the unseen forces in high places whose
hands seem to shape our lives with Satanic zeal, but let me ask you to consider
for a moment Pogo’s mighty vision prompting him to state categorically, “We have
met the enemy, and he are us.”In those
lamentably rare moments when I’m able to back away from the here-and-now and
sprinkle myself with the wonderful elixir of perspective, I am able to put
Pog More...
Sunday, June 14, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
While there are some who will
disagree, most of the people—exhibitors and attendees alike—with whom I spoke at
this year’s event in Las Vegas felt that the show outdid their expectations.
Despite the economy and travel difficulties, the show floor was alive with
exhibits and good volumes of traffic. The consensus among many of the exhibitors
was that while the number of visitors to their booths may have been down from
recent years, the quality was top notch…another w More...
Sunday, May 17, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In anticipation
for this week’s North American Waste-to-Energy Conference (NAWTEC) at Chantilly,
VA, I invaded the magazine’s archives to see if there was anything I had written
in the past about energy from waste that was applicable today. Here then is an
excerpt frommy Editor’s Comments for the November/December 2003 issue of MSW
Management, the full version of which can be found at http://ww More...
Sunday, May 10, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In several of my recent electronic
editorials (blogs…ugh), I’ve raised the question of how we should be paying for
waste management and its various programs as we go forward, and the truth is
that I don’t know…and neither do a lot of people with whom I’ve spoken in recent
weeks.
Most rely on tip fees and collection
billings to cover costs. Many give up a portion of their proceeds to other
jurisdictional entities, and nearly all support recycling and pu More...
Sunday, May 03, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’ve asked a number of people about
their plans for this year’s event that begins on June 8, 2009, at the Las Vegas
Convention Center and received a mixed bag of responses. Here’s a sampling
broken into three groups1) I don’t want to go…and besides, I
don’t need to.
* I’m not interested in the conference
program or products and services exposition.
*
My company or jurisdiction has
ch More...
Sunday, April 26, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
We humans are a restless sort. Just when it seems we have
everything hooked up and moving smoothly, things change. Sometimes its author is
external—an earthquake, asteroid, solar activity—but most of the time it’s an
internal dynamic, an urge in response to a perception of something better…a
hardwired process that’s allowed us to struggle to the top of the food chain and
hopefully stay there.
Strange, then, that while we are spring-loaded to adapting to
More...
Sunday, April 12, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Two weeks ago I pussy-footed my way up to the subject of solid waste funding options, now and in the future:
Today’s landfills are more than just repositories for absolutely worthless stuff. They are often the hiding places for materials for which no viable markets exist. In a great number of cases they are cash cows, not only for other waste management programs that cannot fund themselves, but even as reservoirs into which public officials ca More...
Sunday, April 05, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Several Months back I
suggested that in the face of depressed
commodity prices, waste managers might
consider sequestering materials
in anticipation of increasing demands from
recycling markets. As it
turns out, that’s exactly what the Lancaster County
Solid Waste
Management Authority (LCSWMA) at Lancaster, PA, decided to do. What
follows is a report from Tom Adams, the county’s recycling manager, to
LCSWMA
Executive Director James Warner:
Due
to plum More...
Sunday, March 29, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In our companion
publication, Grading & Excavation Contractor, we’re watching an
interesting phenomenon take place; a fiscal sword, wielded by the people with
the projects that is having an amazingly positive impact on both safety and
environmental compliance that we in the waste industry might find worthy of
consideration. First let me pose examples and then let’s look at how they may be
applied to our universe.
Hoofbeats of
the Dreaded EMR
More...
Sunday, March 22, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my previous
Web log, I suggested that landfill advocates have not done as good a job as
their competitors in rallying support of the public and their representatives.
I’d like to expand on the subject a little.
Allow me to
voice my opinion that, regardless of what you want to call it, there will always
be waste (hopefully less as we go forward) and therefore the need for safe,
secure, properly managed, and economically viable repositories for it. That
doesn’t seem p More...
Monday, March 16, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spent this past week in Atlanta at
SWANA’s Landfill Gas Symposium, talking with attendees and exhibitors alike
(both categories record-setting in their numbers), taking in the presentations,
and trying not to get trampled by the hordes of Southeastern Conference
(basketball) Championship fans running amok in the downtown area. I came through
unscathed, which in retrospect had some miraculous aspects, but my survival
allows me the opportunity to offer a short report on the symposium More...
Sunday, March 08, 2009 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I had no sooner sat down to write my
blog than I received an e-mail from the EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program
(LMOP) with information on how the recently issued stimulus package can benefit
landfill gas (LFG) energy project development. The timing of this could not be
better, as I am also pulling together all the last-minute details for my trip to
Atlanta next week for SWANA’s Landfill Gas Symposium. So rather than meddle with
LMOP’s missive, let me give it to you f More...
Sunday, March 01, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
The Sierra Club and World Watch
Institute have recently joined forces in promoting biofuel as a means of
reducing our dependence on fossil fuel, so if you have any interest in the
subject, by all means go to www.worldwatch.org/smartchoicesforbiofuels.
Before you do, however, read what Jim Stewart, chairman of Los Angeles–based
BioEnergy Producers Association, has to say.
The Sierra Club and Worldwatch More...
Sunday, February 15, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Our July/August 2008 issue contained
an article in the SWANA section by Jeremy K. O’Brien, titled, “Landfill Gas
Collection System Efficiencies,” highlighting elements of a report conducted by
SWANA staff with SWANA’s Applied Research Foundation (ARF) with input and
guidance provided by ARF landfill gas project sponsors. (The article can be
found here). Based on the
findings of three More...
Sunday, February 08, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spent last week (February 2–6) in
Las Vegas at the 2009 World of Concrete, an event many feared was going to be
something of a wake rather than an exposition. While attendance was down—30%
below last year’s record-setting 84,000 seems a reasonable guess—the prevailing
sentiment appeared to be, “OK, these are tough times, so what do we do about
it?”The “what” most attendees had in mind
was to become more efficient, beginning with getting a More...
Sunday, February 01, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As
some of you are already aware, you now have a choice: You can get the magazine
in its digital edition instead of—or in addition to—the printed
copy.
This
doesn’t replace the content you’ll find here on www.mswmanagement.com; all the
articles will still be available here, along with readers’ comments and
additional Web-only content. The digital version is simply an exact reproduction
of the printed magazine with its original layout and advertisement More...
Sunday, January 25, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Let me begin this by venting.
I don’t know how much of our national wealth has been
squandered in the past year seeking first to obscure a host of looming crises
and then to apply a few useless bandages to stanch the bleeding of activities
whose basic flaws left them well beyond repair or recovery. My guess, however,
is that when historians 100 years hence total up the damage, it will be in
the multiple trillions of dollars range, making the bailout figures released to
d More...
Sunday, January 18, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I spent the first three days of this past week at the Landfill Methane Outreach Program’s (LMOP’s) 2009 conference in Baltimore, MD, being treated to a group of interesting and provocative presentations, several of which had to do with the trading or sale of credits or offsets related to landfill gas. Other than an article, Selling LFG Carbon Credits by Jim Warner, executive d More...
Monday, January 12, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
The present-day hierarchy has had a profound effect on waste management strategies, structure, politics, and certified authority–a self-perpetuating aristocracy claiming a sort of moral high ground that, until recently, has held at bay those who would challenge that authority. It would be misleading to suggest that no good has resulted from the hierarchy and its adherents, but it would be equally wrong to ignore the damage its institutionalization has wrought.
What damage, you ask? Outso More...
Monday, January 05, 2009 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my November 17, 2008 blog I posed the question of whether
sequestration should be added to the Waste Hierarchy, receiving a number of
comments, most of which considered it a worthwhile question.
Since that time, we’ve seen recycling taking a lot of flak in
the media because of the collapse of markets…mostly foreign since onshore
markets have been bypassed in favor areas where labor rates are substantially
lower. If indeed the pocketbook is the basis for diversion rather More...
Monday, December 29, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Since it’s no longer a question that we’re in for some tough
times in the coming months, it’s time to decide whether we intend hunker down in
a coping mode, or search for opportunities to actually improve things. What opportunities, you ask, and that’s the catch.
Opportunities like money don’t grow on trees, yet they’re out there…and to some
extent our access to them is a function of attitude. For example, I think we’ve
all known at some More...
Sunday, December 14, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As most of you know, SWANA has been a leader in web based
waste management training for several years, offering self-paced and instructor
led courses in a number of subjects including:
*Integrated Solid Waste
Management
*Landfill Gas
*Composting
Operations
*
Electronics
Recycling
*
Waste
Screening
*
Manger
*MOLO Math
Information on these and other SWANA e-courses is available&n More...
Monday, December 08, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
According to Great Britain’s Institution of
Mechanical Engineers (and the bulk of the European Union), we are overlooking a
significant opportunity as a result of continuing opposition to
waste-to-energy…or as they call it Energy from Waste
(EfW).
After you’ve read the following (and
overlooked their odd spelling conventions), please tell give us your thoughts on
EfW (of WTE if you prefer).
Energy From Waste: A Wasted
Opportunity?
More...
Sunday, November 30, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In my previous Blog (does anyone else dislike the term as
much as I?) I spoke of the high quality of the presentations at the Municipal
Waste Managers Association’s Fall Summit at San Diego in November. I singled out
Susan
Thorneloe’s introduction of EPA's Suite of
Homeland Security Decision Support Tools (DSTs) For Managing Disaster-Generated
Waste and Debris, outlining a single comprehensive approach to
domestic incident management for responding to, and recovering from te More...
Sunday, November 23, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I journeyed south to San Diego last week to attend the
Municipal Waste Managers Association’s 2008 Fall Summit. The association is an
adjunct of the US Conference of Mayors designed to keep its
members up to date on waste management trends and issues, and in the wake of the
conference I’m able to confirm the excellence of its performance in this
regard.
While all presentations were timely and of high quality, one
was of singular importance: Susan Thorneloe’s intr More...
Monday, November 17, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Forester Media’s offices are located
in Santa Barbara, CA, a city of some 80,000 inhabitants that has made it into
the national news for the fifth time in less that two years with yet another
serious fire.
Named the “Tea
Fire” because of its birth in an abandoned but oft-trespassed tea
house in the foothills of neighboring Montecito, as of today (November 18) the
blaze is close to full con More...
Sunday, November 16, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Should stewardship over such things as the environment or
public health and safety be defining factors as to what can or cannot be
considered recyclables? I think so, but I am not so sure that it would pass today’s
reality check. At present, it looks to me as if throw-aways become recyclables
whenever we’re able to ship them anywhere but to a landfill, regardless of how
they’re going to be managed or where they’re going to end up.
While stewardship is a guiding More...
Monday, November 10, 2008 7:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
If so—and if you have not already watched it—take the time to
watch excerpts from the November 9th 60 Minutes show exposing what’s
happening to victims of ill-conceived e-waste-dismantling efforts made possible
by fraudulent exports from the US.
Go to “The Electronic Wasteland” to watch the segment. While the show takes a Colorado-based recycler to task for
his illegal activities, to More...
Sunday, October 26, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
George
Washington was a pretty prudent President—certainly the greenest of our chief
executives if you consider the number of portraits spawned by the US Treasury
Department—so I’m certain he’d be as interested as I in knowing just how much
carbon is released into the atmosphere by the industry involved in the creation
of the bill’s presumed value.
Just
to throw something out to jump-start the discussion, I’m going to propose that
every dollar c More...
Sunday, October 12, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I’m sitting here
gazing at our September/October
2005 cover
that chronicled the devastation wrought by Florida’s 2004
sequence of
hurricanes, while trying to make some sense out of what has happened
this year.
Not counting
Nana, which as of today (October 13th), is gathering
steam in the
Atlantic, there have been 13 Atlantic storms (Arthur,
Bertha, Christobal, Dolly,
Edouard, Fay, Hann, Ike, Josephine, Kyle,
Laura, and Marco, two of which have
been e More...
Monday, October 06, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Back at the beginning of the
decade I asked the question, "Is It Time to Dump the Hierarchy?” looking forward
to the variety of reactions the notion might elicit. I was not disappointed, but
in some cases I was caught off guard. On one hand I found solid support for the
proposition and its basis from people I would have expected to stand foursquare
behind the hierarchy, and I found opposition from some I would have expected to
line up in the "Amen" corner. And, of course, there were a More...
Sunday, September 28, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As I settle in to write this, I’m clueless what the outcome
of the infamous $700 billion bailout will (or even should) be other than to say
that I find our current fiscal situation confusing. Ten minutes ago, the House
of Representatives voted down the plan, but I doubt that’s the end of the road.
It’s bad enough trying to imagine just how the keepers of the
most powerful and diverse economy in the history of the planet presumably awoke
one morning to find that th More...
Monday, September 22, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
A famous battle cry from the 1992
elections was “It’s the economy, dummy,” a reminder that the public had its eye
on the pocketbook rather than causes. Today, following several years of high
employment, moderate inflation, and record tax revenues, it seems once again
we’re eyeball-to-eyeball with a wounded economy and at a severe loss as to how
to deal with it.
While scholars, government
functionaries, and politicians remain bound up in scientific debate, Joh More...
Sunday, September 21, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For the umpteenth time I find myself gnashing my teeth over
California’s practice of allowing credit for waste diversion of organic
materials that are processed as landfill alternative daily cover, while at the
same time withholding similar credit to those same materials if they are to be
used as feedstock for transformation technologies.
Now you might wonder what’s going on here or just how it came
to pass that stuff bound for the landfill (bad) ended up in the landfill w More...
Monday, September 15, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
For the umpteenth time I find myself gnashing my teeth over
California’s practice of allowing credit for waste diversion of organic
materials that are processed as landfill alternative daily cover, while at the
same time withholding similar credit to those same materials if they are to be
used as feedstock for transformation technologies.
Now you might wonder what’s going on here or just how it came
to pass that stuff bound for the landfill (bad) ended up in the landfill w More...
Sunday, September 14, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
In the future we assume that technology will present us with
the increased possibilities for transforming materials currently fit only for
disposal into marketable commodities. The key to this lies in our ability to add
enough value to a larger portion of the wastestream to make these goods
competitive with traditional materials in the supply chain.
There are many areas in waste management that can profit from
greater technological efforts, but (are you ready for the editorial message More...
Monday, September 08, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
A couple of years back I sat staring at my monitor agonizing
over just what I was going to say to an audience of solid waste professionals at
an event for which I had consented to provide the keynote address. The theme for
the forum was “The Evolution of Waste,” a thesis I didn’t buy into but lacked
the wits how to voice my differing vision. As luck would have it, my screen was
not as blank as my mind, and after several minutes of wandering reverie I began
to focus on the image More...
Sunday, September 07, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
As I
suggested in my most recent Editor’s Comments
I believe we've allowed ourselves to drift away from the primary purpose of
recycling, and it's high time we confronted ourselves on the issue. Even if I'm
wrong on this, a critical look at the role of recycling in the face of expanding
environmental and societal concerns seems in order.
But are
there opportunities for action right now? S More...
Tuesday, September 02, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
I doubt that the subject of drug and alcohol abuse is any dearer to
your heart than mine, and that’s part of the problem. We don’t like to think
about it. So why, if it the subject is not high on our list of favorites, talk
about it here? How about:
Worker Compensation: 38% to 50% of all
Workers' Compensation claims are related to substance abuse in the workplace;
substance abusers file three to five times as many claims.
Medical Costs: Substance More...
Monday, August 25, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Today it’s to announce the introduction of our completely
overhauled MSW Management website and ask you to go and take a look at
what’s there for you.
Aside from news and commentary by waste professionals like
yourself, you’ll find full-text feature articles and departments from previous
issues (three years at the moment, but over time we’ll maintain a decade’s worth
online), a selection of web-only articles, and an array of what I hope you’ll
fin More...
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 8:00 PM
Posted By: MSW Management Editor
Welcome to the new MSW Management Web site. You’re among the first to experience our beta site, and we’re
glad to have you onboard to help us test the waters, try out the site’s new
features, and let us know what you think.
We’ve always made the content of the
magazine available online, but now it’ll be much easier for you to find current
articles as well as browse and search through past issues to find exactly what
you need. You More...
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