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 for its involvement in the first place. It is only after we deal with this that all the other pursuits associated with integrated waste management should be allowed to come into play. The question here is how well are we doing in meeting our primary charge, and I’d like to suggest a couple of areas in which I have concerns.
The first of these has to do with our responsibility for materials we outsource under the banner of “recyclables” where we have no direct knowledge or control over their fate. This is a subject I’ve covered with some regularity in my recent Web logs, and have addressed in my latest magazine Editor’s Comments for our June Elements issue, which is at the printer at this moment. So I’ll defer to the second area in which I have concern…the management of materials that fall under the categories of household hazardous, special, or electronic wastes.
Certainly the management of putrescibles deserves top billing in our pantheon of wastes, both because of the risks they pose to health and the amount of materials involved, but what about our efforts with the smaller—but often riskier—group of materials that for the present purposes I’ll lump under the mantle of HHW?
How about asking yourself just how much time and effort is expended in dealing with materials that involve significant health and safety consequences in comparison with—for instance—our recycling efforts? After you’ve ruminated on that for a bit, how about asking yourself whether public policy has its priorities straight?
Then, how about letting me know what your thoughts are on this?