By Neal Bolton

You step out your front door on a cold Sunday morning to get the newspaper. You look down the street - and panic. There’s smoke coming out of your neighbor’s roof! You run to his front door and burst into his house. There, in the corner of his living room, you see flames. Is it an emergency? Should you call fire department?

Not necessarily. Relax. It’s just his fireplace. Fire and smoke don’t always indicate an emergency.

You drive into the landfill. The wind is blowing. As the route trucks unload, paper is plucked away by the wind and blown across the tipping pad. You make a quick U-turn and speed back to the manager’s office. Is it an emergency? Should you close the landfill?

Not necessarily. Relax. It’s just another normal (albeit windy) day at the landfill. Wind and garbage trucks don’t always indicate an emergency.

The point is that almost every landfill has blowing litter. But not all of them have a litter problem. Here’s how to tell the difference:

• Are you trying to prevent litter?
• Are you trying to control litter?
• Does litter accumulate?
• How quickly do you respond?
• Does your inspector think you have a litter problem?
• Do your neighbors think you have a litter problem?

Do You Take Steps to Prevent Litter?

The first question to ask yourself is: "What’s being done to prevent or minimize blowing litter at the landfill?" For example, are you segregating loads based on their potential to create litter? Your spotter can direct these kinds of loads to dump in protected areas (e.g., between two larger loads) to minimize their exposure to the wind.

Do you change your operation on exceptionally windy days? Shorter pushes create less litter. Similarly, pushing waste as soon as it is dumped also reduces blowing litter. Bringing portions of the cell up to grade and then covering immediately can help. Finally, pushing uphill (rather than downhill) will generally reduce litter. Keep in mind that uphill pushing can cause other problems (e.g., machine overheating).

Are You Using Litter Fences to Control Litter?

Are you using litter fences effectively to deal with the source of the litter problem? It’s surprising how many landfill managers look at litter from the standpoint of an unwilling martyr: complaining about it, suffering from it, but doing little to stop it.

It’s sort of like the (now bankrupt) farmer who had an apple orchard. Every year his trees produced sour apples. And every year the farmer picked off all those sour apples and complained about how farming was such a tough way to make a living. Next year more sour apples; again he’d pick them off. He eventually went broke picking those sour apples.

He spent all his money and energy dealing with symptoms. The root problem was that the trees were bad. He should have just cut them down and planted more. He should have dealt with the problem.

If you don’t have a variety of litter fences at your landfill, yet you’re complaining about litter, you’re not dealing with the problem...you’re chasing symptoms.

Does Litter Accumulate at Your Landfill?

Do large quantities of litter accumulate at your landfill? We’re not talking about blown litter that might lie around for a day or two before your litter crew gets to it. Rather, it’s those deep canyons downwind of the landfill that are a concern. The ones that have 15 ft. of litter at the bottom. Or it’s those brush-covered slopes that are always speckled with litter. You know, the places where the inspector never goes.

If there are areas on or around your landfill that go for weeks or months without being cleaned, you have a litter problem.

How Quickly Do You Respond to Blown Litter?

Some landfills have one or more employees who continually pick litter. They have a routine route established so that all litter is picked up regularly (e.g., once or twice a week). Following severe windstorms, an additional labor force (litter mercenaries) are brought in to help bring litter under control.

The issue is can you and do you respond quickly to blown litter? If not, then you have a litter problem.

What Do Your Inspection Reports Show?

It’s a good bet that your site’s inspection reports will tell whether or not you have a litter problem.

Sure, we’ve all heard about the hard-nosed inspector who stands at the unloading area and writes violations as the litter blows across the tipping pad, right into the litter fences, and who keeps writing even as the litter crew is picking it up. On the other extreme, there’s the inspector who never says anything about anything. In fact, the last time he got out of his car to do a "field" inspection, the only litter he found was a political poster with the words "I Like Ike" printed on it.

But assuming that your inspector is doing a good job (as most are), what do the inspection reports say about your site’s effort at litter control? If they consistently show a litter problem, they could be trying to tell you something.

Because of the wide variation in what the term litter control means, and how it’s interpreted, perhaps a better measure is how your landfill’s inspection reports compare with others in your region.

Are Your Neighbors Happy?

If you want to know if a man snores, don’t ask him - ask his wife.

If you want to know if a landfill has litter problems, don’t ask the landfill staff - ask the neighbors.

You might not think that you have a litter problem. But if your downwind neighbors have a litter problem, guess what? So do you.

So how is your landfill doing? Do you have a litter problem, or do you just have litter? Finding the right answer might just give you a break from dealing with a problem that isn’t really a problem or that has already been dealt with. Then again, nobody wants to spend their time picking sour apples.

MSW
July/August, 2000