Sustainable waste management may be the way of the future for waste disposal. But in order to reach this long-term goal, we must look at past methods, evaluate costs, educate, and participate.

By Denise K. DeLuca

The Costs
A New Goal for the New Millennium
The Three R’s
The Transfer Station Transformation
Why Not?
What Now?

A series of articles by Lanny Hickman published in MSW Management over the past year presented a brief history of solid waste management in the United States. Reading these articles prompted me to ask my parents how they handled their solid wastes back in the 1960s when they were young adults in the greater Boston area. They recalled separating their garbage (the wet waste) from their trash (the dry waste). Wet garbage was put out at the curb, and the garbage man would pick it up and deliver it to a local farm for pigs to eat. If they accidentally put something into the garbage they shouldn’t have, they got an earful the next week about what pigs could and could not eat. The dry trash would build up until they had a carload’s worth, about once a week at their house. On the weekend, they would load up the station wagon, drive to the city dump, and throw their trash into the pile where it was burned or buried. While there, they might run into neighbors, old friends, or even campaigning politicians. Sometimes they’d see people scavenging, following the old adage of "One person’s trash is another one’s treasure."

The old methods of waste management certainly had their benefits. Local waste management provided local jobs. Wet wastes were recycled, and many reusable materials were salvaged. Since many people also self-hauled, they were very aware of the volume of trash they produced. And the local dump functioned as a meeting place of sorts, a place where people mingled with others in their community, chatted with neighbors, discussed local politics. Since local dumps had local impacts, people tended to get involved in waste management issues. Each community made its own solid waste management decisions based on what worked best for them and their particular circumstances. As a result, solid waste management was one mechanism for people and small businesses to actively participate in their community.

For years, solid wastes were handled this way. It seemed to work, and it was cheap. Unfortunately, the practice of feeding pigs, burning, scavenging, and burying led to contamination of air and water resources and posed a public health threat.

To address these problems, solid waste professionals overcame some very difficult hurdles and took solid waste management to a higher level. The result was Subtitle D. Large communities closed their open dumps and built landfills equipped with US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-approved liners, leachate collection systems, and closure/postclosure plans. It was an expensive proposition, so new landfills were made as large as possible to take advantage of economies of scale. Smaller communities couldn’t afford such compliance, so they closed their local dumps, built transfer stations, and began hauling their trash to the nearest regional landfill.

These regulations resulted in much improved waste management practices. We have come a long way toward protecting public health and our air and groundwater resources from the impacts of solid waste. But in the process of replacing local dumps with regional landfills, have we thrown out the baby with the bath water? We have protected public health and air and groundwater resources, but at a cost.

The Costs

It is clear that waste disposal costs more when protection for public health is increased and overt contamination of the environment is eliminated. Lined landfills with leachate collection systems are certainly more expensive than open dumps, but they are necessary if burial continues to be the primary means of solid waste disposal. These are the direct costs of health and environmental protection.

But there are other, more indirect costs to consider as well; for example, the cost to the environment. Closing local dumps and building large regional landfills have resulted in a great increase in the size of service areas, thus an increase in waste hauling distances. More hauling means greater consumption of fossil fuels, with the associated contamination of both local and global air and water resources.

How much more fossil fuel is being consumed? To get an idea, consider some general numbers representing waste disposal "then" (pre-Subtitle D) and "now" (post-Subtitle D). Tables 1 and 2 provide an illustration of the number of landfills then and now in the US and in the state of Montana, respectively, and how these numbers roughly translate into number of people served per landfill, number of square miles per landfill, and average roundtrip haul distance to a landfill.

For the purpose of making a comparison, it is assumed that there was and is a uniform distribution of people and landfills across the US and Montana. This simplifying assumption helps illustrate the relative changes that have resulted from Subtitle D. Based on this assumption, the people and square miles per landfill are computed by taking the population and total land area, respectively, and dividing each by the total number of landfills. The average haul distances are computed by assuming a circular service area and computing the radius of half that circle. The comparisons also assume that all wastes were and are hauled using large trucks (not self-hauled).

What these numbers suggest is that across the US, waste is being hauled about 10 mi. farther (roundtrip) than it used to be. Assuming a 20-ton truck gets 5 mi./gal. (average of loaded and unloaded), the increased haul distance requires the consumption of an additional 2 gal. of fuel per roundtrip. At the current waste-generation rate of about 118 million tpy of waste, an additional 12 million gal. of fossil fuel is being consumed each year hauling wastes to regional landfills than would be if waste were still hauled to local dumps.

In the state of Montana, where the population is sparser and haul distances are longer, we are hauling our garbage about 32 mi. more each trip to the nearest landfill than if we hauled to a local dump. At these distances, Montanans are consuming an additional 350,000 gal. of fossil fuel each year hauling wastes. Some communities in Montana must haul significantly farther. Regional landfills in Montana routinely accept wastes from more than 100 mi. away.

Another unintended, indirect cost of Subtitle D is the generation of waste itself. Since most people no longer haul their own wastes, they are less aware of the volume of waste they produce. Since they no longer see and smell the open dumping and burning at the local dump or see the volumes of waste that their community generates, it is easy for them to forget the impacts their personal wastes have on the environment. As much as these changes have been quite beneficial, they have also eliminated activities that reminded each of us of how our own waste generation contributes to environment degradation. This detachment has allowed even the more eco-minded among us to, relatively guilt-free, generate an ever-increasing volume of waste. To the average citizen, waste management falls into the category of "out of sight, out of mind."

In addition to the environmental costs, there are social costs to consider. These are the indirect costs to the social and economic strength of our communities. As noted above, regional landfills must be large to take advantage of economies of scale. Fewer larger landfills require centralized control and decision-making. The numerous small dumps of the past were controlled locally, thus requiring local decision-making. Solid waste management was also a local industry. In these ways, solid waste management contributed to the economic base and social structure of a community by supporting a network of interdependent small businesses and requiring the active participation of its citizens. Centralizing waste management has resulted in a loss of local control, a loss of local industry, and a loss of local choice. With less choice in waste management, people tend to be less aware of the choices that might exist and less aware of solid waste management in general.

The numbers in Tables 1 and 2 help illustrate the degree of centralization that has occurred. Table 1 indicates that a typical landfill in the US now serves almost three times as many people as a typical local dump did before Subtitle D. Table 2 indicates that a typical landfill in Montana serves more than seven times as many people as a typical local dump. As described above, these landfills are also farther away. So far away, so many people—why should any individual care about, let alone participate in, solid waste management?

We have gained important health and environmental protections, but not without environmental and social costs. We consume more fossil fuel, generate more waste, and have weakened the economic and social base of our communities. And even with the vast improvements in efficiency and engineering, we are still putting the majority of our ever-increasing volume of solid wastes in a hole in the ground (albeit a lined hole).

A New Goal for the New Millennium

So what is the solution? Go back to self-hauling and local dumps? Obviously not. We have made dramatic improvements in the protection of public health and the environment. Anyone who has made the effort knows that constructing smaller local landfills is not only economically infeasible but often socially unacceptable (a.k.a. "not in my backyard!"). Perhaps what we need is a new goal.

The goal of Subtitle D and other waste management regulations was to protect public health and natural resources. Our new goal should be sustainability. Though sustainable waste management might be considered an oxymoron by some, we can certainly take steps to start moving in that direction. Some communities have already done so.

Before we can move toward sustainability, however, we must first understand what it is and how it applies to waste management. The concept of sustainability requires that we take a more holistic approach - a broader perspective - than we have thus far. Sustainable waste management must take into consideration not only the functionality and health of our environment, but also the functionality and health of our communities. The thesaurus suggests that the word sustainable might be replaced with endurable, sufferable, bearable, tolerable, supportable, livable, or passable. When applied to solid waste, the words endurable and livable might capture the idea best.

As part of a sustainable waste management plan, the community's goal might be to reduce waste to a single conveyor load.

The environment must be able to endure our waste management practices. A sustainable waste management system could be practiced indefinitely without any lasting damage to the environment. Even with the precautions required by Subtitle D, putting wastes in a hole in the ground can’t be continued indefinitely, particularly when we continue to increase the rate at which we generate waste. In many areas of the US, there is sufficient land area to allow the burying wastes for quite some time. But this can’t continue forever, as has already been realized in many parts of the world and some parts of the US. Ultimately, landfilling is not sustainable.

People must also be able to endure and live with their own waste management practices. As social creatures, we must also be able to successfully live with each other in stable communities. What does that have to do with solid waste management? We all generate waste, and what each of us does with that waste affects everyone else, so we agree to manage our solid wastes together. Solid waste management is one of the basic human functions that bonds us together as members of a community. Practiced at the regional level, waste management detracts from the social and economic strength of local communities. It undermines the sustainability of our communities.

Based on these ideas, sustainable waste management requires that we minimize landfilling and, to the extent possible, manage our wastes locally. In addition, each individual should be aware of the impacts their own waste management choices have on the environment and on their community and that they actively participate in making those choices.

The Three R’s

After establishing Subtitle D, EPA took a step toward sustainability by promoting the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Waste reduction is first on the list because it is the ideal. However, effectively reducing waste production in the US would require a massive shift away from the overconsumption and the convenience-at-all-cost that our culture has come to cherish. This will be difficult and will take time, but the first step in that direction must be promoting awareness of solid waste issues. The second step must be providing appropriate and significant incentives for waste reduction. Although many people flaunt T-shirts and bumper stickers demanding that we "Save the Earth," most are unaware of their own contribution to its demise. We have learned through experience that awareness requires both education and participation. Incentives to change practices can be helped along by regulations. Recall when it was common practice to throw trash out of a car window? The Woodsy Owl campaign helped us change our attitudes; posted fines for littering helped us change our practices. Similar campaigns and incentives will be required to encourage or require us to change the practices that currently are leading us to generate so much waste to be managed.

Substantial waste reduction must be our ultimate goal, but it is a long-term goal. In the meantime, we need to focus our efforts on the other two R’s: Reuse and Recycle. There are numerous alternative waste management options currently available to help us reuse and recycle our wastes. The problems that these alternative systems have faced in the past are many. They include such factors as cost, limited proven technologies, reliance on volunteerism, inappropriate expectations, limited knowledge, inefficiencies, safety, and plain old inconvenience. To get beyond these problems, we must be willing to learn from past mistakes rather than simply reject the alternatives outright. Then we must provide incentives to encourage the development and use of alternative waste management technologies.

Fully implementing the three R’s is a key element of sustainable waste management. But to be sustainable, the way that we implement the three R’s is as important as the implementation itself.

The Transfer Station Transformation

Our future sustainable waste management systems must maintain health and environmental protections, efficiency, and convenience. But they must also increase local community awareness and participation, provide incentives for waste reduction, dramatically increase local opportunities for material reuse and recycle, and minimize landfilling.

Can we achieve all of these objectives? Potential solutions are many, but to be sustainable they must be tailored to meet the conditions within each community. Each community must reevaluate its own waste management practices, assess the myriad waste management options that exist, and then determine the solutions that would be optimal for local economic and social conditions. One way to implement such solutions might be to turn local transfer stations into alternative waste management facilities - a transfer station transformation.

This transformation might be best illustrated by a hypothetical example. Consider a community of around 10,000 people generating on the order of 10,000 tpy of waste. They currently operate a transfer station, located at their old dump site, and haul their wastes 25 mi. to the nearest regional landfill. At 20 tons per truckload, they make 500 roundtrips each year to the landfill, logging about 25,000 mi. and using about 5,000 gal. of fuel annually.

This community decides to make sustainable waste management their new goal for the new millennium. They conduct a waste characterization study and find that of the 10,000 tons of waste they haul each year, about 5,000 tons could be composted, 2,500 tons could be recycled, and a portion of the remaining 2,500 tons could be recovered for reuse.

After much assessment and discussion, the community decides to create a local "one-stop-shopping" facility for waste management. Working with private waste collectors, they implement a wet/dry source-separation system. They also provide specialty recycling waste containers at key locations throughout the community. Promotional campaigns are conducted, and waste education programs are established in the public schools. At their transfer station, they install a MRF to recover recyclable materials from the dry wastes and a mixed-waste composting facility to process the wet wastes and yardwastes. They also set up a program for separate collection of household hazardous waste and began a materials exchange program for reusable durable goods and construction materials. The community owns the facility and contracts with private businesses for waste collection, various site operations, and support services. To increase community awareness and participation, they plant compost demonstration gardens, have compost giveaways, and give facility tours to demonstrate their processes and products.

What are they achieving? They reduce their waste hauling and landfilling to less than 2,500 tpy, reduce their annual fossil-fuel consumption by 3,750 gal., extend the life of the regional landfill, and start producing marketable compost. Members of this community now can locally and conveniently implement the three R’s. The process of discussing and implementing their new waste management goal, and subsequent participation in achieving that goal, strengthens the community’s social structure and economic base. They gain a greater awareness of solid waste issues, and ideally this awareness - along with the positive feelings generated by participation - inspires citizens to take greater steps toward personal waste reduction.

A sustainable waste management system could include education programs and compost demonstration gardens for the public.

This is a hypothetical example, but there are real communities that have already made this type of facility work. In the early 1980s Columbia County, WI (population 45,100), knew that Subtitle D would force it to build a new landfill, start hauling wastes to the nearest lined landfill 65 mi. away, or come up with some other workable alternative. The solution was to build the Columbia County Recycling and Waste Processing Facility. This facility recycles aluminum, cardboard, plastics, glass, mixed paper, paperboard, steel cans, white goods, and tires. The remaining wastes are processed through the county’s MSW composting system. With the enthusiastic participation of county citizens, the facility has produced a 302% increase in recycling volumes. The $1.6-million annual operating budget is covered by the $33/ton tip fee, revenues from recycled materials and compost, and a combination of state grants and general county funds. Avoided direct costs include hauling and landfilling wastes. Indirect benefits include reduction of fossil-fuel consumption, extension of regional landfill life, reduction of greenhouse gas production at the regional landfill, and public education and participation.

The Town of West Yellowstone, MT (population 1,000), closed its small dump back in the 1980s. Since it is located adjacent to Yellowstone National Park, the city decided that building a new landfill would be environmentally unacceptable as well as economically infeasible. Instead it chose to build a transfer station and haul its wastes over 100 mi. one way to the nearest regional landfill. With this long-haul distance, the tip fee at the transfer station is up to $115/ton. The county, the Solid Waste District, and Yellowstone Park commissioned a study to see if composting would be a viable alternative to long hauling and landfilling. This study estimated that the existing or lower tip fee could be used to cover the costs constructing and operating a small MSW composting facility on the transfer station site that would reduce waste hauling and landfilling by more than 50%. The locals are most concerned with current and future cost savings but are happy to provide environmental benefits in the process. Yellowstone National Park is also concerned with costs, but this facility will help the park implement some of the goals set forth in the "Greening of Yellowstone Park" initiative.

Communities that have a regional landfill could implement similar systems and programs at their landfill sites. As is currently the case, larger facilities can take advantage of economies of scale, allowing them to pursue a wider range of waste management alternatives. Haul costs and fossil-fuel consumption wouldn’t change, but the remaining elements of sustainability would be in place.

Why Not?

If sustainable waste management is so beneficial, why aren’t we all practicing it? As solid waste managers, regulators, engineers, and individual waste generators, we all need to ask ourselves that question.

The more critical among us might suggest that such alternatives are too expensive, technically infeasible, or simply too difficult to initiate and implement. While those arguments are certainly justifiable, we probably said the same thing about lined landfills 30 years ago - but 30 years ago we were also throwing garbage out car windows!

It is true that some alternative waste management systems are just that - alternative - and still require improvement before becoming universally useful and affordable. But many communities have found ways to make source separation, recycling, composting, and various other alternatives work. As the alternative waste management industry develops, costs will go down and the number of successful examples will increase. The cost of alternatives will also become more competitive as more landfills close and haul distances increase.

Those in the private sector, who must always look for ways to reduce costs and increase revenues, have probably considered - and rejected - many of these alternative systems in the past. Private-sector companies simply can’t afford to implement programs that don’t generate a net profit. (Would you buy stock in a company that chooses to lose money?) Thus, without other incentives, private-sector companies won’t unilaterally implement alternative waste management systems. But private companies only represent a part of the picture.

Public decision-makers have the luxury and the responsibility to consider the greater good of the people and the environment. Their solid waste management decisions don’t need to result in a profit. Unfortunately, most public decision-makers are unfamiliar with the many alternative waste management technologies that are currently available, so it can be nearly impossible to garner the required level of interest and cooperation just to get started.

Sustainable waste management will only work if everybody - the private sector, the local and regional governments, and the general public - works together. No single entity can make it happen on its own.

What Now?

The ideas presented in this article aren’t new. People across the nation have been recycling, composting, and working toward waste reduction in various forms for years. But we have a long way to go. We need to learn as much as we can about alternative waste management options and how we can use them to help all of us achieve sustainability. We need to pass on this information to our public, our clients, and our decision-makers. We need to provide more incentives for waste management rather than waste disposal. We as solid waste managers, regulators, and engineers need to follow in our predecessors’ footsteps, work together to overcome the difficult hurdles, and take solid waste management to the next level. We need to make sustainable waste management our goal for the new millennium.

Denise K. DeLuca is with Land & Water Consultants in Missoula, MT.

MSW
September/October 2000