It’s unfortunate that the Tribune doesn’t seem to have seen a garbage dump or an incinerator that it doesn’t like (“High stakes in a garbage dispute,” editorial, Aug. 15). The real problem with garbage is not that we lack disposal capacity but that we generate too much of it.
The amount of municipal refuse generated in this country has risen from an average of 2.65 pounds per person per day in 1960 to more than four pounds in 1988. Unless something is done, it’s projected to grow to five pounds per person by the year 2010. This is because U.S. consumers have shifted from durable, reusable products to overpackaged, single-use disposables. Just as important, we’ve become more and more dependent on products that contain toxins, such as household batteries, paints, pesticides and cleaners.
Under most current systems, consumers have little incentive to consider the disposal impact of their purchasing decisions because there’s no direct link between waste generation and the cost of garbage service. Likewise, product manufacturers have little incentive to produce less wasteful or non-toxic products because they don’t have to pay for the amount of waste their products or packages produce. Instead, their disposal becomes a local responsibility and comes at the expense of funds for education, police/fire protection and other important governmental services.
Waste reduction, recycling and composting could handle as much as 85 percent of our waste stream. Yet instead of implementing quantity-based garbage rates and working to rid consumer products of toxins, our public officials-with the Tribune’s encouragement-continue to focus on the “need” to site polluting incinerators and landfills.
Ironically, on the very same day that the Tribune’s editorial offered the Robbins incinerator as the “only good news” in the current garbage scenario, another article in the business section pointed out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s dioxin reassessment indicates that dioxin levels currently found in the bodies of virtually every American may already be causing cancer, birth defects and damage to the immune system. That same article also reported that burning garbage tops the list of known sources of dioxin in the environment.
But the problems with incinerators and landfills are well-known and need not be reiterated here. The point is that the Tribune’s apparent endorsement of the “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” mentality that has gotten us to today’s “crisis” only serves to perpetuate the current situation. Why doesn’t the Tribune, instead, call for redirecting some of the money we spend on siting landfills and incinerators into creating or expanding businesses that can use the recyclables and compostables that are in the waste stream? That way, we could solve our garbage problem while producing more jobs and creating less pollution. Best of all, we could leave our children the legacy of a sustainable society that can make us all proud.
