(Photo of trash in landfill from Flickr and photographer Zen/Zen Sutherland)
Weekly Angst: When you first started recycling, maybe 2 decades ago, little did you know one of the benefits would be to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that threaten catastrophic climate change. Now you have an additional reason to reduce, reuse, recycle -- and compost.
We are drowning in trash and, despite recycling, it’s adding at least 7% to emissions that cause global warming. Incinerators and landfills both emit GHG. And worse than that, every item that is destroyed needs to be replaced – which means more emissions from extraction, processing, manufacturing and transportation.
The Sierra Club’s new report Stop Trashing the Climate recommends phasing out all municipal waste incinerators and building no new incinerators or landfills.
The report sets a goal of zero waste by 2040, which could be accomplished by reducing consumption, recycling most products, re-using paper, plastic, glass and many other materials, and composting food and lawn scraps. Zero waste would reduce greenhouse gas emissions the same as if 20% of our coal-fired power plants were closed down. Under the Urban Environmental Accords, 103 mayors worldwide have agreed to send no waste to incinerators or landfills by 2040. More than 2 dozen American cities or states have a zero waste goal.
Too much consumption
The term “consumer” – if you’ve thought about it – is related to “consume” which means “use up.” And that’s exactly what we consumers are doing. Using up the world’s natural resources at a record pace.
The United States, with just 5% of the world’s population, is using up 30% of the world’s resources, producing 30% of the waste and emitting 22% of the planet’s greenhouse gases.
Think about what would happen if the rest of the world caught up with us on consumption. We’d need several planets to supply everyone. What we’re going to have to do is scale back so our consumption isn’t so far out of line with everyone else’s.
Manufacturers will have to take responsibility for producing less waste, especially the products and packaging that make up more than 72% of our trash.
Reuse, recycle and compost
Americans destroy nearly 170 million tons of paper, metals, plastics food scraps, etc., a years, and we have the ability to reuse, recycle or compost 90% of what we waste. Composting avoids significant methane emissions and increases carbon storage in soil to improve plant growth.
The damage landfills do
In addition to destruction of goods and using up of natural resources, landfills are the largest anthropogenic (human-caused) source of methane, which is 75% more potent a heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Although some landfills capture methane to use for power, only 20% is captured, and non-recycled organic materials should instead be composted or anaerobically digested, the report said.
The damage incinerators do
Incinerators emit more carbon dioxide per megawatt hour than coal, gas or oil power plants. They produce CO2 and nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent than CO2. Many require fossil fuels to operate.
Other recommendations
• Implement federal, state and municipal zero waste targets.
• Levy a per-ton surcharge for taking waste to incinerators or landfills, as many European countries do.
• End “renewable energy” subsidies for landfills and incinerators.
• Charge by volume and weight for trash collection.
• Regulate paper packaging and junk mail and significantly increase paper recycling.
Toronto’s solution
The city of Toronto removes about 1/3 of its garbage before it can get to a landfill. It goes to a plant where microscopic bugs digest garbage and turn it into compost. The Toronto plant has a system that can separate out plastic bags, batteries, bones and other non-biodegradable objects in a huge tank that spins to break the bags and let them float to the top, then separates out hard and heavy objects, which do go to a landfill.
What remains is methane and compost. The latter is given free to residents to enrich soil or taken to city parks and gardens.
The plant, which processes 50,000 tons of organic waste (double what was originally expected) handles trash from a half-million single-family homes, with another half-million apartments expected online soon. There are plans to build another composting plant by 2010, which will capture and use the methane for power, and then to expand and retrofit the current plant by 2012.
Toronto’s goal is to divert 75% of its waste from landfills by 2010. The city also has a significant recycling program.
One of the features that helps its popularity is the ability of the bugs to gobble up the odors usually emitted by such a program.
Many European cities have organic composting plants, but in North America Toronto is the only one doing it on this scale. Other cities starting more slowly are San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Oakland and Alameda County, Calif.
These cities have shown what can be done. Now we just need the will to do it.
(Sources: Sierra Club’s “Stop Trashing The Planet,” Greenwire.)
No comments:
Post a Comment