A Discussion of Sanitary Landfills, Zero Waste, and Sustainability
The concept of the landfill has been changing rapidly over the years. I am in the sixth decade of my life, and I still remember visiting as a teenager the very landfill in California, where I am employed. I don’t remember calling it a landfill, just “going to the dump.” Even earlier, I remember going to an area near a stream on our family farm in the midwestern United States, and looking at the buried trash — the cans and metallics that weren’t routinely burned.
Looking back, those were heady days, when the world was like an oyster waiting to give up its pearl. We could do anything! Didn’t we just land on the moon and go where no man had gone before?
Enter the 21st century. The ecology movement, the counterculture, and readers of The Mother Earth News are now main stream. Global interests debate the politics of the Kyoto Accord, but global warming seems to be the elephant in the room. Whatever the case, landfills are an increasingly rare commodity because they have to be allowed by the neighbors, carefully permitted, and rigorously regulated. Then, when they have been filled, must be continually maintained.
Zero Waste is the concept that no waste is sent to the landfills or incinerators. As a landfill employee, I recognize the need to reduce the load put upon the landfills from both a regulatory and practical perspective of conserving valuable landfill space. Whether or not Zero Waste is practically attainable, we need to work toward the end of reducing, reusing, and recycling to see how close we can get to zero. In the meantime, in my opinion, we need to be aware of the practical cost of gaining absolute zero. Only when those who pay the price of the Zero Waste alternatives have realized its cost, both monetarily and ecologically, should they proceed. Like reaching absolute zero on the thermometer, the closer we get to absolute zero, the cost becomes prohibitive, seems unobtainable, and should only be pursued to the extent that it can be economically justified. Only to the degree that it can be economically justified, is it sustainable. And, that is the reason I prefer to pursue the goal of Sustainability instead of Zero Waste.
Toward a Sustainable Future.
