Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Day 14

Chapters 20 and 21: Water Pollution & Solid and Hazardous Waste

Water pollution is any change in water quality that can harm living organisms or make the water unfit for human uses such as irrigation and recreation. Water pollution causes illness and death in humans and other species, and disrupts ecosystems. The chief sources of water pollution are agricultural activities, industrial facilities, and mining, but growth in population and resource use makes it increasingly worse. Water pollution comes from point source, which discharge pollutants into bodies of surface water at specific locations through drain pipes, ditches, or sewer lines, and from nonpoint sources, which are broad and diffuse areas from which pollutants enter bodies of surface water or air, such as runoff from farmland, urban streets, parking lots, and golf courses. We haven’t made much progress in controlling nonpoint surface water pollution because of its non-specific causes, but most of the world’s more-developed countries have laws that help control point-source discharges of harmful chemicals into aquatic systems since they’re so easy to identify, monitor, and regulate. The most common water pollutant is the eroded sediment that comes from agricultural lands, along with the runoff of fertilizers, pesticides, bacteria from livestock and food-processing wastes, and excess salts from soils of irrigated cropland. Industrial facilities emit a variety of harmful inorganic and organic chemicals. One of the worst of these is coal ash, which is indestructible waste from coal burned in power plants. This is a significant problem because air pollution laws force coal-burning power plants to remove many of the harmful gases and particulates from their smokestack emissions. Since we can’t destroy matter, this just means that they need to put that waste somewhere, so they end up dumping it into slurry ponds. Fracking is also a huge source of groundwater pollution, since it involves the high-pressure injection of a plethora of toxic chemicals into shale rock deep underground to break it up, which doesn’t go anywhere but further into the underground systems, thus contaminating aquifers. Mining is the third biggest source fo water pollution. It puts tons of toxic chemicals and  heavy metals from mining wastes into runoff streams, polluting streams and lakes. The United Nations reported in 2010 that each year unsafe drinking water kills more more people than way and all other forms of violence combined; and the WHO estimates that almost 1 billion people (1/7 of everyone in the world) do not have access to clean drinking water.

an example of point-source pollution

Streams and rivers are the world are extensively polluted, but they can cleanse themselves of many pollutants if we do not overload them or reduce their flows. The addition of excessive nutrients to lakes resulting from human activities can disrupt their ecosystems, and prevention of such pollution is more effective and less costly than cleaning it up. Some forms of pollution are called oxygen-demanding wastes, such as the biodegradable wastes that bacteria breakdown but end up depleting dissolved oxygen in the process. This is dangerous for organisms that require more oxygen. Laws enacted in the 1970s to control water pollution have greatly increased the number and quality of wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. and in most other more-developed countries, as well as requiring industries to reduce their point-source discharges. Of course, the better way to reduce pollution and cleanup is to eliminate the pollution altogether, using the precautionary principle. According to the Global Water Policy Project, most cities in less-developed countries discharge 80-90% of their untreated sewage directly into rivers, streams, and lakes whose waters are then used for drinking, bathing, and washing clothes. But streams and rivers are more effective at cleansing themselves than lakes and reservoirs. This is because they contain stratified layers underwater, and because they don’t flow, so the flushing and changing in a lake or reservoir can take 1 to 100 years to do what a stream or river can do in several weeks. This also causes dangerous biological magnification of pollutants in ecosystems that travel and accumulate from smaller organisms like algae and fish up to the larger ones like the land animals and birds that feed on them, then ultimately to us who feed on those animals. Eutrophication is also a major problem. It happens when runoff of otherwise good nutrients like phosphates or nitrates flow into a lake or body of water and cause booming algal growth. As water bodies become more eutrophic, human activities can accelerate the input of plant nutrients and cause cultural eutrophication. Then during hot weather or drought, the nutrient overload produces dense growth, or “blooms,” of algae or cyanobacteria and thick growths of water hyacinth, duckweed, or other aquatic plants. These dense colonies reduce lake productivity and fish growth by decreasing the input of solar energy needed for photosynthesis by the phytoplankton that support fish populations. Then when the algae die, they’re decomposed by swelling populations of aerobic bacteria in a process that depletes dissolved oxygen from the body of water. The decaying organic matter is then broken down by anaerobic bacteria once it sinks to the bottom and produces gaseous products like smelly, toxic hydrogen sulfide and methane. As usual, pollution prevention is more effective and often cheaper than cleanup.

Chemicals used in agriculture, industry, transportation, and homes can spill and leak into groundwater and make it undrinkable. There are both simple and complex ways to purify groundwater used as a source of drinking water, but protecting it through pollution prevention is the least expensive and most effective strategy. Common pollutants such as fertilizers, pesticides, gasoline, and organic solvents can seep into groundwater from numerous sources. People who dump or spill gasoline, oil, and paint thinners and other organic solvents onto the ground also containment groundwater. Once a pollutant from leaking underground storage tank or other source contaminates groundwater, it fills the aquifer’s porous layers of sand, gravel, or bedrock like water saturates a sponge, making the removal of the contaminant difficult and costly. The slowly flowing groundwater disperses the pollutant in a widening plume of contaminated water. If the plume reaches a well used to extract groundwater, the toxic pollutants can get into drinking water and into water used to irrigate crops. Groundwater flows so slowly that once it becomes contaminated it cannot cleanse itself as quickly as other sources of water, moving only about a foot per day. The EPA conducted a survey of 26,000 industrial waste ponds and lagoons found that 1/3 of them had no liners to prevent toxic liquid wastes from seeping into aquifers, 1/3 of these sites bring within a mile from a drinking water well. Also, almost 2/3 of America’s liquid wastes are disposed by injection into ground wells, some of which of course leak water into aquifers. By 2008 the EPA had completed the cleanup of about 357,000 of the more than 479,000 underground tanks in the U.S. that were leaking gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, or toxic solvents into groundwater. Scientists expect within the next century for the millions of these tanks to become corroded and more leaky, posing a major global health problem. It can take decades to thousands of years for contaminated groundwater to cleanse itself of slowly degradable wastes, such as DDT. On a human time scale, nondegradable wastes like toxic lead and arsenic remain in the water permanently. In the more-developed countries, the process of turning sewer water into pure drinking water is a very real technology. But reclaiming wastewater is expensive and faces opposition from citizens and officials who are simply grossed out. Among the simpler ways to purify drinking water for topical countries who lack a centralized water treatment system is a technology involving filling contaminated water into clear water bottles and allowing them to absorb the sun’s UV rays for 3 hours, killing any microbes, which has decreased incidence of childhood diarrhea by 30-40%. Several major U.S. cities have avoided building expensive water treatment facilities by investing in protection of the forests and wetlands in the watersheds that provide their water supplies. New York’s drinking water is known for its purity. The city gets 90% of the drinking water for its 9 million residents from reservoirs in NYS’s Catskill Mountains. Forests cover more than 3/4 of this watershed. Underground tunnels transport the water to the city. To continue providing quality drinking water for its citizens, NYC faced spending $6 million to build water purification facilities. Instead, the city decided to negotiate an agreement with the state as well as with towns, farmers, and other parties with interests in the Catskills watershed. The city agreed to pay this diverse group of governments and private citizens $1.5 billion over 10 years in exchange for their promise to protect and, in some cases, to restore the forests, wetlands, and streams in the watershed. The money that New York spent on watershed protection saved the city the $6 billion cost of building water purification facilities plus $300 million a year in filtration costs. This is an excellent example of how people can cooperate and work with nature to provide a more sustainable supply of clean drinking water. The precautionary principle would have it so that the contested project of fracking is sure to never happen, eliminating the increased need to further purify our water supply.

The U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 requires the EPA to establish national drinking water standards, called maximum contaminant levels for any pollutants that may have adverse effects on human health. However, we can enhance the Safe Drinking Water Act by combining many of the drinking water treatment system that serve fewer than 3,300 people with nearby systems to make it cheaper for small systems to meet federal standards, strengthening and enforcing public notification requirements about violations of drinking water standards, and banning the use of any toxic lead in new plumbing pipes, faucets, and fixtures (current law allows for fixtures with up to 10% lead content to be sold as “lead-free.”) Despite much concern and some problems, experts say that the United States has some of the world’s cleanest drinking water. Municipal water systems in the Unites States are requires to test their water regularly for a number of pollutants and to make the results available to citizens. Yet about half of us worry about our tap water and so we buy high-priced bottled water. We’re actually the world’s largest consumers of bottled water, followed by Mexico, China, and Brazil. In 2009, we spent more than $11 billion to buy billions of plastic bottles filled with basically just more than 40% tap water. It is one of the biggest, most successful schemes ever played on the American people. Bottled water uses 100 to 2,000 times more energy to make than just drinking water from the tap. Also, bottled water has very harmful effects on the environment. Every second, about 1,500 plastic water bottles are thrown away. Each year, that’s enough to encircle the globe eight times. In the United States, only about 14% of these bottles get recycled  the rest ending up in landfills, lakes, or the ocean. Manufacturing and transporting the water bottles takes huge amounts of energy. The consumer and environmental group Food & Water Watch estimates that each year more than 17 million barrels of oil are used to produce the plastic water bottled sold in the U.S. Toxic gases and liquids are released during the production of the plastic bottles and greenhouse gases ad other air pollutants are emitted by the fossil fuels burned to make them. The Fiji bottled water company is especially unscrupulous. The corporation that produces Fiji water has a 99-year lease that gives it access to an enormous aquifer on the island. But while Americans and Europeans are drinking this very expensive bottled Fiji water, half of the people on Fiji fo no have access to safe, reliable drinking water. It’s like mercantilism all over again. Health officials suggest that before drinking expensive bottled water or buying costly home water purifiers, consumers have their water tested by local health departments or private labs. Independent experts contend that unless tests show otherwise, for most U.S. urban and suburban residents served by large municipal drinking water systems, home water treatment systems are not worth their cost, and drinking expensive and environmentally harmful bottled water is unnecessary. Buying water bottles is just downright stupid.

The great majority of ocean pollution originates on land and includes oil and other toxic chemicals as well as solid waste, which threaten fish and wildlife and disrupt marine ecosystems. The key to protecting the oceans is to reduce the flow of pollution from land and air and from streams emptying into ocean waters. Coastal areas, especially wetlands, estuaries, coral reefs, and mangrove swamps, bear the brunt of our enormous inputs of pollutants and wastes into the ocean. According to a 2006 State of the Marine Environment study by the UN Environment Programme, an estimated 80% of marine pollution originates on land, and this percentage could rise significantly by 2050 if coastal populations double as projected. The report says that 80-90% of the municipal sewage from most coastlines of less-developed countries is untreated, overwhelming the marine ecosystems’ ability to break down these wastes. It is believed that China’s coastlands are so choked with algal blooms from eutrophication, that they can no longer sustain marine ecosystems. Runoff  of sewage and agricultural wastes into coastal waters introduce large quantities of nitrate and phosphate plant nutrients, which can cause explosive growths of harmful algae. These harmful algal blooms are called red, brown, or green toxic tides, and can release waterborne and airborne toxins that poison seafood, damage fisheries, kill fish-eating birds, and reduce tourism. Each year, harmful algal blooms lead to the poisoning of about 60,000 Americans who eat shellfish contaminated by algae. These plant nutrients also create oxygen-depleted zones of water off the coast. The northern area of the Gulf of Mexico can be seen from aerial views to be oxygen depleted, the third largest oxygen-depleted zone in fact, due in large part from the directly accumulated runoff from the Mississippi River basin. In 1997 ocean researchers discovered a huge swirling mass of plastic wastes in he North Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii containing plastic bags, bottles, jugs, nets, and tiny pieces of plastic the size of the U.S. state of Texas. As a long-lasting monument to the human throwaway mentality, it is now called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In 2010, scientists discovered another huge floating mass of plastic debris in the Atlantic Ocean, called the Great Atlantic Garbage Patch. Ocean pollution from oil is another huge problem. We all remember the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon blowout explosion that sent 210 million gallons (4.9 million barrels) of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for months and months. Although tragedies like this are deeply harmful, studies show that the larges source of ocean pollution from oil is urban and industrial runoff from land, but of it from leaks in pipelines and oil-handling facilities. Volatile organic hydrocarbons in oil kill many aquatic organisms immediately upon contact. Other chemicals in oil form tarlike globs that float on the surface and coat the feathers of seabirds and the fur of marine mammals, destroying their natural heat insulation and buoyancy and causing many of them to drown or die of exposure from loss of body heat. Heavy oil components that sink to the ocean floor or wash into estuaries can smother bottom-dwelling organisms such as crabs, oysters, mussels, and clams, or make them unfit for human consumption, and some spills have killed vital coral reefs. Full recovery for marine ecosystems in the ocean can take decades, and scientists estimate that current cleanup methods can recover no more than 15% of the oil from a major spill. In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound in Alaska, the largest oil spill from a tanker in U.S. waters. Exxon Mobil paid $3.8 billion in damages and clean-up costs, but recovered much of this money in tax credits and insurance payments. In 1994, a jury awarded 11,000 Alaskan fishers, cannery workers, and landowners $5 billion in punitive damages, but Exxon Mobil refused to pay. After 14 years of court appeals, Exxon lawyers persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 to reduce the punitive damages by 90% to 510 million. That same year, Exxon Mobil made $42.5 billion in profits, the largest in history for any U.S. company at the time. Disgusting. In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act, which banned single-hulled oil tankers in U.S. waters after 2010, but the oil industry got this ban delayed until 2015.

Reducing water pollution requires that we prevent it, work with nature to treat sewage, cut resource use and waste, reduce poverty, and slow population growth. Farmers can reduce nonpoint pollution by reducing soil erosion by keeping cropland covered with vegetation and sing other soil conservation methods. They can also reduce the amount of fertilizer that runs off into surface waters by using slow-release fertilizer, using no fertilizer on steeply sloped land, and planting buffer zones of vegetation between cultivated fields and nearby surface waters. Organic farming helps a lot because it does not use these fertilizers or pesticides. The Clean Water Act of 1977 and the 1987 water Quality Act form the basis of U.S. efforts to control pollution of the country’s surface waters. The Clean Water Act sets standards for allowed levels of 100 key water pollutants and requires polluters to get permits that limit how much of these various pollutants they can discharge into aquatic systems. The EPA has been experimenting with a discharge trading policy, which functions like a carbon cap-and-trade system but with water pollution discharge. However, the EPA has been lax in regulating and enforcing permits. This could also lead to the dangerous buildup of pollutants in accumulated areas. The EPA has found that a certain amount of good has been accomplished since the enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972. They include: the percentage of Americans served by community water systems that met federal health standards increased from 79% to 94%; the percentage of U.S. stream lengths found to be fishable and swimmable increased from 36% to 60% of those tested; the proportion of the U.S. population served by sewage treatment plants increased from 32% to 74%; and the annual wetland losses decreased by about 80%. Yet there’s more to be done. 45% of the country’s lakes and 40% of its streams are still too polluted for swimming or fishing, and seven out of every ten rivers is polluted from agriculture runoff, particularly from animal wastes. In 2009, the New York Times utilized the Freedom of Information Act to cite water pollution violations of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act in every U.S. state and found that one in five water treatment systems violated the Safe Drinking Water Act between 2003 and 2008, releasing sewage and chemicals such as arsenic and radioactive uranium, affecting more than 49 million Americans. Now many industries are claiming that the Clean Water Act doesn’t apply to the waterways in which they’re polluting, causing a dangerous step backward and an increase in recent levels of polluting from the uncertainty of which waterways are protected under the law. Toxic coal ash is also very difficult to regulate; and in 2009 the New York Times conducted a study of the EPA and found that 93% of the 313 coal-burning power plants that had violated the Clean Water Act between 2004 and 2009 had also avoided fines or other penalties by federal or state regulators. Some environmental scientists call for strengthening the Clean Water Act by giving it more power in the way of regulating water pollution prevention instead of focusing on end-of-pipe removal of specific pollutants. It should allow for larger and mandatory fines for violators and regulation of irrigation water quality, which is currently not regulated at all. Another suggestion is to rewrite the Clean Water Act to clarify that it covers ALL waterways (the way the Congress originally intended) so that there’s no confusion over which waterways it applies.

sediment and runoff plumes in the gulf of mexico

It is encouraging that since 1970, most of the world’s more-developed countries have enacted laws and regulations that have significantly reduced point-source pollution. These improvements were largely the result of bottom-up political pressure on elected officials by individuals and groups. On the other hand, little has been done to help less-developed countries with their water pollution. By 2020, China plans to provide all its cities with small sewage treatment plants that will make wastewater clean enough to be recycled back into the urban water supply systems, tackling both water pollution and water scarcity. At the end of the day, its a shift toward trying to totally avoiding the production of water pollution in the first place that must be our goal. The shift to pollution prevention will not take place unless citizens put political pressure on elected officials and also take actions to reduce their own daily contributions to water pollution.

My question for this chapter would be the usual how can we enforce stricter water pollution laws and regulations. But as for more recently in the Northeast Unites States, I believe that we should start looking into the problem of chemical contamination left after Hurricane Sandy flooded much of the metropolitan Tri-State area. Entire cars and half houses were underwater for a while, so who knows what kind of chemicals and toxins had leeched out of various parts of our infrastructure during those hours when much of the coastal metropolitan Tri-State area was submerged. How can we make more people become concerned for their own homes and the viability of the soil beneath them to produce food for our future? By education and much more publicity.

In the natural world, there is no waste at all. This is because anything that comes from one organism is utilized by another in some process that works to the benefit of the whole ecosystem, wastes become nutrients. Then we entered the picture. We produce so much waste material that goes unused. Solid waste contributes to pollution and represents the unnecessary consumption of resources. Hazardous waste contributes to pollution as well as to natural capital degradation, health problems, and premature deaths. Studies indicate that we could reduce our waste of potential resources and the resulting environmental harm it cases by as much as 90%. A solid waste is any unwanted or discarded material we produce that is not a liquid or gas, and it can be divided into two types. Industrial waste is produced by mines, farms, and industries that supply people with goods and services. Municipal solid waste (MSW), aka garbage or trash, consists of the combined solid waste produced by homes and workplaces other than factories. More-developed countries witness an alarming amount of MSW, particularly as they grow economically (like with China) and they buy and thrown out more and more stuff, which ends up in landfills or in incinerators. Another category of waste is hazardous or toxic waste, which threatens human health or the environment because it is poisonous, dangerously chemically reactive, corrosive, or flammable. These include industrial solvents, hospital medical waste, car batteries (containing lead and acids), household pesticides products, dry-cell batteries (containing mercury and cadmium), and incinerator ash. The two largest classes of hazardous wastes are organic compounds, like solvents, pesticides, PCBs, and dioxins) and toxic heavy metals, like lead, mercury, and arsenic. Highly radioactive waste leftover from nuclear power plant operation is also a very vexing problem that humanity must now face, as it must be stored for 10,000 to 240,000 years. After 60 years, scientists and governments still have not found a viable scientific and politically acceptable way to safely isolate these dangerous wastes. According to the UN Environment Programme, 80-90% of the world’s hazardous wastes are produced by the more-developed countries – the United States being the top producer, with its military, chemical industry, and mining industry. At least 3/4 of these materials represent unnecessary consumption of the earth’s resources; and studies show that we can reuse and recycle up to 90% of the MSW we produce and thus reduce our resource use dramatically. Although we have only 4.6% of the world’s population, we produce about 1/3 of all the solid waste on the planet. We also need to recognize that the manufacturing process from which most of our products come is laden with hidden background wastes. A desktop computer requires the combination of 700 or more different parts that were obtained from mines, oil wells, and chemical factories all over the world; and, for every 0.5 kilogram (1 pound) of electronics it contains, approximately 3,600 kilograms (8,000 pounds) of solid and liquid waste were created. The manufacturing of a single semi-conductor computer chip generates about 630 times its weight in solid and hazardous wastes. The statistics on what exactly our country produces, and subsequently wastes, are staggering. Enough tires to encircle the planet almost 3 times, enough carpet to cover the entire state of Delaware, and 274 million plastic bags every day/3,200 per second, to name a few. Most of our wastes break down very slowly, if at all. Mercury, lead, glass, plastic foam, and most plastic bottles basically take forever to break down. Aluminum cans take 500 years, plastic bags take 400 to 1,000 years, and plastic six-pack holders take 100 years.

A sustainable approach to solid waste is first to reduce it, then to reuse or recycle it, and finally to safely dispose of what’s left. Waste management is the method in which we attempt to control wastes in ways that reduce their environmental harm without seriously trying to reduce the amount fo waste produced. It basically involved sorting wastes together and putting them somewhere else. Waste reduction, on the other hand, is the method in which we produce much less waste and pollution, and the wastes we do produce are considered to be potential resources that we can reuse, recycle, or compost. It’s more of a prevention approach to tackle the undesirable side effects of waste management. Since there’s no single solution to our waste problem, analysts call for an integrated waste management, with emphasis on reduction rather than on disposal. In 2008, the EPA reported that 54% of the MSW produced in the U.S. was buried in landfills, 13% was incinerated, and 33% was either recycled or composted. Integrated waste management comes in a broad, three-step approach to dealing with how we use our stuff. First, we can change industrial processes to eliminate the use of harmful chemicals, use less of a harmful product, reduce packaging and materials in products, and make products that last longer and that are recyclable, reusable, or easy to repair. Second, we need to reduce, repair, recycle, compost, and buy reusable and recyclable products. And third, our last priority, would be to then treat waste to reduce its toxicity, and incinerate or bury waste. The idea is to make it so that as little waste ends up in the third step as possible. Reducing and reusing are preferred from an environmental standpoint because tackle the problem of waste production before it occurs. When we reduce and reuse, we are saving matter and energy resources, reducing pollution, helping to protect biodiversity, and of course saving money. There are also six strategies that industries and communities can use to reduce resource use, waste, and pollution. First, redesign manufacturing processes and products to use less material and energy. We’ve reduced the weight of a typical car by 1/4 since the 1960s, and we can do better still. Second, develop products that are easy to repair, reuse, remanufacture, compost, of recycle. Third, eliminate or reduce unnecessary packaging – the hierarchy of no packaging, reusable packaging, and recyclable packaging is a good way to start. The 37 European Union countries require the recycling of 55-80% of all packaging waste. Fourth, use fee-per-bag waste collection systems. I really like this one, and I’ve seen it implemented in Spain. If you want to use a plastic bag, you have to pay for it rather than get handed one for free at stores like here in the United States. I like this a lot because it enforces people to realize everything time they buy something the impact of that seemingly simple choice. Needless to say, everyone in Barcelona brings they own bag. Fifth, establish cradle-to-grave responsibility laws that require companies to take back various consumer products such as electronic equipment, appliances, and motor vehicles, as Japan and many European countries do. Sixth, restructure urban transportation systems to rely more on mass transit and bicycles than one cars. An urban bus can replace about 60 cars and greatly reduce amounts of material used and wastes produced.

Reusing items decreases the consumption of matter and energy resources, and reduces pollution and natural capital degradation; recycling does so to a lesser degree. Reuse involves cleaning and using material items over and over, and thus increasing the typical life span of a product. This form of waste reduction decreases the use of matter and energy resources, cuts waste and pollution (including GHG), creates local jobs, and saves money. Everyone should invest in a refillable container so they don’t have to buy drinks in throwaway plastic bottles. Denmark, Finland, and the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island have banned all containers that cannot be reused. According to the founder of reusablebags.com, Vincent Cobb, each year an estimated 500 million to 1 trillion plastic bags are used and usually discarded throughout the world. Producing them requires large amounts of oil since they’re a byproduct of petroleum production, and they take 400 to 1,000 years to break down. Less than 1% of them get recycled in the U.S. In a number of African countries, the landscape is littered with billions of plastic bags. The bags block drains and sewage systems, and can kill wildlife and livestock that eat them. They also kill plants and spread malaria by holding mini-pools of warm water where mosquito can breed. Of course, plastic bags kill the marine life that ingest them as well. Ireland has a tax of 25 cents per plastic bag, and this has reduced plastic bag litter by 90%. Bangladesh, Bhutan, parts of India, Taiwan, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, China, Australia, France, Italy, and the U.S. city of San Francisco have all banned the use of all or most types of plastic shopping bags.

Recycling involves reprocessing discarded solid materials into new, useful products. Households and workplaces produce five major types of materials that we can recycle: paper products, aluminum, steel, and some plastics  There are two ways we can reprocess these materials: primary or closed-loop recycling – materials like aluminum cans into new products of the same type, and secondary recycling – turning old materials into new products, like rubber tires into road surfacing. To make sure recycling works, items separated for recycling have to go to the right place for recycling, and businesses, governments, and individuals must complete the loop by buying products made from recycled materials. Households and businesses should implement source separation, which is separating their trash into glass, paper, metals, and certain types of plastics so that these can all be properly recycled. This is easier and better than materials recovery-facilities because MRFs require an increasing source of trash – the opposite of the intended goal. To promote separation of wastes for recycling, over 4,000 communities in the country use a pay-as-you-throw (PAUT) or pay-per-bag waste collection system in which households that don’t sort their trash properly for recycling are charged when their waste is picked up, and those who do separate their trash properly are not. Composting is another form of recycling that mimics nature’s recycling of nutrients (a principle of sustainability). Composting is using decomposer bacteria to recycle yard trimmings, vegetable food scraps, and other biodegradable organic wastes that yield organic material to be added to soil to supply plant nutrients, slow soil erosion, retain water, and improve crop yields. San Francisco actually mandates it as part of its coal to eliminate dumping any MSW in landfills by 2020. The paper and pulp industry is the world’s fifth largest energy consumer and uses more water to produce a metric ton of its product than any other industry. About 55% of the world’s industrial tree harvest is used to make paper. But, we can make paper using hemp or kenaf, rapidly growing straw-like plants. Recycling paper uses 64% less energy and produces 35% less water pollution and 74% less air pollution than starting from scratch with wood pulp; of course, it also saves trees. The National Resources Defense Council mounted a campaign in 2009 to stop the cutting down of America’s old-growth forests to produce toilet paper, and estimated that nearly 425,000 trees would be saved if every U.S. household used at least one 500 sheet toilet paper roll made from recycled paper a year. Plastics are the devil. There are about 46 different types and many plastic containers and other items are thrown away or end up as litter on roadsides and beaches. Each year they threaten terrestrial animal species and millions of seabirds, marine mammals, and sea turtles, which can mistake a plastic bag for a jellyfish, or these animals get caught in discarded plastic nets. About 80% of the plastics in the oceans are blown in from land and beaches, rivers, storm drains, and other sources, and the rest get dumped into the ocean from ocean-going garbage barges, ships, and fishing boats. Plastics discarded on beaches or dumped from ships can disintegrate into tiny particles that resemble the prey of many organisms. Since plastic in undigestible to these organisms, it builds up in their stomachs and they die from biological complications like dehydration or starvation. Currently, only about 4% by weight of all plastic wastes in the U.S. is recycled. This is because different plastics are mixed in products and difficult to separate. Scientists are looking into the production of bioplastics, made from corn, soy, sugarcane, chicken feathers, and some components of garbage, that can actually be lighter, stronger, and cheaper, as well as less energy intensive to make. In 2008, the EPA said the recycling and composting of 33% of all MSW in the U.S. reduced carbon dioxide emissions by an amount equivalent to removing the emissions of 33 million cars. Three factors inhibit reuse and recycling. First, the market prices of almost all products do not include the harmful environmental and health costs associated with producing, using, and discarding them. Second, the economic playing field is uneven because, in most countries, resource-extracting industries receive more government tax breaks and subsidies than reuse and recycling industries get. Third, the demand and thus the price paid for recycled materials fluctuates  mostly because buying goods made with recycled materials is not a priority for most governments, businesses, and individuals. We can encourage reuse and recycling by increasing subsidies and tax breaks for reusing and recycling materials and decrease subsidies and tax breaks for making items from virgin sources. The fee-per-bag is a really good way of throwing the issue of the necessity for environmental responsibility into the faces of the citizens and conditioning them to become more aware citizens rather than mindless consumers.

Technologies for burning and burying solid wastes are well developed, but burning contributes to air and water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and buried wastes eventually contribute to the pollution and degradation of land and water resources. There are more than 600 large waste-to-energy incinerators across the globe, 87 of which are in the United States and burn 13% of our MSW. Waste incineration hasn’t caught on here too much because of the excessive air pollution, citizen oppression, and an abundance of cheaper landfills that can only happen due to our largest expanse of area as a nation. About 54% of our MSW by weight is buried in landfills. Of landfills, there are two types – open dumps, which are essentially fields or holes in the ground where garbage is deposited and sometimes burned; and newer, “sanitary” landfills that spread wastes out in thin layers, compacted and covered daily with a fresh layer of clay or plastic foam to reduce leakage and keep it dry. At the end of the day, all landfills eventually leak, passing both the effects of contamination and cleanup costs on to future generations.

A sustainable approach to hazardous waste is first to produce less of it, then to reuse or recycle it, then to convert it to less hazardous materials, and finally to safely store what is left. This is the basic outline of the integrated management approach suggested by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which is fully implemented by Denmark. In Europe, about 1/3 of hazardous wastes is exchanged in clearinghouses where they’re sold as low-cost raw materials, but here in the U.S. only 10% of our hazardous goes through this process and this should be raised. Unfortunately, most e-waste recycling efforts end up creating further hazards, especially for children in developing countries, because of the carcinogenic effects of burning or stripping the raw materials and metals in e-waste. More than 70% of e-wastes end up in China, where workers are forced to inhale toxic fumes from burning plastic and acid. From this, an estimated 82% of children under the age of 6 suffer from lead poisoning. In 2008, only 18% of the e-waste in the U.S. was recycled, and up to 80% was shipped overseas to places like small port towns in China to be dangerously dismantled. The best precaution we can take to make sure no one is harmed as much by our e-waste is to reduce the amount of our e-waste, meaning not to buy as much and properly dispose of what we have. We can also detoxify hazardous wastes, physically, chemically, and biologically. Physical methods would be using charcoal or resin to filter out harmful solids, or distilling liquid wastes to separate out harmful chemicals. Chemical methods are used to convert hazardous chemicals to harmless or less harmful chemicals through chemical reactions. Chemists are testing the use of cyclodextrin, a type of sugar made from cornstarch, to remove toxic materials like solvents and pesticides from contaminated soil and groundwater. Also, the use of nanomagnets, coated in chitosan derived from the chitin in the exoskeletons of shrimp and crabs, to remove pollutants from water is being looked into. What’s really cool is bioremediation, where bacteria and enzymes help to destroy toxic or hazardous substances or convert them to harmless compounds. Here, contaminated sites are inoculated with an army of microorganisms that breakdown specific hazardous chemicals, like organic solvents, PCBs, pesticides, and oil. This method takes a little longer than the others but it costs less. Phytoremediation uses natural or genetically modified plants to absorb, filter, and remove contaminants from polluted soil and water. They’re like “pollution sponges” that can clean up pesticides, organic solvents, and radioactive or toxic metals. Specifically, phytostabilization involves plants such as willow trees and poplars to absorb chemicals and keep them from reaching grounwater or nearby surface water. Rhizofiltration is when roofs of plants like sunflowers with dangling roots on ponds or in greenhouses can absorb radioactive stronium-90 and cesium-137 and various organic chemicals. Phytodegradation is when plants such as poplars can absorb toxic organic chemicals and break them down into less harmful compounds which they store or release slowly into the air. And phytoextraction is when the roots of plants such as Indian mustard and brake ferms can absorb toxic metals such as lead, arsenic, and others and store them in their leaves. Plants can then be recycled or harvested and incinerated.Unfortunately, even with things like the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), only 5% of hazardous wastes produced in the country are regulated. We need to stop using a cradle-t0-grave system and start using cradle-to-cradle. There is about $1.7 trillion worth of cleanup costs in the country’s current Superfund sites, a prime example of the economic and environmental value of emphasizing waste reduction and pollution before it becomes a problem out in the environment and in our backyards. One of the most successful bits of legislation was the 1986 complete phasing out of using leaded gasoline in the United States. However, the Superfund is now broke after pressure from polluters caused Congress to refuse to renew the tax on oil and chemical companies that had financed it after it expired in 1995. Taxpayers, not polluters, are picking up the bill for future cleanups, and yet it’s amazing how people complain that government wants to increase taxes. If people knew the scheming done by those who make the world a worse place for everyone, I should hope they wouldn’t complain so much about the “fault” of government so that they can shift their anger to those who are really responsible for the country’s economic tumult. Although, of course, government should not genuflect so willingly to the dirty commands of these companies.

Shifting to a low-waste society requires individuals and businesses to reduce resource use and to reuse and recycle wastes at local, national, and global levels. Grassroots action has led to better solid and hazardous waste management. Look at Lois Gibbs of Love Canal. Individuals have organized grassroots citizen movements to prevent the construction of hundreds of incinerators, landfills, treatment plants for hazardous and radioactive wastes, and polluting chemical plants in or near their communities. Rather than hold onto the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”), we should think of NIABY, “not in anyone’s backyard,” or even NOPE, “not on planet earth.” The best way to deal with most toxic and hazardous waste is to produce much less of it. Environmental justice is the ideal that every person is entitled to protection from environmental hazards regardless of race, gender, age, national origin, income, social class, or any political factor. Studies have shown that the majority of waste dumps, incinerators, plants, and landfills are near the homes of lower income communities or non-whites, and they’ve also shown that in general toxic sites in white communities have been cleaned up faster and more completely than those  in Latino and African American communities. This applies internationally as well. In 1992, the Basel Convention became an international treaty that banned the more-developed countries from shipping hazardous from industrialized countries to or through other countries without their permission. In1995 the treaty was amended to outlaw all transfers of hazardous wastes from industrialized countries to less-developed countries. By 2009, the treaty had been signed by 175 countries and ratified (formally approved and implemented) by 172 – those countries that were missing were Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States. In 2000, delegates from 122 countries completed another global treaty called the Stockholm Convention on Persistant Organic Pollutants (POPs), regulating the of 12 widely used chemicals – called the dirty dozen – that can biomagnify in higher trophic levels in ecosystems. The list includes DDT and 8 other chlorine-containing persistent pesticides, PCBs, dioxins, and furans. Medical researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC have found that it is likely that every person on earth has detectable levels of POPs in their bodies. In 2000, the Swedish Parliament enacted a law that, by 2020, will ban all chemicals that are persistent in the environment and that can accumulate in living tissue based on a guilty until proven innocent risk assessment that industries must perform to prove their products’ safety – currently the opposite of of the policy in the U.S. and other countries. Many school cafeterias, restaurants, national parks, and corporations are participating in a rapidly growing “zero waste” movement to reduce, reuse, and recycle in order to lower their waste outputs by up to 80%. The residents of East Hampton out on Long Island cut their solid waste production by 85%.

To prevent pollution and reduce waste, people need to understand some crucial concepts. Everything is connected. There is no “away” when we throw things away. Polluters and producers should pay for the wastes they produce. We can mimic nature by reusing, recycling, composting, or exchanging most of the municipal solid wastes we produce. Biomimicry is the science and art of discovering and using natural principles to help solve human problems. For example, scientists have studied termite mounds to learn how to cool buildings naturally. Biomimicry is at the heart of the three principles of sustainability. Biomimicry also encourages companies to come up with new, environmentally beneficial, and less resource intensive chemicals, processes, and products that they can sell worldwide. In addition,, these companies convey a better image to consumers based on actual results rather than public relations campaigns. Biomimicry involves two major steps. The first is to observe certain changes in nature and to study how natural systems have responded to such changing conditions over many millions of years. The second step is to try to copy or adapt these responses within human systems in order to help us deal with various environmental challenges. With solid and hazardous wastes, the good web serves as a natural model for responding to the growing problem of these wastes, where in nature one thing’s waste, or output, becomes another thing’s input – endlessly recycling on and on in a circle of sustainable life.

My question for this chapter would be – how can we revamp our economy to work starting with the solution rather than the problem? We can grow a green economy based on healing the problems we now face, literally make money off of clean up and restoration. In a side note, there might have been a bacteria discovered that can break down plastics faster than normal rates in the open. What can we do to capitalize on this potentially holy grail of environmental problem solving? More to the point, how can we start making this green, plentitude economy, a reality? I recently attended the NYC Mayoral Forum on Sustainability, where the mayoral candidates expressed their proposed (rough draft) plans for what they would do in the way of sustainability for the city if they were mayor. A breath of fresh air came in the form of Bill de Blasio, who said “We need to make recycling a way of life.” It’s this kind of attitude, of stark and swift change, that we must embrace to really get our act together. (UPDATE: Let’s see if he keeps his promises.)