Recycling, by the National Commission on Supplies and Shortages. Reprinted as a pamphlet by U.S. EPA, publication #SW-601, 1977, free, ask your congressperson or regional EPA office for copies to circulate. Recyclers and energy activists should take the time to become familiar with the contents of this pamphlet. Implementation of the simple and straightforward recommendations it contains could reverse some of the worst trends in the web of degenerative processes that are progressively strangling our culture. Best of all, recycling could be transitioned from a break-even proposition in most communities to a position of prominence as a major materials supplier to a revitalized, more self-reliant economy. The Commission's recommendations: 1) End tax subsides such as percentage depletion allowances which currently be!lefit producers who use virgin materials. 2) Continue to remove or relax regulations that discriminate against procurement, processing, and transport of recycled materials. 3) Impose product disposal charges or excise taxes, which would be added to the price of items that are routinely a disposal problem-containers, packaging, paper, even cars. Funds collected would be used to pay collection, processing, and storage costs for dealing appropriately with the materials when they become wastes, as they must eventually. 4) Base resource recovery on source separation; do not invest in high-technology operations that try to separate garbage after . it is thoroughly mixed. I especially liked the section on product charge legislation. It's hard to believe that a jerry-built system of subsidy/supports is about all that props up our rickety, deficitridden economy, but it's true. Or maybe the two (supports and deficits) are really just two halves of the same progressively deadening reality. In any event, the way out-a way outhas got to be to stop the daily replication of this flabby-minded, irresponsible, mistaken, misdirected, and misguided ripoff of the natural world, and to set ourselves up to recover and use what we already have all around us, in abundance. -Daniel Knapp EPA Monographs: The Leachate Damage Assessment Series. EPA/530/SW509,514,517 (3 volumes, 1976). Case studies of the Sayville Disposal Site in Islip, NY, the Fox Valley site in Aurora, Illinois, and the People's Avenue site in Rockford, Illinois. Also: Hazardous Waste Disposal Damage Reports; Documents #1, 2 and 3. (3 vols., 1976) EPA Publication Nos. PB 261-155,156,157. Taken together, these short narratives form a valuable historical record of what happens when hazardous and offensive materials originating in disposal sites migrate to other locations, permanently damaging wells and causing destruction of aquifers and streams. Generally speaking, what happens is that feeble and inadequate attempts are made to compensate people (often low-income rural residents) whose water supplies are destroyed. While a potable water supply is eventually restored, sometimes more than a year later, the cost includes annexation to the city which generated the wastes that destroyed the water supply, and hookup to the city's remotely controlled water system. Along the way, a natural system is replaced by a human-made substitute; the exchange is greased by money. Recovery of costs is up to those damaged; recovery of damages is rarely more than a small fraction of what is asked. Public bodies and landfill operators often deny responsibility. There are no examples of air pollution damage in the stories I read from this series, but the outline would probably be the same. What I take from this is that no one can May 1980 RAIN Page 11 e Schatz's recycling _poster series commissioned by Oregon Departent of Environmental Quality someone, somewhere, to find some way of putting hazardous and toxic wastes "out of sight, out of mind." The EPA materials agree with this conclusion: The problems associated with improper land disposal of hazardous wastes-unlike the problems of air and water pollutionhave not been widely recognized by the public, although the damages may be as severe and difficult to remedy. In addition, the hazardous waste disposal problem continues to become even more significant, as the.progressive implementation of air and water pollution control programs, ocean dumping bans, and cancellation of pesticide registrations results in increased tonnages of land-disposed wastes, with adverse impact on public health and the environment. The problem is manifested in groundwater contamination via leachate, surface water contami~tion via runoff, air pollution via open burning, evaporation, sublimation and wind erosion, poisonings via direct contact and through the food chain, and fires and explosions at land disposal sites. (Hazardous Waste Disposal Damage Reports, U.S. EPA Publication No. SW-151.3. 1976. P. iii) In other words, "buyer beware." The operation and siting of every landfill, incinerator, or other "disposal facility" should be scrutinized from every possible angle, all in the context of a hardheaded insistence that source separation, source reduction, and techniques such as product disposal charges be tried first, and become the standard against which all competing systems are judged. The reverse is true now: it is garbage disposal that is the standard, and so it will be until an aroused public puts an "end to the trend." ' -Daniel Knapp afford to ignore threats to their local life- ~~e1fJ,j,~,-J, support systems caused by the need of ~~~~~
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz