Page 20 RAIN October 1980 The "out of sight, out of mind" ethic is powerfully reinforced in many areas by regulations that prohibit or discourage salvage. It is difficult to understand why this should be so, since prevention of salvage operates to reduce local employment, increase waste flows, shorten the working life of landfills, destroy or lock up embodied energy contained in materials, and guarantee contamination of everything with everything else. Valuable resources are destroyed, and the people are taxed to pay for it. At the level of the dump, the prohibition is not usually supported with a list of reasons. Instead, what people see is a sign saying "No Salvage." It is obvious that there is no point in asking questions of a sign, and for most people the sign is enough to prevent further inquiry. Those who take the time to find out may discover that the prohibition is backed by a local ordinance, which can be looked up in the county or city code. But finding the legal backing still doesn't explain the prohibition; laws are not reasons, after all. The matter becomes more perplexing still when it is remembered that the oldtime pattern wast o salvage everything that could be salvaged before burning and eventually covering the remainder. The small dump with a local, often resident operator was the normal ultimate.disposal system before the current era of extensive regulation and solid waste bureaucratization. Thus it is tempting to look outside the. localities for the source of pressure to prohibit salvage and to conclude that, left to themselves, local populations act to minimize waste. Working at or near landfills and talking with the people who use them reinforces this idea. Again and again, you hear someone say: "Now why would anyone want to throw that away!" Where salvage and picking is allowed, moreover, a salvage worker soon learns that he or she can set materials aside for recycling or resale with an 80-90% chance for cooperation and compliance. Most people are glad to see the materials saved from destruction; they do not like the idea of being forced to waste things, and they adapt quite rea.dily to changed circU:mstances that permit more aggressive recycling and salvage. If people gain employment ;md solid waste disposal costs are reduced, so much the better! The United States Environmental Protection Agency publishes hundreds of titles on solid wastes, and many on landfills, but there is nothing on landfill salvage. There is an eight-volume matched set of book.s, available free.and complete with flowcharts and engineered systems layouts for a variety of proprietary mechanized "resource recovery" plants, including prominent mention of manufacturer's trade names, but there is no manual for'setting up frontend recycling at a landfill or transfer station, no review of tools and technology for "surface-mining," nO'model contracts with local producer co-ops or small recycling contractors. • . Most of the EPA's material that does relate to salvaging is oriented to marketing, not collection, and often the "salvage" referred to is machine processing of mixed wastes, not metals highgrading or wood salvage or soils reclamation. And so, although landfill salvage and scavenging has never died out entirely in the United States, there is no systematic acknowledgement that it still exists as a practice or a possibility, and there are no operational statistics, no design reviews, no case studies of successful enter- • prises-in short, there is an informational void in the EPA's otherwise voluminous field of information on solid wastes management. Sanitary Landfill Design and Operation is the basic how-to manual that EPA's Office of Solid Waste Management uses to spread the gospel about approved sanitary landfilling prac,tices. Most of the book is aimed at speedy and efficient disposal, with drawings showing a variety of different burial techniques, photos of compacting and spreading equipment, and even such details as dosage rates for p~sticides to kill off insects and make·the landfill that much more "sanitary." The booklet has been available since 1972, and has been reprinted,at least once. Total distribution is unknown, but it is probably fairly concentrated among solid waste and public works officialdom in city and county administrations across the country. Sanitary Landfill Design and Operation does not deviate much from the apparent reluctance of USEPA to give landfill salvage its due: there is less than half a page on the subject, and there are no illustrations at all. Far worse than the lack of mention, though,.is the misinformation, ignorance, and sheer prejudice that the authors manage to convey in the few short paragraphs where salvage is mentioned. Almost everything they say about the subject is questionable, wrong, or self-contradictory. The section on "Salvage and Scavenging" is the last in the chapter on Landfill Operation1 right after "Fires." It is worth quoting, and critiquing, in full. Salvaging usable materials from solid waste is laudable in concept, but it should be allowed only if a sanitary landfill has been designed to permit this operation, and appropriate processing and storage facilities have been provided. (p. 38) The authors to not tell us where to go to see an acceptably designed salvaging facility, however, nor do they give us any guidance in deciding ":hat "appropriate processing and storage facilities" might 1 be like. We already know from an examination of EPA titles on solid waste that there is no other publication, manual, or guide available. Scavenging, sorting through wastes to recover seemingly valuable items, must be strictly prohibited. (p. 38) · Why use the diminuitive word "seemingly" to qualify valuable items? Experience shows that even minimal labor-intensive frontend recycling systems at moderate-sized landfills (250-300 tons per day) can generate revenues of $5,000 to $8,000 per month with virtually no capital investment. Monthly tonnage diversions can be as high as 150 or more, and considering that white goods (stoves, refrigerators, etc.), metals in general, structural lumber, firewoodsized logs, rugs and furniture, etc:, are among the most difficult wastes to push and compact as well as the most desirable and dependable producers of revenue, the over~ll positive impact of largescale front-end recycling on the operations of the landfill could be very significant. Admittedly, sorting through mixed wastes does not sound like a very palatable job, but in practice it's not all that bad, and certainly it is never boring. Besides, there are cleaner alternatives that can minimize the need to hand-sort mixed wastes. The most obvious is the use of a buy-back or reduced-charge system within the landfill to monetarily reward effective recycling behavior, coupled with a program to teach the public to use source-separation procedures and systems. All salvage proposals must be thoroughly evaluated to determine their economic and practical feasibility. Salvaging is usually more effectively accomplished at the point where waste is generated or at specially-built plants. (p. 38) Here agin, something is given, but even more is taken away. Anyone who wants to salvage will have to write a proposal, but no criteria are given to judge I/economic and practical feasibility," no suggestions offered on how to conduct a fair and open competition for salvage rights. The next sentence is prejudicial and ignorant of reality: it is precisely because source separation is not effectively practiced at the point of waste generation that landfill salvage becomes necessary as a last resort.
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