No Loss for Words

The State of Washington determined last year that our state needed to reduce the amount of material deposited in the waste stream (garbage).  They passed a bill in the legislature that set the stage for cities like Seattle to develop local ordinances making it illegal to use Styrofoam clamshells, plastic food and beverage containers and enabling them to levy “Green” fees for plastic bags.  Their intent was to reduce the consumption of not just plastic things, but clearly biodegradable items as well.  Even though paper bags are not covered by the Seattle ordinance, they will be in the next wave.

I prefer to look at the massive volume of waste as an opportunity for a business rather than a penalty.

I look at the massive volume of waste we deposit in land fills and see millions of dollars worth of product being buried in the ground.  If that bothered the legislature a lot, they should have offered incentives to change behavior rather than penalties.

I remember the time when there were people at the dump that salvaged much of the stuff we dumped.  The trucks dumped the garbage on the ground and the salvage sorters jumped all over it.

Today, we encapsulate our garbage in plastic bags inside plastic bags.  Then, we bury it in the ground in a dry landfill where no oxidation takes place.  No significant biodegrading is taking place when there is not water or oxygen; particularly when these plastic bags are left intact.

I make no claim of ownership to the idea that at a minimum, we should be shredding the garbage bags to facilitate oxidation of the contents. 

But there is more to this idea as well.

The shredding would allow a machine to separate different types of waste so that those items that are clearly biodegradable can be composted, while the metals, plastics and other non-biodegradable items would be separated and reprocessed.  For materials that are organic, but not particularly biodegradable, we would incinerate and capture the energy in a co-generation plant.  It might be that we don’t need land fills.

Certainly there are issues to be dealt with regarding the burning, but this whole process could be a business opportunity rather than a business penalty.  This would be a system that is the friendliest to the environment.  Why isn’t Greg Nickels pitching sorting and incinerating?

I would offer tax credits to the companies that developed the plants to move this plan ahead.  I might offer public land to set up the plants as well.

We pay millions to transport our garbage out of the region.  We pay the railroad and the county that receives the trash.  If my system turns waste into a marketable commodity, the value of your garbage could reduce or eliminate the cost to the consumer, rather than creating additional burdens. 

Since nobody in our region is talking about this idea, I doubt the publicly stated goal is the real one they don’t want you to know about. 

What do you think?  Does my idea have merit or am I clueless?

Posted on August 6, 2008 at 8:47 am in Environmental, Snohomish County Political Commentary   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL