The Garbage Problem in America

The Garbage Problem in America

I. The Growth of the Waste Stream

Today's generation have been taught to be wasteful. We produce enormous quantities of waste, then try to bury it or burn it and forget it. But it cannot be forgotten. It washes up on our beaches, it reappears as air pollution, it creeps into our water supply; it comes back to haunt us. A throw-away society is not a sustainable society.

A garbage crisis is at hand. As a nation, we have begun to worry that the growing mounds of wastes will only continue to increase as the means of disposal become further restricted. Government agencies and public officials are urgently trying to find a solution. The waste dilemma has become the centerpiece of the politics of garbage.

The mood of the crisis manifests itself in countless ways, including attempts to export the problem, here or abroad. Numerous municipalities, counties, and states, particularly those with heavier concentrations of industry and greater urban density, have attempted to send their waste to less dense, often poorer areas. This has created a garbage war between states. California seeks to dispose in Arizona, New York looks to Vermont, and Minnesota makes a move on Iowa. New Jersey, especially, has been an active exporter, probing the possibilities of dumping its waste in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. These states though constrained by the commerce clause of the Constitution, have nevertheless sought to pass legislation to halt New Jersey's aggressive export policy.

But it is the city of Philadelphia and the saga of its ash barge that provides perhaps the striking example of this form of garbage imperialism. During the 1980s, Philadelphia sought to rely on ...

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...er 1946, p. 103.

As described by the American Society of Civil Engineers

Cited in Third Pollution: The National Problem of Solid Waste Disposal, William E. Small, New York, 1971.

Franklin Associates, Ltd. The Role of Recycling in Integrated Solid Waste Management to the Year 2000, Prepared for Keep America Beautiful, Inc., Stamford, CT: KAB, September, 1994, Chapter 6, Appendix I.

Franklin Associates, Ltd., ibid.

Richard Bishop Consulting, Ltd., Cost Reduction Opportunities in New Jersey Curbside Recycling Programs, prepared for the New Jersey Office of Recycling, October, 1990, p. 9.

Roy F. Weston, Inc., Value Added to Recyclable Materials in the Northeast, prepared for the Northeast Recycling Council, May 8, 1994, pp. 2-5.

Andrew Reamer, "The Economic Development Benefits of Recycling," Economic Development Commentary, Winter 1991, pp. 20-29.