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Down in the Dumps: Is There a Garbage Crisis in America?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Martin V. Melosi
Martin V. Melosi
Affiliation:
University of Houston
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Extract

The pariah garbage barge on a two-month odyssey with 3,100 tons of unwanted trash drew throngs of sightseers and reporters Sunday as it anchored just outside New York Harbor while city officials decide its fate.

The trek of the Mobro is well known. On 22 March 1987 the fully loaded garbage barge left Islip, New York, looking for a landfill that would take its unwanted cargo. Five states—North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida—as well as three countries, Mexico, Belize, and the Bahamas, had banned the barge from unloading. Reluctantly, the captain turned the Mobro toward home, where it received an unceremonious, and dispirited, welcome.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 5 , Special Issue 1: Urban Public Policy: Historical Modes and Methods , January 1993 , pp. 100 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1993

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References

Notes

1. National League of Cities and United States Conference of Mayors, Cities and the Nation's Disposal Crisis (Washington, D.C., March 1973)Google Scholar, 1. See also Greenberg, Michael R. et al., Solid Waste Planning in Metropolitan Regions (New Brunswick, N.J., 1976), 11—22Google Scholar; Berry, Brian J. L. and Horton, Frank E., Urban Environmental Management (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974), 376–77.Google Scholar

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9. Projections of eight pounds per capita for the 1980s was a miscalculation. Rathje argues that even four pounds per capita may be too high, estimating instead about three pounds. See Van Tassel, Alfred J., ed., Our Environment: The Outlook of 1980 (Lexington, Mass., 1973), 460Google Scholar; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 191; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Characterization of Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 1990 Update; Executive Summary” (Washington, D.C., 13 June 1990), 3Google Scholar; Rathje, “Rubbish!” 101.

10. See Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 22ff.

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14. EPA, “Solid Waste Dilemma: Appendices A-B-C,” A.A-1 to A.A-48.

15. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 156–58. For an alternative perspective on the widely held view that collection service generally has been inadequate in neighborhoods heavily populated with minorities and/or the poor, see Jones, Bryan D., Service Delivery in the City (New York, 1980), 118–35.Google Scholar

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24. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 219.

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29. Figures vary widely on what constitutes a landfill for purposes of evaluation. One report set the number of MSW landfills in 1986 at 9,284, with a sharp drop by 1988. Another stated that in 1980 the United States had 93,384 landfills—77,087 industrial sites and 15,577 municipal facilities. The EPA figure of 6,000 seems to reflect accurately the total MSW fills, taking into account the heavy attrition in sites during the 1980s. See “Municipal Solid Waste Management: An Integrated Approach,” State Factor 15 (June 1989): 2Google Scholar; National Solid Waste Management Association, “Landfill Capacity in the Year 2000” (Washington, D.C., 1989), 1–3Google Scholar; Repa, Edward W., “Landfill Capacity: How Much Really Remains,” Waste Alternatives 1 (December 1988): 32Google Scholar; Murarka, Ishwar P., Solid Waste Disposal and Reuse in the United States, vol. 1 (Boca Raton, Fla., 1987), 5Google Scholar; “Land Disposal Survey,” Waste Age 12 (January 1981): 65.Google Scholar

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31. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Facing America's Trash: What Next for Municipal Solid Waste? (Washington, D.C., 1989), 273–74Google Scholar. See also Long, The Problem of Waste Disposal, 9–10.

32. Melosi, “Waste Management,” 12; Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 47–49; Greenberg et al., Solid Waste Planning in Metropolitan Regions, 8; Kharbanda, O. P. and Stallworthy, E. A., Waste Management (New York, 1990), 67.Google Scholar

33. According to Harvey Alter, manager of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Resources Policy Department, there may be as few as two plants in the country that densify. Letter, Harvey Alter to Martin Melosi, 19 April 1991.

34. EPA, “Solid Waste Dilemma: Background Document,” 2.D-1–2.D-3, 2.D-5. See also Alter, Harvey, “The History of Refuse-Derived Fuels,” Resources and Conservation 15 (1987): 251–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alter, , “Energy Conservation and Fuel Production by Processing Solid Wastes,” Environmental Conservation 4 (Spring 1977): 11–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van Tassel, ed., Our Environment, 464–65; Tillman, David A., Rossi, Amadeo J., and Vick, Katherine M., Incineration of Municipal and Hazardous Solid Wastes (New York, 1989), 1Google Scholar, 59–61, 113–17; Long, The Problem of Waste Disposal, 11, 15–16, 18, 20–21; Zralek, Robert, “Energy from Waste,” APWA Reporter 48 (August 1981): 15–16Google Scholar; Godfrey, K. A., Jr., “Municipal Refuse: Is Burning Best?” Civil Engineering 55 (April 1985): 53–56Google Scholar; Sokol, David, “Contracting for Energy,” American City and County/Resource Recovery (1988)Google Scholar: RR22, RR24.

35. Schwab, “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” 7.

36. Hershkowitz, Allen, “Burning Trash: How It Could Work,” Technology Review (July 1987): 27Google Scholar. When the article was written, Hershkowitz was director of solid waste for INFORM, a New York environmental research group. He is now employed by the NRDC.

37. Dioxin is a generic term for approximately 75 chemical compounds with the technical name polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs). PCDFs, or furans, are a related group of 135 chemicals often found in association with PCDDs. Both can be released into the air as a residue of burning. While the potential effects of dioxins and furans on humans are serious, there has been substantial debate on the conclusiveness of testing because measurement of exposure is imprecise, separating the effects of dioxins from other toxic substances is difficult, and the latency period for potential effects may be as long as twenty years or more. See McCarthy, James E., “Incinerating Trash: A Hot Issue, Getting Hotter,” Congressional Research Service Review 7 (April 1986): 19–20Google Scholar. See also Tillman, Rossi, and Vick, Incineration of Municipal and Hazardous Wastes, x; Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes, Inc., “Incineration: The Burning Issue of the 80's” (July 1985), 11 — 13, 26—41; Janet Marinelli and Gail Robinson, “Garbage: No Room at the Bin,” The Progressive (December 1981): 24–25; Institute for Local Self-Reliance, “An Environmental Review of Incineration Technologies” (October 1986): 1–43.

38. Institute for Local Self-Reliance, “An Environmental Review of Incineration Technologies,” 8. See also Seldman, Neil, “Waste Management: Mass Burn Is Dying,” Environment 31 (September 1989): 42–44.Google Scholar

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40. Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 222; Melosi, , Coping with Abundance (New York, 1985), 91–97Google Scholar, 185–89; Hoy, Suellen M. and Robinson, Michael C., Recovering the Past: A Handbook of Community Recycling Programs, 1890–1945 (Chicago, 1979), 4Google Scholar, 8–10, 15–19, 22.

41. Seldman, “Waste Management,” 43–44. See also Schwab, “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” 9; Curlee, T. Randall, “Plastics Recycling: Economic and Institutional Issues,” Conservation and Recycling 9 (1986): 335–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; EPA, Recycling Works! (Washington, D.C., January 1989)Google Scholar; Basta, Nicholas, “A Renaissance in Recycling,” High Technology 5 (October 1985): 32–39Google Scholar; Goldoftas, Barbara, “Recycling: Coming of Age,” Technology Review (November-December 1987): 30–35Google Scholar, 71; Magnuson, Anne, “Recycling Gains Ground,” American City & County/Resource Recovery (1988)Google Scholar, RR10. Recycling is already a major component of waste programs in Europe and Japan. In fact, the Japanese are the world's leader in the field. See Hershkowitz, “Burning Trash,” 28.

42. “Municipal Solid Waste Management,” 6.

43. See NSWMA, “Solid Waste Disposal Overview” (1988), 2; Cynthia Pollock, “There's Gold in Garbage,” Across the Board (March 1987), 37; “Municipal Solid Waste Management,” 7; “Newark Claims East Coasts’ Largest Recycling Program,” World Wastes 31 (December 1988): 47–49.Google Scholar

44. Waste minimization is a broader term than waste reduction. It appears in the 1984 amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 and includes waste reduction, recycling, and the treatment of wastes after they are generated. According to Kirsten U. Oldenburg and Joel S. Hirschhorn, “Waste minimization combines the concepts of both prevention and control and its goal is generally understood to be the avoidance of land disposal of hazardous wastes regulated under RCRA.” See , Oldenburg and Hirschhorn, , “Waste Reduction: A New Strategy to Avoid Pollution,” Environment 29 (March 1987): 17–20Google Scholar, 39–45. Unlike the various disposal options, waste reduction and waste minimization are moving into relatively uncharted waters. In a society conditioned to deal with its waste problems from the “back end,” “front-end” solutions go beyond technical fixes and management efficiencies toward lifestyle and behavioral changes. See Colten, Craig, “Historical Development of Waste Minimization,” Environmental Professional 11 (1989): 94–99Google Scholar; Ghassemi, Masood, “Waste Reduction: An Overview,” Environmental Professional 11 (1989): 100—116Google Scholar; EPA, “Waste Minimization: Environmental Quality with Economic Benefits” (Washington, D.C., October 1987).

45. “Garbage at the Crossroads,” Chicago Tribune, 1 February 1984, 1.

46. James Cook, “Not in Anybody's Backyard,” Forbes, 28 November 1988, 172.

47. The notion that refuse was a health hazard grew out of English studies in the mid-nineteenth century that linked communicable disease to filthy environmental conditions. This revelation led to the use of “environmental sanitation” to combat disease. After 1880 “contagionists” made great strides in convincing sanitarians and public health officials that many diseases had a bacteriological cause, and environmental sanitation, while still in practice, was subordinated to more modern epidemic-combatting practices. See Melosi, Garbage in the Cities, 12, 26–33, 80–84, 113–14, 153–55, 197–207.

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50. The cities in the study were: Camden, New Jersey; Middletown and Akron, Ohio; Pekin and Berwyn, Illinois; Kansas City, Missouri; Covington, Kentucky; Gainesville, Florida; and New Orleans and Oklahoma City.

51. Berenyi, Eileen Brettler, “Contracting Out Refuse Collection: The Nature and Impact of Change,” Urban Interest 3 (1981): 30–42Google Scholar. Municipal collection tended to predominate in the South during the 1970s, while franchise collection was much more common in the West. See Savas, “Solid Waste Collection in Metropolitan Areas,” in Ostrom, Elinor, ed., The Delivery of Urban Services (Beverly Hills, 1976), 211–13Google Scholar, 219–21, 228. The question of efficiency of private service has been tested in various studies. Several claimed that private collection is cheaper, although economies of scale play an important role. Small-scale systems of fewer than 1,000 pickup units have shown a diseconomy. See Collins, John N. and Downes, Bryant T., “The Effect of Size on the Provision of Public Services: The Case of Solid Waste Collection in Smaller Cities,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 12 (March 1977): 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bennett, James T. and Johnson, Manuel H., “Public Versus Private Provision of Collective Goods and Services: Garbage Collection Revisited,” Public Choice 34 (1979): 55–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edwards, Franklin R. and Stevens, Barbara J., “The Provision of Municipal Sanitation Services by Private Firms,” Journal of Industrial Economics 27 (December 1978): 144CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marlow, Julia, “Private Versus Public Provision of Refuse Removal Service: Measures of Citizen Satisfaction,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 20 (March 1985): 355–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fitzgerald, Michael R., “The Promise and Performance of Privatization: The Knoxville Experience,” Policy Studies Review 5 (February 1986): 606–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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56. Frank P. Grad, “The Role of the Federal and State Governments,” in Savas, Organisation and Efficiency of Solid Waste Collection, 169.

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65. Dombrowski, “Reilly Predicts More Regs and Higher Disposal Costs,” 39. See also EPA, “Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda for Action,” 8–11.

66. Kovacs, “Legislation and Involved Agencies,” 19.

67. Menell, “Beyond the Throwaway Society,” 674.