Striving for zero waste
By Alex Bauer, staff writer
Daily Messenger
Posted Aug 04, 2009 @ 03:59 PM
Seneca, N.Y. —
Zero waste. On the surface the idea seems perfect. Everything’s
recycled or composted, which leads to cleaner air, no more trash and
no more landfills.
That’s what members of the Finger Lakes Zero Waste Coalition are after.
The coalition is a not-for-profit, Geneva-based environmentalist group
founded in November 2008 in response to Casella Waste System’s
proposal to build a pilot waste-to-fuel project at the Ontario County
landfill in the town of Seneca.
“Zero waste seems like a ridiculously ambitious goal because it is
fairly new to our thinking, and because the amount of waste we
Americans produce right now is overwhelming and our methods of
handling it are completely outdated,” said Katherine Bourbeau, the
group’s founder. “The good news is that zero waste offers really
simple, low-tech solutions that are easily implemented.”
Zero waste, as Bourbeau puts it, is “striving to reduce waste disposal
in landfills and incinerators to zero.”
To achieve it, Bourbeau and the rest of the coalition offer these
suggestions: getting food and compostable material out of the waste
stream; educating yourself and others to learn the values of
recycling; and holding manufacturers responsible for the entire life
of their product, meaning companies get their stuff back when
consumers are done with it and find ways to use it again.
Coalition member Cynthia Hsu said her group has held forums to educate
“the public about alternatives to dumping everything into a landfill”
and requested “a seat at the table to help develop the county’s 10-
year solid waste management plan to ensure that it incorporates zero
waste concepts” to reach its goals.
The city of San Francisco plans to reach 75 percent zero waste — or 75
percent landfill diversion — by 2010. Doug Knipple, president of the
Finger Lakes coalition, thinks the city can be used as a model for
Ontario County.
“They are taking anything compostable and composting that and
returning it to the land as compost for fertilizer,” he said. “And
they have aggressive goals to go up to 85 percent and approaching 100
percent.”
While Knipple isn’t sure if actually attaining zero waste is a
reality, he sees no reason why getting close isn’t.
Finger Lakes Zero Waste has “focused on what we consider misguided
projects at the Ontario County facility,” Knipple said. “Our long-term
goal is to try to encourage and implement zero waste principles both
locally and nationally.”
Piling up
The county landfill brought in 597,382 tons of waste in 2007. Rockland
County, which is north of New York City, sent the most municipal waste
— 89,063 tons — this way. Ontario County contributed 62,849 tons of
municipal waste. Also contributing to the landfill were Connecticut
and Canada.
Trash from outside the county means more trucks on the road, said the
coalition’s Knipple.
Members of his group have often expressed their concerns about the
amount of trash that comes to the landfill.
“I don’t appreciate their aesthetics, and I don’t appreciate what they
do to our roads, and I don’t appreciate the increased driving hazard
that they represent,” Knipple said.
Ontario County Administrator Geoff Astles called the argument about
the county accepting waste from outside its borders “irrelevant.”
“First of all the county decided to allow outside waste to come into
the landfill years before we even contemplated leasing operations to
Casella or anybody else,” he said. “The other reason that the argument
is somewhat irrelevant is there are fixed costs to operate a landfill.
There is no way that the county could afford to operate the landfill
on its own and only take county garbage.”
The county gets $2 million annually for Casella for the first 600,000
tons of waste brought to the landfill. It receives approximately $2.37
for each ton taken in after that.
“Besides there being some reduction in using that revenue to lower our
cost to the taxpayers, we’ve also avoided all that additional cost
that we would’ve incurred if we would’ve run the landfill ourselves,”
Astles said.
The additional costs Astles refers to include purchasing equipment —
bulldozers and trash compacters — and staffing the landfill. Astles
estimates those additional costs would amount to $1 million annually.
Without the money it collects from Casella, the county’s 2009 property-
tax rate would have been $7.21 per $1,000 of assessed value instead of
the current $6.24 rate, he said. In 2008, the rate would have been
$7.64 instead of $6.36 and in 2007 it would have been $7.76 instead of
$6.38, according to the county administrator.
Jerry Leone, Casella spokesman, claims his employer is already doing
the “green” things for which the Zero Waste Coalition is pushing.
Leone said Casella is the largest recycler of organics in New England,
and said the company is “in the middle of a pilot program with the
Boston area where we’re working on recovering food waste and food
scraps.”
“On one hand, I don’t know if the Zero Waste Coalition really realizes
what we’re already doing and the steps that we’re taking,” he added.
Leone, like Knipple, said he isn’t sure if zero waste is an attainable
goal.
“I think it’s well on the way to where I think we need to be as a
society, a region and as a country,” he said. “We’re getting that much
closer to where we want to be. I don’t know if zero waste is entirely
possible, but certainly large reductions to what we have now are.”
A ‘nice word’?
The coalition has focused its efforts on two Casella projects since
its founding. The first is the landfill operator’s pilot waste-to-fuel
project in the old recycling center at the landfill. The project has
been approved at the county level, and Casella is waiting on approval
of a Research, Development and Demonstration Permit from the state
Department of Environmental Conservation before it gets under way.
The debate between the two parties has been whether the waste-to-fuel
project is incineration, which is the burning of waste.
Casella has labeled the process as gasification and has claimed time
and time again that it isn’t incineration. The coalition disputes that
claim.
“Gasification is a nice word. So, even though it sounds relatively
benign, it’s an incinerator,” said Hsu.
David Baker, D-city of Canandaigua and chairman of the county’s Solid
Waste Management Committee, supports Casella’s stance.
“Technically, this is not an incinerator. There is a method of burning
the product that would appear to be incineration, but it’s not really
the way it’s put out to be.”
As for Casella’s other project, the landfill operator was supposed to
build a sewer line to carry leachate — the liquid that pools in the
bottom of the landfill — from the landfill to the city of Geneva
wastewater treatment plant.
Casella called off the project July 12 because it couldn’t reach a
leachate-acceptance agreement with the city of Geneva. The city
initially had agreed to accept the leachate when Casella began
operating the landfill in 2003.
On July 1, Matt Horn, Geneva city manager, said concerns from the
public over the leachate’s content caused City Council to rethink
accepting the substance.
“They’re expressing some reservations about accepting the leachate,”
he said. “I think City Council just heard a lot of public input as to
questions about content of leachate. The issues today that City
Council is reviewing center around that.”
Chris Costello, another member of the Finger Lakes Zero Waste
Coalition, thinks his group had something to do with that.
“Oh absolutely,” he said when asked if the coalition was responsible
for the City Council rethinking its original decision. “Finger Lakes
Zero Waste, I think, was instrumental in putting an end to that.”
Despite the fact that Casella won’t build a sewer line from the
landfill to Geneva, it will continue to truck the leachate to Geneva’s
wastewater treatment center.
Coalition member Hsu thinks Casella should pre-treat leachate and
remove contaminants before it leaves the landfill.
While Leone acknowledged the fact that Casella doesn’t do any leachate
treatment before shipping the substance to Geneva, he did say that his
company tests the leachate extensively each month to meet the city of
Geneva’s leachate regulations. And, Casella tests its leachate twice a
year to meet state Department of Environmental Conservation regulations.
But Costello and other coalition members, mainly Knipple and Hsu,
think city residents had a lot to do with Casella’s withdrawal as well.
At a City Council meeting earlier this summer, dozens of residents
spoke out against the leachate line.
“I don’t think this issue would have been brought to the public’s
attention without Zero Waste’s persistence,” Hsu said. “There are a
lot of people in the city of Geneva who, if they had not gotten up and
spoken at that City Council meeting, things may have been different.”
To see the E-edition:
http://archive.mpnewspapers.com/pdfEdition_show_pdf.php?file=08042009_DLY_A05.pdf
http://archive.mpnewspapers.com/pdfEdition_show_pdf.php?file=08042009_DLY_A01.pdf
Online story:
http://www.mpnnow.com/homepage/x2121670853/Striving-for-zero-waste
Forwarded by:
Finger Lakes Zero Waste Coalition
P.O. Box 865
Geneva, New York 14456
www.FingerLakesZeroWaste.org
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