Tag: landfill

Bottle Laws Expand to Water

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws. Some of those states that do have the laws are expanding them to include deposits on bottled water and other beverages. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws. Some of those states that do have the laws are expanding them to include deposits on bottled water and other beverages. Lester Graham reports:


When Ed Solomon drives up in his delivery truck, he’s not just taking
in cases of soda and other beverages:


“Most every stop we go to as we deliver products, we take the empties
out, and the crates also. But, WHOOO! Yes. Sometimes there’ll be a
lot of empties at various stops.”


Solomon delivers Faygo beverages in Michigan. That state has the
nation’s highest deposit on bottles and cans: ten cents each. And
whether it’s Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Budweiser or Miller, if distributors
drop off product, they have to pick up the empties that people bring
back for the deposit refund.


Of the ten states that have bottle deposit laws, some are adding the deposit requirement to new beverages such as bottled water.
Forty other states have no deposit law at all.


Johnny Georges operates the convenience store Stadium Party Shop in
Ann Arbor, where Ed Solomon is dropping off new product and picking up
the empties. If the law in Michigan is expanded, it would mean Georges
and his employees would have to take in a lot more kinds of empty
bottles and cans.


“I think it’s going to take a little space in my opinion because there
are so many waters out there, so many juices, so many other brands.
So, it’s going to take a little space. Hopefully we’re going to
organize it as usual. And… we’ll see.”


Not everyone is that receptive to the idea. Beverage distributors and
major grocery chains are lobbying hard against expanding the deposit
law. Distributors don’t want to hassle with picking up the empties.
Major grocery chains say they don’t like the mess of people bringing
empties into the stores. They don’t like losing floor space to make
room for bottle and can collection areas. The bigger stores also have
to invest in bar code scanners to automatically count and sort the huge
volume of empties being returned.


A lot of small stores like Johnny George’s don’t have the fancy
equipment. Here, Georges just set aside a neatly organized area where
it collects and sorts the bottles and cans. He says he knows that an
expanded bottle deposit law would mean a little more hassle, but he
doesn’t mind:


“I like the new law. I hope they pass it. That takes a lot of trash
out of the street. And it’s good for the environment in the meantime.”


And Georges isn’t the only one who thinks it would be good for the environment.
Polls show a large majority of people support the idea.


James Clift is with the environmental group Michigan Environmental
Council. He says it’s time to expand the law to other containers.
When the bottle law was written 30 years ago, beer and soda pop cans
and bottles were the biggest concerns.


“But since then, bottled water, tea, other beverages, energy drinks,
we’ve got a whole new set of drinks on the market. And they’re a
larger and larger segment of the market to the point they may become
the majority of the market in the next five to ten years.”


Clift says his state needs to catch up to the changing market, but the
majority of the states don’t require a deposit on cans and bottles at
all. And Clift argues, you can tell when you’re traveling in one of
those states:


“You know, because you see all the trash along the roadways, you see
trash cans filled with bottles and cans and it just seems so unnatural
for someone who grew up in Michigan, you know, to throw away a bottle
or a can. Luckily, we’ve been programmed to know that that has value
and has other uses.”


So people there bag or box up their empties, take them to the store, the
stores can sort them and guys like Ed Solomon can take them back to be
recycled:


“It’s hectic, yes, it really is, you know, to deal with these empties.
Yeah, but, that’s the law I guess.”


And if the can and bottle deposit law is expanded to, and other drinks, as it has been some states, more distributors
and grocers in Michigan will find the job a little more hectic… while
40 other states do little to nothing to reduce the number of cans and
bottles headed for the landfill.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Tossing Food Scraps to the Worms

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:

Transcript

Every day we have to deal with throwing away
garbage. For most, that means taking it to the curb.
But some people keep the food scraps for something
special. Richard Annal has the story of a
family that’s using a money-saving, all-natural way
to dispose of food waste:


I’m driving through the rain to meet a woman who’s doing something I’ve
heard about for years but have never actually seen. And she’s doing it in her basement. She’s taking her
family’s food scraps and feeding them to worms downstairs. Brenda
Lotito’s home is white and brown, and sits on a little hill in a suburban
neighborhood. Brenda is expecting me and greets me at the door. Behind
her, there’s a little commotion. That’s her son John and the family dog,
Charlie.


I have a seat at the kitchen table. I find out it was John who first
took an interest in worms. He likes the red, slimy night crawlers:


“What sparked my interest in the worms is how they feel when you touch
them and how you can’t hold them very well because they keep slipping
out of your hands.”


With a little research at their local library, Brenda and John found
worms work as a natural garbage disposal. So for the past five years,
instead of putting the garbage out, they’ve been feeding the worms.
They turn the food scraps into compost.


We all head down to the basement, including Charlie, the dog. That’s
where Brenda keeps the family’s worm box.


The Lotitos have a typical basement. Washer, dryer, sports equipment…
and a box of worms. It’s wood. It’s about 2 feet wide by 4 feet long.
Brenda tells me they can be different sizes depending on what you need.
This one is more than large enough for Brenda, John, her husband, and
Charlie, the dog. Brenda says she can put just about all her food waste
into the box:


“I don’t put meat or anything like that in there but we put all our
vegetables. Ya know, I don’t have to cut anything up. I just simply
throw the corn cobs in there throw the husks in there. And they eat
it.”


I open the lid and peer in. The first thing I notice is what I don’t
notice. There’s no offensive odor. The only smell I do detect is that
of fresh earth. I move the contents of the box around. There’s some
shredded newspapers, some corn cobs in the process of becoming worm
food, coffee grounds, and other food waste.


After a little poking around, I find the worms: dozens of red,
well-fed looking worms. They’re fat.


Brenda tells me she has been making worm boxes for years and she thinks
others can benefit from her experience. She’s selling worm composting
kits for a small price. She says worm boxing is easy to get started,
takes a little investment, and the maintenance is low:


“Once you buy a batch of red worms, they’ll just keep on multiplying every
7 to 10 days, and um, you’ve got yourself a great composting bin.”


Brenda says worm box composting has a lot of benefits. In her town,
the trash pick-up service charges by volume. So, she saves money on her
garbage bill by putting most food waste into the box instead of the
trash can.


And she saves money on fertilizer. Brenda is a gardener. The compost
left by the worms is a great all-natural fertilizer. And in addition,
the worm’s, um, leavings work as a natural bug repellant as well:


“What it does is it makes the plant create an enzyme that is bitter to
aphids and other creatures.”


And Brenda thinks fewer chemicals and fossil fuel-based fertilizers
makes the food in her garden that much better:


“You know I can pick the tomato right off the plant. Ya know, wipe it
off, wash it off, And feel comfortable that I’m putting it in my mouth.
Everything has come from the earth. It’s a circle, it’s awesome.”


Brenda says to her, the biggest benefit of worm box composting comes
from letting people know there’s another way to dispose of food waste.
It’s all-natural. It means less garbage to pick up, less garbage to
fill up the landfill, and at the same time it saves money, provides a
superior fertilizer that’s all organic, and puts nutrients back into
the Earth… where they come from.


For the Environment Report, I’m Richard Annal.

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State Passes Greenhouse Gas Regs

The state of California is poised to lead the nation in the effort to combat global warming. California will impose the kind of sweeping greenhouse gas emissions reductions the federal government has rejected. The GLRC’s Tamara Keith has more:

Transcript

The state of California is poised to lead the nation in the effort to combat global
warming. California will impose the kind of sweeping greenhouse gas emissions
reductions the federal government has rejected. The GLRC’s Tamara Keith has more:


The California global warming solutions act will set into state law a cap on greenhouse
gas emissions: a 25% reduction by 2020, and it empowers state regulators to require
major emissions reductions from the largest carbon polluters. The list includes oil
refineries, power plants, landfills and cement factories. The bill’s author Democrat
Fabian Nuqez says he hope this landmark legislation starts a nationwide movement.


“We want to be the first to do our share, to say to the rest of the nation, let’s all follow
suit.”


This legislation is the result of a deal struck between Democrats and Republican Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger.


Major business groups fought hard against the bill saying California can’t cure global
warming on its own and new regulations will drive businesses out of the state.


For the GLRC, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Turning Nuke Waste Sites Into Playgrounds

  • Grassland prairie flowers from Weldon Spring, part of the Department of Energy's restoration effort to control erosion and add aesthetic beauty to the area. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy)

Across the U.S., there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear weapons programs.
The government is trying to return these Cold War relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery visited one that was recently opened to the public:

Transcript

Across the US, there are more than 100 sites contaminated by radioactive waste from the
nation’s nuclear weapons programs. The government is trying to return these Cold War
relics to safe and useful purposes. Some of these once toxic zones are being treated much
like public parks. The GLRC’s Kevin Lavery recently visited one that was recently
opened to the public…


A thick grove of trees opens up to a clearing that reveals a white mound of limestone
rock. It rises like a tomb from some long-forgotten civilization, were it not for the water
towers and golf courses on the horizon.


Mike Leahy and his 9-year-old son Cameron came to this rock dome to catch the view
atop its 75 foot summit. But the real attraction was what they did not see:


“We read the sign and saw what was buried and how they did it, and – it’s kind of
disturbing, what’s in there.”


Beneath their feet lay more than a million cubic yards of spent uranium, asbestos and
PCB’s. The 45 acre mound is a disposal cell, where the government buried thousands of
barrels and tons of debris. That history didn’t bother young Cameron:


“It’s really cool. They keep all that nuclear waste under all that and it can’t harm
anybody.”


The Weldon Spring site, 30 miles west of St. Louis, Missouri began during World War
Two as an Army TNT factory. In the 1950’s, the plant refined yellow cake uranium for
later use in nuclear weapons. All that stopped in 1966 and all the radioactive waste just
sat there. Weldon Spring became an EPA Superfund site in 1987. After a 900 million
dollar cleanup, the site was opened to tourists in 2002.


(Sound of frogs)


Today, frogs sing in a native prairie at the foot of the cell. In April, officials opened a
hiking trail adjacent to a once-radioactive landfill. The route connects to a state park.


Weldon Spring is not a park per se, but project manager Yvonne Deyo says urban sprawl
prompted them to think like one:


“There’s subdivisions and lots of infrastructure going in…and that just kind of hits home
how important green space is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to do a little bit of
here at the site.”


Weldon Spring is one of about 100 such sites the Department of Energy is converting to
what it calls “beneficial re-use.” Many are becoming recreational venues. Another
closed uranium plant near Cincinnati is adding horseback riding trails. In Wayne, New
Jersey, a former thorium processing facility is becoming a baseball field. And a national
wildlife preserve is in the works at Rocky Flats, the site outside Denver that made the
plutonium cores of nuclear warheads.


The Department of Energy says Weldon Spring is safe for visitors – though some residual
contamination remains.


(Sound of Burgermeister Spring)


Burgermeister Spring runs through a 7-thousand acre state reserve adjacent to the site.
This is where uranium-laced groundwater from Weldon Spring rises to the surface.
Though the spring exceeds the EPA’s drinking water quality standard, there’s no warning
sign here. Officials say the contamination is so low that it poses no immediate public
hazard. The spring feeds into one of the most popular fishing lakes on the property.
Most visitors are surprised to hear that:


“Huh.”


Jeff Boeving fishes for bass four or five times a month:


“(Does that concern you to hear that?) Yeah – absolutely…I mean, they’ve got a great
area out here and they’re kind of messing it up if they’re going to have contaminants, you know, going into it.”


The government’s vision of post-nuclear playgrounds is not without its critics. Arjun
Makhijani heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park,
Maryland. He says recreational sites near urban development zones risk losing their
original purpose:


“Institutional memory tends to be very short; after 30, 40, 50 years people forget, they
begin to develop the land, and pretty soon you could have houses, farms and schools in
the area. So it’s not necessary that it will stay recreational forever.”


Recreation is only one option the Department of Energy is considering for all of its sites.
In the last two years, the agency’s budget has doubled with the addition of nearly a dozen
radioactive properties. Officials say Congress has so far supported its fiscal requests.
And with the future of a proposed permanent nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain still
in doubt, even more tax dollars will likely be spent converting the nuclear dumps in
America’s backyards to a place where families play.


For the GLRC, I’m Kevin Lavery.

Related Links

A Mad Dash for Trash

  • Penn State is luring people to its annual "Trash to Treasure" event with gimmicks such as going for the "most people disguised as Groucho Marx" record. (Photo courtesy of Penn State University)

Each spring when college students leave their dorms, they leave behind tons of unwanted furniture, rugs, and other stuff that just didn’t make the cut for the trip back home. At one time, it all would’ve ended up in a landfill. In recent years, some universities have been sorting out the usable items and holding huge yard sales. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan took her pocketbook and her microphone to one of those big sales:

Transcript

Each spring when college students leave their dorms, they leave behind tons of unwanted
furniture, rugs, and other stuff that just didn’t make the cut for the trip back home. At one time,
it all would’ve ended up in a landfill. In recent years, some universities have been sorting out the
usable items and holding huge yard sales. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan took her
pocketbook and her microphone to one of those big sales:


“Welcome to the fifth annual Trash to Treasure sale. Let the excitement begin.”


At 7:30 a.m., the gates to Beaver football stadium at Penn State are hoisted and thousands of
people run through six metal corrals. It’s a mad dash for CD players, stuffed animals, and other
remnants of college. Sixty-six tons… of stuff. What’s with kids leaving behind all this, and that
$215 chichi bronze silk purse – with tag intact?


“No one wants to take it home. I mean to fit all that stuff in a car – it’s awful. It’s really hard to
do. So I mean if you can’t fit it you might as well leave it and leave it for somebody else.”


Erin Horning is a college student herself. She’s here for the fourth year in a row.


“I was a freshman in college this past year so I came here to get all my college stuff from the
students that already left like irons, and oh, furniture….”


Penn State’s Environmental Strategies Team started the Trash to Treasure sale to keep leftover
lumber and coffee mugs out of the waste stream. Other major colleges around the country are
following suit, including Notre Dame and West Virginia University. Penn State spokesman Paul
D. Ruskin says it also saves the school 43-hundred dollars in hauling costs.

“We had a problem. We had 60 to 70 tons of usable material left behind. And the solution which
we found was to have this massive sale and to have the items donated to this sale. And to have
United Way take over and manage the sale.”


The charity brings in 300 volunteers who sort sale items over a few weeks. Bethany Heim
volunteered for 19 shifts. She and her husband are also first in line for the sale, having arriving
around midnight.


(sound of people in stadium)


“I came for a vacuum. It started as a joke when I started volunteering here three weeks ago.
And now I found THE vacuum.”

Heim says that besides keeping trash out of landfills, the sale benefits the community in other
ways.


“They have stuff put away for Katrina victims. I’m sure some of it will make its way to the flood
victims in New England. And just that it’s not on the sides of the streets – ’cause driving
through town when you see all the furniture from the college kids on the sides of the streets.”


Penn State tries to bring more customers in every year. The school’s Paul D. Ruskin admits that
the county market for box fans has already been saturated. So now it’s trying to generate
enthusiasm with gimmicks. Like this year’s attempt to break the record for the most people
wearing Groucho Marx masks. The effort fell 138 people shy. Still, the United Way netted 45,000 dollars. And as for Bethany Heim…


“I got my vacuum!”


And with happy customers like that, universities are starting to realize that selling all the college
student leftovers is good P.R. as well as just good sense.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

Related Links

A MAD DASH FOR TRASH (Short Version)

When college students head home for the summer, the unmatched dishware and stuffed animals that filled dorms often become trash, but a number of schools are turning stadiums into sale grounds and hawking the remnants of college life. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan has more:

Transcript

When college students head home for the summer, the unmatched dishware and stuffed animals
that filled dorms often become trash, but a number of schools are turning stadiums into sale
grounds and hawking the remnants of college life. The GLRC’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan has
more:


When college lets out, dumpsters get overwhelmed with tons of students’ belongings, but not at
a few major universities. Five years ago, Penn State started getting students to donate their
goods. The school invited the local United Way to sort area rugs and shoes, to run a sale and
to reap the profits. Notre Dame and West Virginia University followed suit.


Paul D. Ruskin is a Penn State spokesman.


“It is a solution that has no downside. It keeps things out of the landfill. It keeps down Penn
State operating costs. It makes nice items available to families at a good price. And it helps a
charitable organization.”


It’s also a big draw. More than five-thousand people attended Penn State’s event this year.
Other universities are reporting similar turnouts.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

Related Links

Chip Measures Garbage by the Pound

Trash containers of the future might contain an information chip that encourages people to recycle. A manufacturing company says the technology could change the way cities administer their trash programs.
The GLRC’s Kaomi Goetz reports:

Transcript

Trash containers of the future might contain an information chip that
encourages people to recycle. A manufacturing company says the
technology could change the way cities administer their trash
programs. The GLRC’s Kaomi Goetz reports:


The way it works is recycling containers are embedded with a chip
that can register the weight of the contents as they’re dumped into the
truck. The information is then tracked to the homeowner and
tabulated to their online account.


Cascade Engineering of Grand Rapids is making the containers.
Spokesman John Kowalski says assessing by weight is part of a
new trend in the solid waste industry.


“Landfill rates are just sky-rocketing, so we’re trying to do anything
we can do to reduce that cost, but also help the environment.
Anything we can do to increase recycling is good for everybody.”


So far, the technology is being used as part of a pilot recycling
rewards program in Philadelphia. It offers discount coupons for
coffee and groceries based on the amount of recycling.


The company says the technology can also be used by cities to
charge for trash removal based on weight, which it says could also
encourage recycling.


For the GLRC, I’m Kaomi Goetz.

Composting in the City

  • Backyard composting isn't quite as inticing a hobby in the wintertime. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen Kelly is one of those city dwellers. And she found if composting isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:

Transcript

Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing
number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen
Kelly is one of those city dwellers, and she found if composting
isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:


“So we’re going to put in our banana peels, and the oatmeal that
nobody ate, and I’m going to break some of this up because apparently
it breaks down faster if it’s in smaller pieces. So right now we’ve got,
half a scone, a bowl of oatmeal, some banana peel… ”


It’s just after breakfast and my kitchen is covered with dirty dishes.
Some of the food is heading into the garbage, the rest I’m going
toss into the composter. It kind of looks like a brown garbage can
with a lid, but it takes about half my garbage and turns it back into
soil.


I started about a year ago, when I finally got a small backyard
where I live here in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. First, I asked
my friends Connie and Dan how they do it.


“How would you guys describe your approach?”


“Laissez faire.”


“Yeah. It’s really a shame that everybody doesn’t do this because it can
be really easy. Just put it in a box and let it sit there.”


I liked the sound of that hands-off approach, but I was also
wondering what to put in and what I needed to leave out. So, I gave
George Reimer a call. He’s the city of Ottawa’s composting expert.


“ust stick with kitchen scraps, vegetables, fruit scraps…plants that
you have from the gardening season, that type of thing.”


“Okay, okay. So no animal products basically?”


“Exactly.”


Once you have a good mix of kitchen scraps, leaves and grass, the
best thing for compost is to mix it around on a regular basis. When
you add that oxygen to the microorganisms already in the garbage,
it breaks the waste down even faster.


It’s not as easy as it sounds – especially if you compost in a plastic
drum. Just imagine sticking a pitchfork into your garbage can and
trying to flip over a pile of wet dirt.


So, armed with that information, I asked George if he could take a
look at our progress after our first week of composting. He stooped
over to pull open a sliding door at the bottom of the container.


“Oh, you haven’t got anything in there, have you?”


“Well I did put some things in there…”


“Yeah, you need to put a slab down or dig it into the ground
because obviously something’s gone in there and removed it all.”


“Yeah, there’s no food in there. Okay. All right then. That was
a week’s worth of squirrel feeding.”


“Yeah exactly.”


(Sound of bricks laying)


So, the next day we go to a big box store to get some bricks. We
lay them all around the base of the composter. The squirrels are defeated.
A few weeks later, I see a huge raccoon shuffling across the backyard.
It knocks the top off the composter and climbs in.


We drive back to the big box store and buy some flat, heavy bricks
to lay on top of the lid. We also buy a few bags of fertilizer, of
course because we still have no compost. I think, this is starting to
feel like work and to be honest – I find it disgusting.


(Sound of brick noise)


“So now, it’s even more challenging to do this.”


(Sound of dumping)


“Ewww. A lot of it is sticking to the pot, which is disgusting but
alright. Uhh, brick back up, auxiliary bricks, okay.”


Now that I had to move those bricks, I was less likely to run out
with just the dinner scraps, and we weren’t mixing the compost very
often, either. So, I tried to remind myself of why I started doing this.


For one, it seemed like a shame to throw vegetable scraps into a
plastic bag and send them to a landfill. Especially when landfill
space is so tight that some Canadian cities are shipping their
garbage to the U.S.


Plus, we have a garden, which could use the nutrients from the
compost. According to George Reimer, those nutrients stick
around a lot longer than the ones found in commercial fertilizer.


I knew all that, and yet, on a stinking hot day in July – and the
composter was stinking because we rarely turned it – I officially
stopped. For a while… for six months. Until recently, when my
guilty conscience prodded me out the door with a bowl of kitchen
scraps.


(Sound of walking in snow)


“We’ve got snow on the ground and a bowl of fresh vegetable
scraps. Umm, interesting. It’s about a third full so there must be
compost under there somewhere.”


Last time I looked, the container had twice that amount in it.
Which makes me think that most of the food has broken down into
something we can finally use on the garden. It gives me an
incentive to start over. Plus, in a few years, I’ll have to compost.


Ottawa will join at least 18 other Canadian cities where residents
are required to throw food scraps into a separate container, and
hey, if all else fails, there’s nothing like a new law to get you
motivated.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Song Satirizes Trash Dumping

If you think your neighbor across the border sends too much garbage to your local landfill, you now have a songwriter on your side. The GLRC’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

If you think your neighbor across the border sends too much garbage to
your local landfill, you now have a songwriter on your side. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Some states are dumping grounds for trash from other states and from
Canada. The U.S. federal courts have ruled that the garbage hauling is
interstate commerce and have protected the practice, but that doesn’t
quiet a Wisconsin musician who lives near a fast growing landfill which
takes in trash from three states.


“Thank you for your generosity. Mountains full of garbage give us one
more place to ski.”


Kevin McMullin’s song urges the other states to just send cash instead of
trash, but many pro-business legislators in some states see trash as cash.
So, when environmentalists call for higher landfill dumping fees to try to
slow the amount of garbage… the lawmaker’s song remains the same –
they vote no.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Trash Proposal Worries Canadians

Every day, hundreds of trucks loaded with trash from Ontario
stream across the U.S. border. The possibility of Congress passing a
bill that would allow states to close their borders to out-of-state trash
has some Canadian officials worried. It would mean Ontario would
have to find a new place to put the 3.5 million tons of garbage it sends
to the state of Michigan each year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Dan Karpenchuk has more:

Transcript

Every day hundreds of trucks loaded with trash from Ontario stream across the U.S. border. The
possibility of Congress passing a bill that would allow states to close its border to out of state
trash has some Canadian officials worried. It would mean Ontario would have find a new place
to put the three-and-a-half million tones of garbage it sends to the state of Michigan each year.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Karpenchuk has more:


Garbage is a politically charged issue in Ontario. And so far most politicians, appear to have
ignored it. If the border closes, Toronto can store garbage for only two days.


The Toronto region has started the process of finding an alternative landfill, or another
technology to deal with the problem… but getting a new plan in place could take years.


Anne Mitchell is with the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy. She says the
provincial government and residents must make the issue a priority.


“And it’s going to take a lot of increasing awareness so that people in fact are managing their own
garbage better. Because I know right now we’re not.”


The province could allow, or even force, other large Ontario landfills to take Toronto’s garbage,
But that would almost certainly lead to fierce local opposition.


For the GLRC, I’m Dan Karpenchuk.

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