I'm finally getting around to writing book reviews for three staple books on the topic of garbage that I read earlier this year. They're all must-reads for those interested in the wonderful and appalling world of waste. The first of the three books, Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage, was written over 15 years ago by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy. Rathje was an archaeologist at the University of Arizona and a forerunner on the science of waste. With his students, he started the Garbage Project in 1973 to see what information they could glean from analyzing trash based on different populations and demographics. My key takeaway is that most things we throw away end up in a landfill and do not decompose, or if they do it can take hundreds of years and leave behind a dangerous trail of toxin-laden leachate in the process. For the unitiated, here's a suitable explanation of leachate: "In the narrow environmental context leachate is [therefore] any liquid material that drains from land or stockpiled material and contains significantly elevated concentrations of undesirable material derived from the material that it has passed through." Yummy stuff, right? Modern sanitary landfills aim to keep leachate from reaching groundwater supplies by using expensive pipe systems and heavy plastic sheeting. For older landfills that are not lined and lack piping systems to collect the leachate, leakage into the groundwater is a serious risk. Even the best designed landfill using the latest and greatest technology will eventually experience a compromised boundary between the leachate and the surrounding soil.
 |
| Newspaper from 1960 at Pitsea landfill in England that was in a dry pocket in the landfill cell. (Photo by Dr. Jim Hanson) |
Why doesn't trash break down and decompose? The lack of oxygen and exposure to the sun prevents the breakdown of the bulk of what's dumped in a landfill. This scenario is perfectly illustrated by the Garbage Project's excavation of decades-old newspapers that are still legible, and food scraps that are still identifiable and not far decomposed beyond their original state. We should all know and understand that when we throw things away they are basically being piled up like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout's garbage in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, only in a landfill instead of in her house.
 |
| "We Are Not Trash!" from luc.edu |
What needs to change? How we dispose of and process organic materials needs to change. It's a relatively easy win that many cities are ramping up or beginning to implement if they haven't already. (Check out these leading zero waste programs in the US: 0X20 in San Francisco and 0X30 in New York City.) Most estimates say that anywhere from 20-40% of our waste is organics. Keeping organic material out of landfills would decrease landfill disposal by roughly one third! That's a lot of vegetable peels and coffee grinds that we could save from senseless landfill disposal and instead process it through aerobic decomposition (composting) or anaerobic digestion. These two processes are generally considered to be more sustainable than landfill disposal and they allow the material to be processed into a useful resource: a soil additive or biogas, respectively. If your city doesn't currently offer organics processing, you could reach out to see if they're planning on it and in the meantime you can keep your scraps in your freezer and either compost them in your backyard, use a worm bin in your kitchen, or drop them off at a participating greenmarket (see map of GrowNYC's drop-off sites).
 |
| Cradle to Cradle cycle from EPEA. "The Cradle to Cradle® design concept distinguishes between the biological and the technological cycles for materials. The waste materials in an old product become the "food" for a new product." |
Rethinking Product Lifecycle. There's a desperate need for a shift in production and consumption if we want to reclaim and preserve a natural, healthy and beautiful environment for ourselves and future generations to enjoy. Products need to be designed 'cradle to cradle' (C2C) rather than 'cradle to grave'. This means designing products with the end in mind and considering the full lifecyle of the product, including all phases from design, to production, distribution and eventually rebirth into a new product. C2C products are based on durability and recyclability and are comprised of benign materials. In an ideal world the materials would be better than benign, they'd be regenerative, bringing sustainability to a whole new level. I'll save the topic of regenerative healthy materials for another posting. In the meantime, check out the great work being done by the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute and their 2015 Living Product Challenge 1.0: A Visionary Path to a Regenerative Future among their other amazing forward-thinking programs.
The goal of C2C is to optimize the usefulness of materials and minimize the waste generated during the product lifecyle. The C2C model achieves this by keeping products and materials in a closed loop system that is based on regeneration where the outputs of one process become the inputs of another process, rather than a useless waste product. Architect and designer William McDonough is generally considered the father of the cradle to cradle concept, having co-authored Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, as well as co-founding the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Product Standard. You can watch his 2005 Ted Talk on the topic here.
This, in a nutshell, is the problem and the solution. Consume less. Consume smarter. Waste less. It's a noble goal that can be achieved with tweaks in behaviors and choices. It's scalable too for those who aren't willing to commit to a complete lifestyle overhaul; something is better than nothing and overtime I believe more sustainable behaviors will be adapted as people see them demonstrated by their friends, their community and in media. These choices then send signals to the producers and eventually incentivize them to modify their products to be more sustainable. Thanks for listening and remember, #CompostIsTheNewBlack!
 |
| Source |
