Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 5: Modernising municipal wastewas discovered to threaten the health of residents. In 1986, the Khian Sea wanderedthe seas for two years looking for a dumping spot for 15,000 tons of toxic municipalincinerator ash, which it eventually found on a beach in Haiti. In 1987, the Islipgarbage barge roamed the Atlantic coastline for months looking for somewhere todump its 3,100 tons of garbage. It all made excellent television material, remarks Szasz[1994].In 1989, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formulated the approach of‘integrated waste management’ which it said would ensure the ‘proper’ management ofmunicipal waste – its storage, collection, segregation, transport, processing, treatment,disposal, recordkeeping and so on – while also embracing “waste reduction, reuse,resource recovery, biological processing, and incineration in addition to conventionalland disposal” [Pichtel 2005: 4]. In short, it created a new language of wastemanagement, giving a (false) reassurance that it is managed in such a way that wastedoes not become pollution. It thus gave substance to ecological modernisation in thedomain of waste and replicated its basic intention: it saved consumption capital bymanaging environmental concerns.Creating waste bodiesThe modern sanitary landfills and incinerators are the emblems and endpoints ofintegrated waste management.The sanitary landfill developed from older dumps which relied on the two principlesof “attenuation and dispersion”. Attenuation is the idea that mixed waste decomposesand becomes less dangerous over time. Dispersion is the idea that pollution, althoughfreely released, is diluted as it spreads into the environment [Williams, 1998: 2006].Both processes can work the other way round, however, with toxicity increasingover time and the potential for biological uptake increasing through the chemicaltransformations of pollutants in the environment. Older landfills were often startedin quarry holes or simply exploited the shape of the landscape. Often ‘filling theland’ meant ‘reclaiming’ wetlands or other areas without market value, and thereforeregarded as waste lands, for economic use.Modern ‘sanitary landfills’ are huge, carefully sculpted waste bodies wrapped in plasticliners to isolate them from the environment and so prevent pollution of groundwater,soil, air, and neighbouring communities. Many are in fact not that well wrapped.- 130 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation