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<text id=89TT0035>
<title>
Jan. 02, 1989: Waste:A Stinking Mess
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
Jan. 02, 1989 Planet Of The Year:Endangered Earth
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 44
WASTE - A Stinking Mess
</hdr><body>
<p>THE PROBLEM: Throwaway societies befoul their land and seas
</p>
<p>By John Langone
</p>
<p> Like the journey of the spectral Flying Dutchman, the
legendary ship condemned to ply the seas endlessly, the voyage
of the freighter Pelicano seemed destined to last forever. For
more than two years, it sailed around the world seeking a port
that would accept its cargo. Permission was denied and for good
reason: the Pelicano's hold was filled with 14,000 tons of
toxic incinerator ash that had been loaded onto the ship in
Philadelphia in September 1986. It was not until last October
that the Pelicano brazenly dumped 4,000 lbs. of its unwanted
cargo off a Haitian beach, then slipped back out to sea,
trailing fresh reports that it was illegally deep-sixing the
rest of its noxious cargo. A month later, off Singapore, its
captain announced that he had unloaded the ash in a country he
refused to name.
</p>
<p> The long voyage of the Pelicano is a stark symbol of the
environmental exploitation of poor countries by the rich. It
also represents the single most irresponsible and reckless way
to get rid of the growing mountains of refuse, much of it
poisonous, that now bloat the world's landfills. Indiscriminate
dumping of any kind -- in a New Jersey swamp, on a Haitian
beach or in the Indian Ocean -- simply shifts potentially
hazardous waste from one place to another. The practice only
underscores the enormity of what has become an urgent global
dilemma: how to reduce the gargantuan waste by-products of
civilization without endangering human health or damaging the
environment.
</p>
<p> Scarcely a country on earth has been spared the scourge.
From the festering industrial landfills of Bonn to the
waste-choked sewage drains of Calcutta, the trashing goes on. A
poisonous chemical soup, the product of coal mines and metal
smelters, roils Polish waters in the Bay of Gdansk. Hong Kong,
with 5.7 million people and 49,000 factories within its 400 sq.
mi., dumps 1,000 tons of plastic a day -- triple the amount
thrown away in London. Stinking garbage and human excrement
despoils Thailand's majestic River of Kings. Man's effluent is
more than an assault on the senses. When common garbage is
burned, it spews dangerous gases into the air. Dumped garbage
and industrial waste can turn lethal when corrosive acids,
long-lived organic materials and discarded metals leach out of
landfills into groundwater supplies, contaminating drinking
water and polluting farmland.
</p>
<p> The U.S., with its affluence and industrial might, is by far
the most profligate offender. Each year Americans throw away 16
billion disposable diapers, 1.6 billion pens, 2 billion razors
and blades and 220 million tires. They discard enough aluminum
to rebuild the entire U.S. commercial airline fleet every three
months. And the country is still struggling to clean up the mess
created by the indiscriminate dumping of toxic waste. Said David
Rall, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences: "In the old days, waste was disposed of anywhere you
wanted -- an old lake, a back lot, a swamp."
</p>
<p> How to handle all this waste? Many countries have made a
start by locating and cleaning up acres of landfills and
lagoons of liquid waste. But few nations have been able to
formulate adequate strategies to control the volume of waste
produced. Moreover, there are precious few methods of effective
disposal, and each has its own drawbacks. As landfills reach
capacity, new sites become scarcer and more expensive.
Incinerators, burdensome investments for many communities, also
have serious limitations: contaminant-laden ash residue itself
requires a dump site. Rising consumer demands for more throwaway
packaging add to the volume.
</p>
<p> Few developing countries have regulations to control the
output of hazardous waste, and even fewer have the technology or
the trained personnel to dispose of it. Foreign contractors in
many African or Asian countries still build plants without
including costly waste-disposal systems. Where new technology is
available, it is too often inappropriate. In Lagos, Nigeria,
five new incinerator plants stand idle because they can only
treat garbage containing less than 20% water; most of the
city's garbage is 30% to 40% liquid.
</p>
<p> Even in highly industrialized countries, there are
formidable social obstacles to waste management:
not-in-my-backyard resistance by many communities to new
disposal sites and incinerators is all too common. In the U.S.
80% of solid waste is now dumped into 6,000 landfills. Their
number is shrinking fast: in the past five years, 3,000 dumps
have been closed; by 1993 some 2,000 more will be filled to the
brim and shut. "We have a real capacity crunch coming up," said
J. Winston Porter, an assistant administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency. In West Germany 35,000 to
50,000 landfill sites have been declared potentially dangerous
because they may threaten vital groundwater supplies.
</p>
<p> What can be done to prevent the world from wallowing in
waste? Most important is to reduce trash at its source. At the
consumer level, one option is to charge households a
garbage-collection fee according to the amount of refuse they
produce. Manufacturers too need more prodding. Higher fines,
taxes and stricter enforcement might force offending industries
to curb waste. Industry must also re-examine its production
processes. Such an approach already has a successful track
record. The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. has cut
waste generation in half by using fewer toxic chemicals,
separating out wastes that can be reused and substituting
alternative raw materials for hazardous substances. 3M's savings
last year: an astonishing $420 million. In the Netherlands,
Duphar, a large chemical concern, adopted a new manufacturing
process that decreased by 95% the amount of waste created in
making a pesticide.
</p>
<p> Recycling, of course, is perhaps the best-known way to
reduce waste. Some countries do it better than others. Japan
now recycles more than 50% of its trash, Western Europe around
30%. The U.S. does not fare nearly so well: only 10% of
American garbage -- or 16 million tons a year -- is recycled,
and only ten states have mandatory recycling laws.
</p>
<p> Some experts believe local governments should hike cash
refunds to people who return disposable items. Said Nicholas
Robinson, who teaches environmental law at Pace University
School of Law: "If we could persuade legislatures to increase
the recycling price for a bottle from, say, a nickel to maybe a
quarter or 50 cents, then that bottle would be a very valuable
commodity."
</p>
<p> But even with more efficient recycling, there will still be
refuse. That means landfills and incinerators, however harmful
their emissions, will be needed as part of well-managed
waste-disposal systems for the foreseeable future. Where
possible, landfills should be fitted with impermeable clay or
synthetic liners to contain toxic materials, and with pumps to
drain liquid waste for treatment and disposal elsewhere.
Landfill waste can also be burned to generate electricity, but
the U.S. uses only 6% of its rubbish to produce energy. By
comparison, West Germany sends more than 30% of its unrecycled
wastes to waste-to-energy facilities.
</p>
<p> Knowledge of the whole refuse cycle is imperative. Of the
more than 48,000 chemicals listed by the EPA, next to nothing is
currently known about the toxic effects of almost 38,000. Fewer
than 1,000 have been tested for acute effects, and only about
500 for their cancer-causing, reproductive or mutagenic effects.
Funding must be increased for such research.
</p>
<p> In the last analysis, the waste crisis is almost always most
effectively attacked close to the source. There should be an
international ban on the export of environmentally dangerous
waste, especially to countries without the proven technology to
dispose of it safely. In the past two years, some 3 million
tons of hazardous waste have been transported from the U.S. and
Western Europe on ships like the Pelicano to countries in
Africa and Eastern Europe. Observed Saad M. Baba, third
secretary in the Nigerian mission to the U.N.: "International
dumping is the equivalent of declaring war on the people of a
country." And if such wastes continue to proliferate, man will
have all but declared war on the earth's environment -- and
thus, in the end, on his own richest heritage.
</p>
</body></article>
</text>