Getting Trashed!

One of my favorite municipal topics is TRASH - which represents a hidden cost to cities and towns, never mind the environmental issues.

Included in the MASSPIRG Newsletter is a section on WASTE:


MASSPIRG Urges DEP To Get On Path To Zero Waste

For the past two years, MASSPIRG has been campaigning for the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enact a waste management plan that will move our state toward zero waste. On July 2, the DEP issued a draft Solid Waste Master Plan, and while its title is “A Pathway to Zero Waste,” the actual plan doesn’t quite go far enough. To convince the DEP to adopt a stronger plan, MASSPIRG organized supporters to turn out at the DEP-sponsored public hearings on the plan, submit comments as part of the feedback process, and sign additional postcards to DEP Commissioner Laurie Burt asking for a commitment to “reduce/reuse/recycle.”

Working with our coalition, Don’t Waste Massachusetts, MASSPIRG organized 300 people to attend six public hearings across the state. In addition, 119 people submitted public comments on the draft plan, and another 4,000 signed postcards, which brought the total number of postcards for the year to over 20,000.

To improve the plan, MASSPIRG is focusing on four specific areas:

1. Action v. theory: The final plan needs to distinguish between what the DEP itself will be able to do and what measures it supports but can’t enact on its own. As the plan reads now, those two categories are basically identical, and this will make it hard to hold the DEP accountable or measure the plan’s progress.

2. Enforcement: Currently, there are a number of regulations in place that are not being fully enforced. While the DEP references “increasing enforcement” in their draft, we are pushing them to lay out the specifics of how they plan to strengthen their enforcement of current, and future, weak regulations.

3. Lack of specificity: Although the draft plan has many objectives, bullet points, ideas, goals, strategies and more, the actual letter of the plan remains vague. MASSPIRG is urging the DEP to be more specific so we’ll be able to evaluate whether the final quantifiable, or measurable, plan will be effective.

4. Eliminate burning: The DEP is still considering burning trash as an option. If Massachusetts is going to achieve a zero waste solution, burning our trash needs to be taken off the table. One sentence reads: “Waste reduction…includes source reduction, reuse, recycling, composting, and other diversion such as using source separated materials as fuels.” You simply cannot burn anything and call it “diversion” on any path to zero waste, and definitions and language are important in this plan.

MASSPIRG is encouraging the DEP to incorporate these, and many other, comments into their final plan, which was due out before the end of 2010.


The next time you get stuck behind a garbage truck, you might notice what's being discarded. This week, waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, it was interesting to watch the trash barrels of recyclables being emptied into the truck - on its way to disposal the Town pays for.

Maybe it is time to re-think what we, as taxpayers spend our money on.