When we make collecting garbage a crime, only criminals will collect garbage! Or something like that. NPR’s Planet Money blog passes along this account of Queens, N.Y., resident Paul Lawrence, who was fined $2,000 and had his car impounded for taking a discarded air conditioner from the curb (with the homeowner’s approval, no less) within sight of a city sanitation worker.

Under New York City law, once trash reaches the curb, it stops being the property of the homeowner and becomes property of the city (a law initially passed to combat rampant theft of recyclables). But should this really be a zero tolerance offense?

Millions of people in the United States and around the world cannot afford the barest of necessities, including shoes and clothes. So it is more than a little infuriating to read stories like this one in the New York Times about corporations intentionally sending unworn clothing, shoes, and other textiles they cannot sell to landfills. It’s especially inexcusable given the slew of organizations that will accept these items and get them to the folks that need them. Waste Age has reported on a few.

At a time when landfill space is at a premium, it is in the waste industry’s interest to help curb this wasteful, shortsighted practice.

With sweeping recycling legislation pending in New York City, it’s no wonder trash has been on the minds of New Yorkers. In case you missed them, two recent pieces in the New York Times took on the issue of waste-to-energy (WTE) and disposal of waste. First, a lengthy debate over whether the country should burn or bury its trash. And this week, an op-ed argues for halting export of the city’s waste in favor of burning it in WTE facilities.

Waste Age has reported on stirrings in the WTE sector. What are your thoughts on wider adoption of the practice in New York specifically and in the United States in general?

A group of fifth-graders at Rutherford Elementary in Stillwater, Minn. had a problem. Reliant on bikes or walking to get to school, the kids were forced to navigate a maze of trash bins on collection days. Cars weaving through bins in the road made things even more unsafe.

Dubbing themselves the Twizbots, the kids sought solutions. They first investigated Envac, an elaborate underground piping system that uses a high-pressure vacuum to move trash around. Despite successful deployments at Walt Disney World and in Montreal, the Twizbots realized such an expensive project was not feasible for their neighborhoods.

As an alternative, the Twizbots worked with Waste Management and members of the city council to more accurately define the term “curbside,” ensuring that bins would be constrained to the curb and not allowed in the street. They followed up by distributing leaflets to residents explaining the updated ordinance. The city council, previously unaware of then Envac system, said they might even consider it for some upcoming park construction projects.

Quick! Someone send the Twizbots to Congress.

Source: The St. Paul Pioneer Press

There’s a great op-ed in the New York Times this week by Bharati Chaturvedi that looks at how the collapse in recylables markets has impacted those at the far end of the recycling food chain. Trash pickers, or as the author defines them, “sorters, traders and reprocessors who extricate paper, cardboard and plastics from garbage heaps and prepare them for reuse,” live essentially hand-to-mouth and have been devastated by the wallop to their livelihood. While many waste-handling companies and recycling processors are feeling an impact on their bottom line, these people lose their only source of income and support.

This is not a crisis limited to third-world countries and slums. Every urban area supports (and is supported by) trash pickers. Chaturvedi suggests government subsidies to keep recycling going in lean times along with some sort of federal registration so that these people don’t fall through the cracks. But both ideas strike me as wishful thinking. What can be done?

Earlier this week, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to increase the recycling of electronics and to reduce the use of hazardous materials in the products. The Electronic Device Recycling Research and Development Act comes at a time when electronics manufacturers, state and local governments, waste handlers, environmentalists, and consumers are all crying out for consistency in the handling of e-waste. Trying to juggle 50 different sets of regulations for e-waste only ends up hurting everyone and makes compliance costly and difficult. It also prevents the establishment of large-scale domestic markets to process and use this material.

What components should be included in this legislation for it to be successful and what will help it meet the needs of the waste and recycling industry?

Yesterday, I stumbled across this shocking and disheartening collection of photos that show the very real consequences of pollution and irresponsible waste handling. They’re hard to shake. It would be easy to seek comfort by assuming that scenes like this are not possible in this country, and for the most part, that’s true. But that strikes me as a cop out.

The fact is, much of the material depicted in these faraway lands originated in or passed through the United States. And it is U.S.-based companies that deliver and heavily market these products (and product containers) overseas without providing any method for reclamation or helping to provide for proper disposal. There’s no escaping our complicity in what is an environmental and human tragedy.

Back when the economy was booming, San Francisco and several other U.S. cities were confident they could ban, tax or require the recycling of plastic shopping bags, considered a blight on the environment and a waste of resources.

But according to the New York Times, the deepening recession has caused most of those efforts to stall.

Momentum for imposing fees or bans has expanded from a few, often affluent, liberal cities on the West Coast — San Francisco was the first big city to ban plastic bags, in 2007 — to dozens of legislative proposals in states like Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas and Virginia.

Some officials say they fear a public backlash if they were to raise fees in an economic downturn; others say governments need the revenue now more than ever. Still others say a cleaner environment, not revenue, is their only goal.

Do you think these bans and fees should be implemented regardless of the economic climate? Will they be successful?

Here’s a interesting but frustrating story from KUOW in Washington State about a possible drawback to the state’s aggressive new e-waste law. Essentially, computers that might otherwise be easily retrofitted and redistributed to people and organizations in need are instead being broken down for salvage and recycling due to a provision of the law that insists that only “fully functional” computers are eligible for reuse.

The story quotes Charles Brennick, who runs Interconnect, a Seattle-based processor of donated computers:

“So if it’s like a year–old computer or whatever and the donor’s taken out their hard drive, that computer then is no longer functional. Then we’d have to send to state program. Easy fix is just putting in another hard drive. It’s a two–minute job. Put in another hard drive and the computer’s good again.”

Under the new law, however, that computer cannot be refurbished. It must be torn down for parts and recycled.

This goes to show that what is e-waste for some could be a lifeline for others. Sometimes the best way to “recycle” a computer is simply to give it to someone who needs it more than you.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that, effective Jan. 18, the Office of Solid Waste (OSW) has been reorganized and renamed as the Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery (ORCR).

The reorganization consolidates complementary functions in order to achieve efficiencies in operations. This reorganization consolidates the four major areas of the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) under one division; combines data collection and data analysis activities thus streamlining operations to better coordinate EPA’s efforts to analyze and present the benefits of its program; and consolidates waste-to-energy activities in one division and branch.

Whether this change represents a fundamental shift in how the former OSW does business — perhaps in concert with the new administration — or is just a superficial make over remains to be seen. We can only hope that it reflects the federal government’s intention to make recycling and conservation a national priority.