Citizens Environmental Coalition

The State Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) has not been updated for many years, even though state law requires it be updated annually. The last SWMP update was in 1999-2000. A draft was circulated in 2001-2002, but never finalized. DEC is now planning an extensive update process with regional meetings and input. Resa Dimino, co-author of Reaching for Zero with Barbara Warren, a document completed with the NYC Zero Waste Campaign, is now working in the DEC Policy Office on solid waste issues. Val Washington, former Environmental Advocates Executive Director, is now the Deputy Commissioner for Solid Waste and she has discussed a possible DEC policy to move towards Zero Waste.

What is Zero Waste? Our current system of production is designed in a way that accepts and even encourages waste and inefficiency. Its primary focus is on a product or service that a private company produces and delivers to a customer. That simple relationship ignores the resources and energy that went into resource extraction and manufacture, the toxic emissions and contamination, water use and community impacts that are involved in production. It also ignores the transport of raw materials, intermediate and final products to customers using fossil fuels and generating pollution. Packaging and used products eventually make their way to landfills and incinerators for disposal with more toxic emissions and contamination of land and water. The public sector, government and taxpayers, pays for waste management and transportation associated with disposal and for the clean-up of toxic contamination.

Once you identify all the inefficiencies and waste in such a production system it becomes relatively easy to develop public policies to move government and the private sector in a more sustainable direction. Zeroing Out Waste and Inefficiency is that direction. Zero Waste refers to a broad set of policies, goals and activism aimed at moving toward a more sustainable, healthy and socially just system. The chief methods to zeroing out waste include waste prevention or reduction, reuse of goods in good condition, recycling and remanufacture of materials and composting of organic materials, such as food and yard waste. Producers can be held accountable through extended producer policies, which require less packaging or recycling, such as measures to deal with electronic waste and requiring bottle deposits. Many private companies have embraced Zero Waste internally and have realized millions of dollars in their own operations by emphasizing waste prevention, reuse, recycling and composting. While the federal government has embraced some Zero Waste opportunities, these programs were never adequately expanded to state and local governments under the Bush administration.

The primary difficulty in advancing zero waste is related to how ingrained our current system of production is and the advertising that has promoted the benefits of a disposal society. For example, advertisers sell new mothers on how impossible cloth diapers are, while not mentioning the costs and the many urgent trips needed to keep a supply of disposables. Most of the myths are based on mothers who did not have modern washers and dryers. Thus, Zero Waste sounds idealistic and realistically impossible to achieve, when society can in fact begin the transition to zero waste by first setting ambitious goals and then adopting a set of realistic objectives for the short term. Ten years ago, would anyone have imagined that organic produce would be available in every grocery store, or that organic milk would have so much consumer demand that companies do not have enough farmers producing it. Given the influence of the major chemical companies in the world and their slogans, “Better Living through Chemistry”, would anyone have imagined that chemical companies themselves would be talking about “Green Chemistry”? Chemical companies are talking not about how to defeat it, but what steps they will take to incorporate green chemistry in what they do.

The N.Y.S. Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has prepared a new State Solid Waste Plan that finally recognizes that materials in our waste stream are valuable and need to be preserved. We strongly endorse its preference for waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting over disposal. The less waste we dispose of the more environmental, economic and social benefits that we will enjoy.

Unfortunately millions of tons of garbage are still being wasted by being sent for disposal in landfills or incinerators. The DEC estimates New York’s recycling rate to be only 20%, far short of the 50% reduction and recycling goal to be met by 1997 under the State Solid Waste Management Act of 1988. A large portion of waste headed for disposal is recyclable (50%) or compostable (30%) material that could be processed by other means into new products.

Are you concerned about leaking landfills and polluting incinerators in New York?

For the first time in over a decade, we have a critical opportunity to influence the state's solid waste policy. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is revising the state’s weak Solid Waste Management Plan and outdated Solid Waste Regulations (Part 360).

Join a statewide coalition of concerned citizens and groups to press the state to incorporate 21st century "Zero Waste" principles into its solid waste policies. NY lags behind many states in recycling and composting and remains heavily dependent on polluting garbage incinerators and landfills. In many municipalities, recycling and waste diversion rates have been declining, and existing NYS policy has done little to turn this dismal situation around. We have an opportunity to move toward Zero Waste in New York, but we need your involvement.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO ATTENDED THE ZERO WASTE CONFERENCE

Thank you for making our Zeroing Out Waste Conference such a success! With your help we can build the coalition necessary to push the state towards Zero Waste policies.

At the conference we heard from speakers Paul Connet, Neil Seldmen, Resa Dimino, and Barabara Warren as to what Zero Waste is and how to implement it into our state and local waste systems and how this will support more sustainable, green jobs in reuse and recycling. We also heard from each other about the issues we are dealing with on local levels and what actions we have taken in our local communities to reduce waste. We hope that you found the discussion groups interesting and useful and that these brainstorming sessions will allow us to work on new and effective solutions to push the state towards Zero Waste policies.

Barbara Warren, Executive Director Neil Seldman, President of the Institute

for Local Self-Reliance

Judith Enck, Deputy Secretary Paul Connett, International Researcher on Waste

of the Environment

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Check Out Stop Trashing the Climate

Stop Trashing the Climate provides compelling evidence that preventing waste and expanding reuse, recycling, andcomposting programs that is, aiming for zero waste — is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective strategies available for combating climate change.This report documents the link between climate change and unsustainable patterns of consumption and wasting, dispels myths about the climate benefits of landfill gas recovery and waste incineration, outlines policies needed to effect change, and offers a roadmap for how to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within a short period.