Vermont Environmental Consortium

March 13, 2007
The Secret Glamour of Garbage
by
Daniel Hecht

In the world of environmentalism, some ideas seem to have panache, and some don’t. If renewable energy is the rock star of environmental technologies, for example, solid waste management seems . . . well, distinctly unglamorous.

At least that’s what I thought until I heard a real firecracker of a talk by Donna Barlow Casey, director of Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District (CVSWMD). Her presentation focused on Zero Waste, an innovative program that CVSWMD has aggressively embraced.

Donna is petite, energetic, with short blonde hair and an air of fierce conviction. An art major in college, she seems an unlikely waste management expert. But her professional trajectory is easily explained: “I was raised with a strong reverence for the Earth, and I’ve always felt very connected to the natural environment.” Her job applies her values in constructive action.

For Donna, “waste” is not a noun; it’s a verb – an action, what we do when we squander things.

Waste is pandemic in the industrialized world. According to Amory Lovins, our consumer society squanders 99% of the value of any natural resource as we extract it, make it into useful things, transport it, use it, and discard it.

And the consequences are dire. To get a gallon of oil, a tree, or a fish to our furnaces, desks, or tables, mountains of trash are created. Trucking it to landfills or dumping it in the ocean burns energy and wreaks havoc on ecosystems. Wasted organic materials generate methane gas that causes global warming. Landfill disposal mixes organic materials with paper, plastic, and who knows what, precluding other, better uses of these materials. Landfills eventually reach capacity, and new ones have to be constructed – in someone’s proverbial backyard.

Fortunately, the art of recovering wasted resources has been making great progress, a quiet revolution led less by new technologies than by new cultural paradigms and new models of economic value.

Donna Casey didn’t invent the Zero Waste program – it’s a growing, world-wide initiative -- but CVSWMD is the first of Vermont’s waste districts to embrace it.

Its basic ideas are familiar: Waste not, want not; a penny saved is a penny earned. But the broad application of these can be quite difficult; Zero Waste initiatives take a decade or more to take full effect.

At the community level, one of the main Zero Waste precepts is that end-users of goods – that’s us -- need to take responsibility for the fate of our discards.

Non-use, re-use, and recycling are the first steps of the program. Next is to make optimum use of organic materials, notably food garbage, which constitutes about 20% of the waste stream.

It’s stinky stuff, but it has terrific potential. CVSWMD has been working for several years to develop clean food waste sources at schools, offices, and hospitals, which can sort large volumes of it at their facilities. This “source-separated,” clean food waste – no plastics, disposable diapers, or batteries, please! -- produces value again and again.

Right now, it’s taken to compost farmers such as Vermont Compost, creating benefits all along the line. Waste generators save money on reduced hauling fees; waste isn’t trucked long distances to landfills, saving energy. Diverting this waste from landfills reduces the number of new landfills needed, creates an entirely value-added industry that builds the local economy, and nourishes Vermont’s soil.
But food waste can do another neat trick: produce energy. Aha -- solid waste becomes a rock star after all!

Think of it this way: Every city and town in America already possesses a major renewable energy source. It doesn’t need to be dug up or brought from overseas, doesn’t require toxic chemicals or create greenhouse gases.

It’s food waste, of course. It’s already here because we already brought the raw material, food, here to eat.

Biodigestion of food scraps produces much more energy than manure does – after all, its nutrient value hasn’t been extracted by passing through a cow. A food scrap-fueled biodigester energy plant can create jobs, supply locally-generated renewable energy, and still provide fine compost as a by-product. By capturing all the methane, biodigested food waste produces far less climate impact than landfill-squandered food. And biodigester energy facilities can be sited almost anywhere, not on prime forest or pasture land -- or cherished ridgelines.

For more information about Zero Waste and the secret charisma of solid waste, visit the website of Zero Waste Alliance (ZWA), the main organization promoting the program in the U.S. Their site at www.zerowaste.org offers a fine overview of Zero Waste theory and practice, and suggests many resources for communities wishing to start the program. It also cites persuasive case studies illustrating the economic benefits of Zero Waste programs for businesses.

Many other fine Vermont organizations are redefining “waste” and creating value out of once-squandered resources, such the Chittenden Waste Management District, Vermont Business Materials Exchange, and more. We’ll look at some of their glamorous innovations in a future column.

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Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, write to vec@norwich.edu.

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