Waste A Stinking Mess

By John Langone

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.