You realize, of course, that you’re in the minority. Oh, most folks probably recycle a bit, but an analysis of Thurston County garbage — the stuff that isn’t recycled and is shipped to a landfill in Klickitat County — shows that about 75 percent of it could be — should be — recycled. (Sigh.) Apparently it’s a lot easier to throw the aluminum can and the old newspaper into the garbage can than into a recycling bin.
So, how’s it working out for you? Plastics a little frustrating? Yeah, we can recycle most of the bottles, and you probably recycle your bags at the local grocery, but what about the rest of it? That hard plastic really gets to me — everything seems to be packaged in it, and though it’s marked with the little number 1 recycling symbol (PETE), there are no local markets for it and nobody recycles it. It just has to go in the garbage.
Well, you’d be interested in learning about product stewardship — or Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) — and getting the Legislature to pass laws to mandate it. It’s a policy that requires those who design, market and use products and packaging to share responsibility for end-of-life management of those materials. EPR is the way of the future for our waste-management system.
As environmental advocate Kara Steward, with Environment Washington, explains, local governments became responsible for waste management about a century ago, when crowding and waste in cities created many disease epidemics. To prevent these epidemics, governments invested in sanitation infrastructure. First they made sure people had clean water and that their wastes were carried away with good sewage systems; then around the beginning of the 20th century cities started to collect and dispose of municipal refuse.
But at that time municipal refuse was mostly coal ash and some food scraps, with some simple manufactured products made of paper and glass. Now look at your own garbage, after you’ve removed the recyclables: as you can see for yourself, almost all of it consists of worn-out products that can only be thrown away, and a large share of it is packaging, almost all plastic packaging. Furthermore, much of that stuff contains toxic materials that ought to be handled carefully so they don’t pollute our world any further.
So our garbage has changed a lot over the last 100 years, but we are still trying to handle it with old-fashioned waste-management systems, all operated, and paid for, by local governments and those of us who pay hefty monthly bills to have the stuff hauled away.
The Extended Producer Responsibility movement takes the stance that this is unfair — “welfare for waste” it’s sometimes called — and that the people who produce the stuff ought to be responsible for it as long as it exists. And the system is certainly financially unsustainable, especially in these economic times.
Washington state has now mandated product stewardship of electronics (hard drives, monitors and televisions). Manufacturers fund collection systems that are free to the public so their components can be recycled safely and reused. Organizations such as the Northwest Product Stewardship Council, Product Stewardship Institute and people in our local agencies, such as Thurston County Water and Waste Management, are now trying to work with the Legislature on laws requiring stewardship of other materials, such as drugs, and especially the plastics that are such a problem.
Concerned citizens ought to learn more about these efforts and urge their legislators to do the right thing — to keep our environment clean and safe.
Burt Guttman, a professor of biology emeritus at The Evergreen State College, is a member of The Olympian’s Board of Contributors. He can be reached at burtguttman@comcast.net.
