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Governor’s Task Force on Waste Materials Recovery and Disposal: Part I This one has been on my ‘list o’ needs an article’ for some time, and will be a multi-installment edition. So, thank you in advance for your patience and speed reading abilities! For almost two years now, a group of representatives from private waste companies, municipal governments, utilities, manufacturing, environmental groups, law firms, the UW and WDNR have been meeting to discuss the future of Solid Waste Management in Wisconsin. One can well imagine with such a diversity of back rounds and interests what this must have been like. The metaphor of cat herding comes to mind. I’ve had the great, good pleasure of meeting and working with a number of these folks over my years ‘in the business’. And I can vouch that ‘they know their stuff’ when it comes to talking trash. The back drop… Wisconsin, while being in the upper tier of states (probably the top dozen or so) nationally in terms of recycling, has experienced a leveling off in recycling participation. As a state, we still landfill over 1,000,000 (yup one million!) TONS of recyclables each year. Add another 900,000 tons of organic wastes (mostly non-recyclable paper & food) being landfilled annually. And finally, add the tremendous amount of demolition wastes landfilled of which over a half million tons that could be reused/recycled per year). Alright, without even having to take my boots off, I’m at 2.5 million tons of potentially recoverable materials currently being landfilled in this state. That’s out of a total of about 8,000,000 tons landfilled…over 30%! So, what were the solutions proposed by the task force? Some of the main ideas included Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), a deposit law for beverage containers, reducing the amount of recyclable paper being landfilled, promoting composting, electronics recycling, and recovering more recyclables from commercial properties. Over the years, I’ve about beaten composting to death, (although I’m always up for a composting seminar… just ask!). We just finished looking at EPR and Bart playing Garbage Gestapo at local businesses last month so those topics have been chalked as well… That leaves recyclable paper in the landfill, container deposits, electronics recycling and, oh yeah, and how do we pay for all this? A detail that was addressed, in a way... And so we shall dwell on these points in parts II & maybe even a #III. For those of you who want to read ahead, you can check out the Task Force website at http://wasteresources.wisconsin.gov/index.asp?locid=83. There is a tremendous amount of information there, the vast majority of which is good stuff. Just don’t get me going on the demolition landfill stuff… And so in the spirit of Rocky & Bullwinkle… tune in next article for “Garbage, Where Do Ya’ Want It?!” or “I’ll Take Mine Composted, not Dumped”. And finally…, what’s a locid? |
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PO Box 400
Rhinelander, WI 54501
PO Box 400
Rhinelander, WI 54501
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