Pellow’s “Ch.4: The Global Village Dump” points out how prevalent and dominant environmental racism can be, happening on local, national, and global levels. Poor waste management techniques encourage the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality that contributes even more to the problem. As MacBride’s “Ch.5: Extended Plastics Responsibility” says, “the handling of modern discards frequently entail the slow or rapid release of uncertain risks to health and ecosystems at multiple points on local and global scales.” The waste generated by cities might be out of sight and out of mind to many, but someone forgotten eventually reaps the negative costs. In terms of New York City, what can the city government do to eliminate this “out of side, out of mind” mentality within New Yorkers? Unfortunately, our waste does not and will not magically disappear. Are there other waste management techniques that can be more suitable? How can we “rewrite those rules” of environmental racism?
Rewriting the rules of Environmental Racism
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Waste to energy could potentially solve our waste issues in New York City. Waste to energy provides drastically reduced environmental impact compared to landfilling and provides us a way to locally handle our own waste responsibly without exporting it. It would limit the scope of our environmental impact to a local level as opposed to a nation wide or global level. Localizing doesnt necessarily free the issue from environmental racism, but locating this plant within city boundaries is could be feasible. Building over already established waste transfer stations and replacing them with waste to energy plants could minimize overall impact by retaining the status quo.