Jacqueline Tosto

This week in seminar we discussed the New York City’s Solid Waste Management Plan. New York City discards about 50,000 tons of waste every day. New York City used to dump it all in Staten Island at Fresh Kill landfill. Eventually in 1997, the landfill closed and once the problem arose of where to put the ridiculous amount of garbage New York City produces. Then the government started creating transfer stations around the city where the garbage would then we shipped elsewhere. This seems like a ridiculous plan. For one, it is out garbage so why are we inflicting our pain onto other places. To be honest we should have kept it in Staten Island and improved the facilities, instead of just moving it.
Anyway, continuing the lack of significant progress, New York City decided to allocate waste management to each of the 5 boroughs to reduce the number of truck trips involved in waste transport. Manhattan, already limited in the amount of space, tried to put a transport center on East 91st Street. It has been over 6 years and still nothing has begun. At this time most of Manhattan’s garbage gets transported through Brooklyn. Once again our garbage is being dealt with elsewhere.
Lastly, after the garbage is collected and transported it is sent out of New York to Pennsylvania. A place called Tullytown collects a large portion of our garbage. Although New York City pays Tullytown’s Waste Management millions of dollars, which is then allocated to the citizens of the town, it still is not right. Is there any amount of money that replaces the pollution we are causing? There is known to be radioactive material in the garbage that can be polluting the land and there is a risk it may reach the Delaware River, polluting the entire ecosystem. I honestly do not understand the people or the government. Who in their right mind would rather have a few thousand dollars at the risk of being infected with radioactive material? And what government would allow this to happen to its people?
I understand that New York is a powerful and important city, but this is almost an abuse of its power. The most brilliant minds and innovative technologies are at our access. I do not understand why we do not use these benefit we have and continue just prolonging our suffering and giving our problems to others. It is not practical at all.
We also discussed the zero-waste policy that is an option for New York to become more sustainability. The policy would require composting of food waste, mandatory recycling, and the elimination of items that cannot be recycled. I think that composting food and mandatory recycling are quite possible. Other countries have just laws in place and they do work. I however think it will be difficult to eliminate all items that cannot be recycled. People would not be okay with eliminating diapers and phones. There should be another way around that drastic of a measure.