Thus an increasing proportion of waste is handled by the large companies which can afford to meet stricter environmental standards. Because of public pressure, politicians insist on the introduction of stricter standards, which further increases the costs. The difficulties of siting a disposal facility operated by a large corporation are usually much greater than the efforts necessary to open a small municipal landfill because the public is much more hostile to strangers trying to bring somebody else's garbage into their area. The waste management market becomes a lucrative one for large companies, sometimes transnational, which tend to build large-scale facilities far from the actual waste generators. To site an incinerator is every bit as difficult as to site a landfill, and the cost of burning waste is no lower than landfilling it.Īn interesting phenomenon occurs at this point: the price of waste disposal increases. Incinerators generated even more public opposition due to potential dioxin and other air pollution problems and problems with ash disposal. The introduction of a "new generation" of municipal waste incinerators in the earlyġ980s, equipped with sophisticated air pollution control devices, did not solve the problem. However, independent of whether there is a real or just a perceived lack of space, building new landfills becomes more and more costly. Physically there is more than enough space all municipal solid waste generated in the States for the next 1000 years could be disposed of at one site 30 km x 30 km if the depth of the landfill were 100 m. It is interesting to note that "lack" of space is a political rather than a physical problem. Coupled with negative public attitudes, this made opening new landfills increasingly difficult and resulted in the so-called "landfill crisis" - an insufficiency and increased cost of landfill space. As a result of growing public awareness of the health hazards of garbage disposal at such facilities, stricter waste disposal regulations were adopted. In the United States, as in other countries, historically, municipal wastes were disposed close to the places where people lived (i.e. Origins of the American Waste Management Crisis in order not to repeat the mistakes once committed by the Americans. It is natural to study the historical lessons from the development of waste management practices in the U.S. Municipal waste management practices in Russia and in the Eastern European states are now somewhat similar to those of the United States about twenty years ago. Whole June/July 1995 Issue #34 Avoiding the Whole June/July 1995 Issue #34 ECOLOGIA NEWSLETTER Archive
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