CHAPTER 19 WILL OUR CONSUMER WASTES BURY US? The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature, that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Dutton, 1948, p. 77)) CHAPTER NINETEEN: TABLE OF CONTENTS The Dimensions of Our Waste The Theory of Waste and Value: Dump on Us, Baby, We Need It Why Do People Worry So Much About Wastes? Conclusion Future historians will surely marvel at the 1990s fear of being overcome by wastes. Disposable diapers have become a cause celebre, and at least for a time, Americans considered disposable diapers as "the single most important cause of our solid waste problem." Government agencies have used the estimate that disposable diapers account for 12 percent of total trash, and a poll of attendees at a National Audubon Society meeting produced an average estimate that diapers account for 25 to 45 percent of the volume of landfills. And a Roper poll found that 41 percent of Americans cited disposable diapers as a major cause of waste disposal problems. Yet according to the best available estimate, the diapers constitute "no more than one percent by weight of the average landfill's total solid-waste contents...and an average of no more than 1.4 percent of the contents by volume." Then there was much dispute over whether disposable or washable diapers, foam cups or paper cups, are the more environmentally friendly. And some activities that are being undertaken or suggested are bizarre - being asked to flush our toilets less frequently, for example, and take cold showers and turn off the water when soaping (which may make sense on a Navy ship). There is similar misunderstanding about fast-food packaging. The Audubon Society meeting poll found an average estimate of 20 to 30 percent of landfills; the actual volume is "no more than one-third of 1 percent." Yet we must take the fear of throwing things away seriously here, because it has serious effects upon government policy. (See also chapter 21 on government conservation policy.) A Sunday kid's page article purveys such bits of "obvious wisdom" as "It takes more than 500,000 trees to make the newspapers that Americans read on Sunday...we're running out of places to put it...there aren't very many new places to put [landfills]." The children are not told that trees are grown, and forests are created, in order to make newspaper. In school, 46 percent of children 6-17 said they had heard about the importance of "solid waste" disposal (36 percent recycling, 15 percent litter, 6 percent garbage/landfills) in school in the 1991-1992 school year. (One wonders what the comparable figures would be for the importance of honesty and hard work.) The propaganda to the children is effective. A "national survey of children ages 5 through 8 asked these questions: `What would you do to make your city a better place?' and `...America a better place?' A majority of the kids...answered `Clean up'". This finding is significant for what the children do not say. There is no mention of "Build schools and parks" or "Go to the moon" or "Help those who are less well-off". Nor is this childish thinking confined to children. An attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency complained to the newspaper that the Post Office's new self-sticking stamps were "long-term environmental mistakes" because "As everyone knows, there is a solid waste problem in the country", and stamps with plastic "strike me as an incredibly irresponsible use of our limited petroleum resources." The more relevant limited resource is newspaper space, and the editor choosing to print this letter rather than the hundreds of other contenders on serious subjects strikes me as "irresponsible". The wastes that have been the subject of most concern over the years have been industrial pollutants. Some are toxic and others are aesthetic blights; hence the argument for reducing their output is strong. Household wastes are a more complicated matter. Here the issues of pollution and conservation get all mixed together. Household wastes are seldom a true health pollution, except for sewage containing bodily wastes, which carry disease. Household garbage and trash, and even junked vehicles, are not dangerous. Of course eyesores and smelly garbage are an aesthetic pollution, but this is not the same as a threat to life and limb. So the arguments for reducing or controlling household wastes are different than for dangerous substances. Yet the issues become conflated. The issues with respect to household waste products in rich countries are twofold: 1) Which resources are necessary to dispose of the wastes, and what is the best way to organize the disposal? and 2) Should people be should given a special inducement to recycle household wastes in order to conserve some resource whose conservation is "in the public's interest"? The latter question boils down to asking about whether waste recycling involves some value that is not reflected in the purchase price of the good. That is, we must consider both the bad side of waste products - the need to dispose of them, even if they are not toxic - and the good side, which is their usefulness as a substitute for using more raw materials. The latter issue is addressed in chapter 21 on recycling versus other alternatives. We will first discuss the quantitative dimensions of the supposed waste problem - amounts and trends. Next comes some "theory" of waste, and its relationship to other categories of economic entities, together with some examples of the conversion of bads to goods. Later, in chapter 21, we will discuss the pros and cons of various public policies toward waste - arrangements and payments, required recycling, and subsidized recycling. THE DIMENSIONS OF OUR WASTE These are some basic facts about the dimensions of our waste output: 1. An American produces about 4 pounds of solid wastes per day, on average, with estimates varying from a pound less to a few pounds more. 2. The growth in the quantity of household waste has slowed in recent years; it is less than the growth of GNP, and not much more than the growth in population. Waste per person in New York City at the beginning of this century (excluding ash) was greater than the national average today. 3. The quantity of coal ash generated by homes was almost 4 pounds per day at the turn of the century. So total waste has declined sharply. (As a young boy I shoveled out the furnace and carried to the curb our house's coal-ash waste. I can testify that the onset of modern fuels such as natural gas not only reduced urban waste but removed an onerous household burden.) 4. The U.S. is not an extravagant producer of waste. "The average household in Mexico City produces one third more garbage a day than does the average American household." 5. If all the U.S. solid waste were put in a landfill dug 100 yards deep or piled 100 yards high - less than the height of the landfill on Staten Island within the boundaries of New York City - the output for the entire 21st century would require a square landfill only 9 miles on a side. Compaction would halve the space required. Compare this 81 square miles to the 3.5 million square miles of U.S. territory. The area of the U.S. is about 40,000 times larger than the required space for the waste. Nine miles square is a bit less than the area of Abilene, Texas, the first city in the alphabetical list, and a bit more than the area of Akron, Ohio, the second city alphabetically. If each state had its own landfill, the average state would require only about 1.5 square miles to handle its next century's entire waste. I chose the period of a hundred years because that is ample time for scientists to develop ways of compacting and converting the wastes into smaller volumes and products of commercial value - twice as long as the time since we got rid of household coal ash. 6. The cost of urban recycling programs is typically about twice the cost of landfill disposal, even without including the cost to consumers of separating various kinds of materials (a cost that can be very high to an individual whose time has a high market or personal value. In New York City the cost of recycling in 1991 dollars "appears to be $400 to $500 per ton," and "in one Midwest city reached $800 per ton," compared to the $25 to $40 per ton costs for landfill disposal. The cost of recycling tends to rise as more recycling is done, because recycling increases the supply of recycled materials, especially newspaper. This decreases the prices paid for recycled paper. Indeed, the price may fall below zero, and recycling programs then either must pay the recycling facility to accept the paper, or put the paper in a landfill. For example, in 1988, Barberton, Ohio received $30 per ton for its waste paper, but by 1989, the town had to pay $10 per ton to the recycler. Hence Barberton shut down its recycling program and sold off its equipment. 7. Landfills need not be either noxious or burdensome. Demonstrating the principle to be discussed below, waste can usually be transformed into products of value, or valuable byproducts can be derived from them. For instance, Riverview, a Michigan suburb of Detroit, has built a trash mountain 105 feet high, with plans to raise it to 200 feet. The facility services neighboring communities for a fee, which makes taxes in Riverview lower than elsewhere. And by covering the landfill with clay, it has become a recreation area whose "ski slope has been rated among the best in the Midwest, and serviced 25,000 skiers" in 1990; the skiers would not come if the areas were unpleasant. Enough methane gas is vented from the landfill and then burned to turn turbines which supply electricity to 5,000 homes - more than a third of the 13,000 population of the city, who have no complaints and only praise for the neighborly dump. Compare the pleasant ambiance of the Riverview facility with the state of garbage disposal in 1930. Then, "40 percent of [U. S. cities surveyed] still saved their wet garbage for the purpose of slopping - this despite the well-known relationship between trichinosis and garbage-fed pigs." When driving past Secaucus, New Jersey, the across-the-river recipient of New York City's garbage, one had to roll up one's auto windows to avoid the ghastly smell of the pig farms as late as the 1940s. Now the area is park-like, the site of a sports facility. During the short span of time during which this edition was being prepared, the U.S. went from a crisis of too much household waste to too little household waste. The typical newspaper headline in 1992 is "Economics of Trash Shift as Cities Learn Dumps Aren't So Full", and the story goes on to present evidence that "overall, the supply of dump space exceeds demand." A huge new high-technology dump in an abandoned Illinois strip mine may close because it cannot get enough business, amid statements that "earlier projections of ever-rising dump fees haven't played out." - just as the theory in Chapters 1-3 predicts happens in the long run with all resources. And sure enough, municipalities that face trash "shortages" - getting garbage to keep their dumps filling rapidly enough to be profitable - are now using legal coercion to prevent haulers from trucking trash elsewhere to take advantage of lower prices. The environmental groups see this alleviation of the supposed problem as bad news, too. "Kevin Greene, research director for Citizens for a Better Environment, said availability of more landfill space [in Illinois] will take pressure off government and industry to employ more recycling and waste-reducing measures...`I'm worried about this glut of landfills', he said." The glut of landfill space is so severe that the incineration industry is suffering. Waste disposal prices are so low that by 1993 there were too many incinerators in operation. What happened to abate the landfill crisis? Firms saw an opportunity to earn profits by opening large modern dumps. Presto, shortage relieved. And the new dumps are much safer, cleaner and more esthetic than the old ones. Should there be another edition of this book in a few years, the topic will probably not deserve mention any more, and readers will have forgotten that it was ever an issue. You would think that the proponents of recycling would be abashed and embarrassed by how the issue has developed - going from a public clamor to not let other states send their garbage into our state, to not letting the garbage from our state be taken to other states - all within about two years. But I have not come across a single statement by an official who says that s/he has learned any lesson from all this. Stay tuned for the next nonsensical turn in events. Here we see again the recurring theme of the book: A problem induced by more people and higher income, a search for solutions, success on the part of some in finding solutions, and a solution that leaves us better off than if the problem had not arisen. It is crucial to understand that it is not a happy accident that the landfill crisis has dissolved. Rather, it is an inevitable outcome of the process of adjustment in a free society. Can one guarantee that every crisis will be overcome in such a timely fashion before great damage is caused? No, no more than one can guarantee that a driver will safely negotiate every turn on a road; accidents happen. But accidents decline in frequency, in part because we learn from the accidents that occur. When I was in the Navy, I was taught that every safety device in gun mounts is the result of a fatal accident. That is not a happy thought, but it is a happier situation than one in which bad happenings occur simply at random, without our ability to reduce their frequency by learning from our past tragedies. THE THEORY OF WASTE AND VALUE: DUMP ON US, BABY, WE NEED IT Many "environmentalists" worry that the unintended by-products from humankind's economic activities - the "externalities", in the lingo of economics - are malign even if the direct effects of production and trade are beneficial. But a solid case can be made that even activities which are not intentionally constructive more often than not bestow a positive legacy upon subsequent generations. That is, even the unintended aspects of humans' use of land and other raw materials tend to be profitable for those who come afterward. Hence, population growth that increases the volume of trash may increase our problems in the short run, but improve the legacy of future generations. The pressure of new problems leads to the search for new solutions. The solutions constitute the knowledge that fuels the progress of civilization, and leaves humanity better off than if the original problem had never arisen. That is the history of our species, as we see elsewhere in the book (see especially chapter 4). Would Robinson Crusoe have been better off if there had preceded him on the island a group of people who had produced, consumed, and left the trash in a dump that Crusoe could uncover? Surely he would. Consider how valuable that dump would have been to Crusoe. If his predecessors had had a low-technology society the trash would have contained sharp stones and various animal remains useful for cutting, binding, and carrying. Or if the preceding society had had high technology, the dump would have contained even more interesting and useful materials - metal utensils, electronics parts, plastic vessels - which a knowledgeable person could have used to get help. Material that is waste to one community at one time is usually a valuable resource to a later community that has greater knowledge about how to use the material. Consider the "borrow pits" by the sides of turnpikes, from which earth was taken for road-building. At first thought the pits seem a despoliation of nature, a scar upon the land. But after the road is finished the borrow pits become fishing lakes and reservoirs, and the land they occupy is likely to be more valuable than if the pits had never been dug. Even a pumped-out oil well - that is, the empty hole - probably has more value to subsequent generations than a similar spot without a hole. The hole may be used as a storage place for oil or other fluids, or for some as-yet-unknown purposes. And the casing that is left in the dry well might be re-claimed profitably by future generations. Or even more likely, it will be used in ways we cannot dream of now. The value of old rigs to ecology and recreation in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California is told in Chapter 00. Humans' activities tend to increase the order and decrease the randomness of nature. One can see this from the air if one looks for signs of human habitation. Where there are people (ants, too, of course) there will be straight lines and smooth curves; otherwise, the face of nature is not neat or ordered. Manufacturing-like activities bring similar materials together. This concentration can be exploited by subsequent generations; consider lead batteries in a dump, or the war rubble from which Berliners built seven hills which are now lovely recreational spots. The only reason that newspapers are an exception and used newspapers are worth so little now is that businesses have learned how to grow trees and manufacture paper so cheaply. When I was a kid, we collected and sold bundles of old papers to the paper mill at the edge of town. (And then when the mill pond froze in the winter we exploited it as our hockey rink.) But now there is no market for those old papers, and no mill pond (one of the costs of progress.) Another act that some consider as despoiling the land but actually bestows increased wealth upon subsequent generations: Ask yourself which areas in the Midwest will seem more valuable to subsequent generations - the places where cities now are, or the places where farmlands are? One sees evidence of this delayed benefit in the Middle East. For hundreds of years until recently, Turks and Arabs occupied structures originally built by the Romans 2,000 years ago. The ancient buildings saved the late-comers the trouble of doing their own construction. Another example is the use of dressed stones in locations far away from where they were dressed. One finds the lintels of doorways from ancient Palestinian synagogues in contemporary homes in Syria. So we tell again the important story: humans have for tens of thousands of years created more than they have destroyed. That is, the composite of what they sought to produce and of the by-products has been on balance positive. This most fundamental of all facts about the progress of civilization is evidenced by a) the increasing standard of material living enjoyed by generation after generation, b) the decreased scarcity of all natural resources as measured by their prices throughout history, and c) the most extraordinary achievement of all, longer life and better health. The treasures of civilization that one generation bequeaths to the next, each century's inheritance greater than the previous one, prove the same point; we create more than we destroy. The core of the inheritance, of course, is the productive knowledge that one generation increments and passes on to the next generation. If human beings destroyed more they produced, on average, the species would have died out long ago. But in fact people do produce more than they consume, and the new knowledge of how to overcome material problems is the most precious product of all. The more people there are on earth, the more new problems, but also the more minds to solve those problems and the greater the inheritance for future generations. Engineers are constantly inventing myriad new ways not only to get rid of wastes but also to derive value from them. "From their one-time reputation as major pollutants, garbage and sewage now seem to be acquiring the status of national resources." Within a year after Connecticut set up a Resources Recovery Authority "to manage a collection and re-use program for the entire state," the authorities could judge that "there are no technological problems with garbage any more. All that is needed is initiative." Seldom does a day pass without news of valuable innovations that turn waste into goods: farmers using recycled paper as beds for animals, poultry, and plants; wood and coal ash substituted for lime; burning old tires to produce electrical energy; recycling the steel from discarded cans as an input to the copper mining process; J. R. Simplot, the Montana potato king, feeding the leavings from french-fry production - half of the potato - to livestock. All this recycling makes economic sense - as proven by the fact that individuals and firms choose to do it because it suits them, and not because they are forced to do it. It is only coerced recycling - the kind that forces people to wash and sort glass and costs hundreds of dollars per ton - that is costly and odious to those who value liberty highly. The pollution of our living space by junked cars is particularly interesting. Not only can this problem be solved by the expenditure of resources for cleanup, but it also illustrates how resource scarcity is decreasing. Improved iron supplies and steel-making processes have made iron and steel so cheap that junked cars are no longer worth recycling. The old cars - if they could be stored out of sight, say, on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico as habitats for fish, like old oil rigs - would be a newly created reservoir of "raw" materials for the future. In this important sense, iron is not being used up but is simply being stored in a different form for possible future use, until iron prices rise or better methods of salvage are developed. Much the same is true with many other discarded materials. Do I have a solution to the used-diaper problem other than burning them for energy? Not at the moment. But there is every likelihood that, as with other wastes created in the past, human ingenuity will find a way to convert them to a valuable resource rather than a costly nuisance. The same is true of nuclear waste, of course (see chapter 13). I just wish I could feel as hopeful about the pollution of human thought and intercourse that we all contribute both in our private relationships and in our public utterances - of which the scare reports about disposable diapers are an example. Now that's a problem more worth our attention than the disposition of disposable diapers. CONCLUSION Here is the sound-bite summary: The physical garbage the doomsayers worry about is mostly not a problem. The problems they urge us to worry about are mostly intellectual garbage. The history of humanity is the creation of life, health and wealth out of what was formerly waste. page # \ultres tchar19 February 7, 1994