What BEAT is doing to move toward Zero Waste
Electronics Recycling in Massachusetts (outside website)
Mattress and Furniture Recycling in MA (outside website)
Freecycling (outside website)
What is Zero Waste?
Zero waste is a way to design, create, use, and breakdown products so that no waste ends up being emitted, landfilled, or incinerated. Despite similarities, zero waste is not just another form of recycling; it involves changes at the production level. Goods should be made with plans for how all components will be treated at the end of that product’s useful life – whether that means the product is disassembled and each component reused, or the product itself could be reused for a different purpose.
While you may be thinking zero waste is unrealistic – setting zero waste as a goal has amazing results. For one thing, the only way we will ever reach zero waste is to set it as a goal. It is easy to measure and tell how we are doing toward reaching that goal. And that goal effects every decision point in a product’s life cycle – or for the consumer – everything about the product you are buying – what is in it, how is it packaged, when I am done is there a way to completely recycle the product or every piece of it? Thinking this way can have a pronounced effect on the amount of garbage you produce, even if you are not reaching zero waste.
For more on Zero Waste visit these websites:
As You Sow’s Waste Program (Extended Producer Responsibility as the norm – work with Producers)
Asbestos Recycling (Asbestos is still a major health threat – treating its disposal properly can save lives)
Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (Design products with materials that come from and can safely return to nature or industry)
Eco-cycle Solutions (Road map for how communities can get to Zero Waste)
One Less Straw (effort to stop the use of plastic straws)
Zero Waste International Alliance
Zero Waste – Grassroots Recycling Network
Zero Emissions Research & Initiatives (ZERI)
Amy Perlmutter’s “Jobs and Recycling in Massachusetts” (pdf)
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2013 – Massachusetts DEP releases “Revised” Draft Solid Waste Master Plan
A very strange twist! In 2009, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection worked with many stakeholders and received lots of public input to develop a Solid Waste Master Plan that everyone could live with. Then, two years later, in December 2012 released the plan with “a small revision”. This “small revision” is totally unacceptable!
Here is a fact sheet (pdf) on why gasification is not an acceptable option.
Here is a coalition response:
Response to Patrick Administration Modifying Incinerator Moratorium
Toxics Action Center
Clean Water Action
MassPIRG
(Westport) Clean Air South Coast
Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT)
(Springfield) Arise for Social Justice
Haverhill Environmental League
Residents for Alternative Trash Solutions (RATS)After four years of deliberation, the Massachusetts Department of Protection (MassDEP) has released a Revised Draft Solid Waste Master Plan. Advocacy groups are not pleased about the lifting of the 23 year old incinerator moratorium as part of the new version.
In a statement from Secretary Richard Sullivan of the Patrick Administration wrote, “MassDEP proposes to modify the moratorium on municipal solid waste combustion to encourage innovative and alternative technologies (e.g., gasification or pyrolysis) for converting municipal solid waste to energy or fuel on a limited basis.” The Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) has had in place a moratorium on new municipal solid waste combustion facilities since 1990.
Sylvia Broude, Executive Director of Toxics Action Center, a public health and environmental non-profit, called the state’s announcement a huge step backward on progress towards zero waste. “MassDEP’s own taxpayer funded study commissioned by the Tellus Institute in 2008 recommended against lifting the incinerator moratorium,” said Broude. “This recent decision to allow more incineration is not only bad public policy, it’s a mockery of the public process, and it flies in the face of advice from MassDEP’s own consultants. There’s simply no reason to expand capacity to burn or bury when we have so much potential to reduce, reuse, recycle.” The Tellus Report: http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/priorities/tellusmmr.pdf
“The Administration’s announcement reveals an information gap,” said Lynne Pledger, Solid Waste Director at Clean Water Action, “Secretary Sullivan and Commissioner Kimmell were not in office three years ago when DEP reviewed the dismal track record of gasification and the failure of a gasification pilot in our own state to gasify garbage, and decided to move on with waste reduction instead of burning resources.”
“In 2009, the Patrick Administration issued a statement called Patrick-Murray Administration Maintains Incinerator Moratorium, Expands Recycling Efforts where they committed to keeping the clamp down on this dirty polluting industry”,said Brent Baeslack from Haverhill Environmental League, “What happened? Do they think they can burn their way out of the failure to follow their own Solid Waste Master Plan?”
Source: http://www.mass.gov/eea/pr-pre-p2/pr-2009/patrick-murray-administration-maintains.html
“The DEP called their draft plan ‘the path to zero waste,’a goal we embrace. But zero waste has no burning whatsoever,” said Janet Domenitz Director of MassPIRG, “By proposing more burning, DEP is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”
“The Patrick administration simply has it wrong to even be considering lifting the moratorium and burning trash,” stated Dave Dionne, a long-time Westport activist and former town official. “The health of the people of the Commonwealth should be the top priority.” Dionne is a member of the Massachusetts Coalition for Clean Air, a group that successfully stopped a plan to convert Somerset Station to a plasma gasification process that would have incinerate coal and toxic construction and demolition debris.
“The Patrick administration needs to provide funding for the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to do its job and enforce the current solid waste ban.” said Jane Winn, Executive Director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT). “We don’t need more incineration. We need to stop illegal waste disposal. The state has cut environmental funding to the point that the DEP can no longer protect human health or the environment!”
Amy Perlmutter, a Massachusetts consultant in zero waste and clean technologies, says “These technologies are anything but innovative. They have a decades long track record of not working up to their promises and not being built due to their high costs. To take limited resources that should otherwise be recycled- creating jobs and preserving the environment- and turn them into fuel is a waste of time and money. Communities throughout the country and world have shown that recycling rates of 60-80% are possible. That’s what a real Zero Waste plan would do.”
“When the former Secretary Bowles said in December of 2009 that focusing on incineration and landfills is the wrong end of the waste equation- we applauded” said Michaelann Bewsee from Arise for Social Justice. “Now, so much of what is good in this plan is undone by a return to incineration, which is exactly the wrong direction for our state.”: http://www.mass.gov/eea/pr-pre-p2/pr-2009/patrick-murray-administration-maintains.html
Kirstie L. Pecci, Esq., of Residents for Alternative Trash Solutions explained that there is no need for additional incinerator capacity. “If the MassDEP strengthened and enforced the waste bans, all recyclable and compostible materials, at least 80% of the municipal solid waste stream, could be diverted from landfills and incinerators.” She further explained that the MassDEP has the authority to revise the waste bans under the legislation that already exists. “Massachusetts would have plenty of disposal capacity if the MassDEP had the guts to do their job.”
Background information
The Solid Waste Master Plan is the Commonwealth’s comprehensive, 10-year waste plan required by law. From 2008 to 2010, there were public hearings, thousands of comments, and testimony submitted by hundreds of citizens. On July 2, 2010, the Department of Environmental Protection issued the draft plan. Today, the MassDEP issued the Revised Draft Plan and Appendices and opened for an additional comment period until February 15th, 2013. The change in the Revised Draft Plan, for which MassDEP now seeks comment, is a limited modification of the municipal solid waste combustion moratorium, which is described on pages 46-47 of the Revised Draft Plan. Following completion of this comment period, MassDEP will publish a Final Plan, along with a Final Response to Comments Document.
The change in the Revised Draft Plan, for which MassDEP now seeks comment, is a limited modification of the municipal solid waste combustion moratorium, which is described on pages 46-47 of the Revised Draft Plan. MassDEP proposes to modify the moratorium on municipal solid waste combustion to encourage innovative and alternative technologies (e.g., gasification or pyrolysis) for converting municipal solid waste to energy or fuel on a limited basis. The moratorium will remain in place for new capacity for traditional combustion of municipal solid waste.
Other Background:
From the Tellus Report’s Executive Summary, pg. 1: http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/priorities/tellusmmr.pdf
“Several factors lead us to conclude that gasification and pyrolysis facilities are unlikely to play a major role in MSW management in Massachusetts by 2020. Key issues informing this conclusion include: the lack of experience in the U.S. with large-scale alternative technology facilities successfully processing mixed MSW and generating energy; the long lead times to plan, site, construct, and permit such facilities; the significant capital costs required and the loss of solid waste management flexibility that is associated with the long-term contractual arrangements that such capital-intensive facilities require; and the relatively small benefit with respect to greenhouse gas emissions compared to diversion or landfilling.”
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Developing a New Massachusetts Solid Waste Master Plan: Statewide Stakeholder Meetings
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
6:00 – 9:00 PM,
Berkshire Community College, in the small theater (room K110) in the Koussevitsky Arts Center, Pittsfield, MA (see maps)
At BEAT’s request, DEP has agreed to hold one of their Solid Waste Master Plan Stakeholder Meetings in the Berkshires – so please attend if you can! Thank you. –
BEAT will attend the meeting, but we submitted comments on this plan by email as well. Jane
The Solid Waste Master Plan is the Commonwealth’s blueprint for managing solid waste that is generated, reused, recycled, recovered and disposed of in Massachusetts. With a 47% recycling rate, Massachusetts is among the best in the nation, but growth has leveled off and we continue to dispose of materials that have significant value. Dramatic increases in energy costs, heightened concerns about climate change, renewed interest in more efficient use of waste as second hand materials, and diminishing public resources are prompting the Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) to fundamentally reexamine the way we think about solid waste management. A new Master Plan needs to take advantage of new market opportunities and provide a framework for improving the overall environmental performance of our solid waste management system.
Consumers, businesses and government can no longer afford our traditional ways of dealing with waste. We need to start seeing waste as material that has value, in both monetary and natural-resource terms, and to develop the markets and infrastructure that will conserve and capitalize on that value rather than squander it. In these fiscally constrained times, we need smart, market-based strategies to promote recycling, increasing demand for second hand material here in the Commonwealth. The new Solid Waste Master Plan must establish strategies that are grounded in marketplace realities and will make significant progress toward this goal in the next decade.
To help us identify strategies that will accomplish this goal, MassDEP is holding five public meetings across the state. We want to hear from citizens, businesses, municipal officials and other stakeholders about your best ideas for accomplishing our goals in both the short and long term. Help us “think outside the box” about questions like:
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- How can we collectively shift from a “waste management” to a “materials management” system?
- How can we work with product manufacturers, distributors and retailers to prevent waste from being generated in the first place?
- How can we increase the amount of waste that is reused, recycled, and composted?
- How can we encourage recycling markets to grow without depending on government subsidies?
- How can we encourage entrepreneurs to develop new uses for materials that are recovered from waste? What are the best ways to stimulate new markets that recover the maximum value from these materials?
- What materials should we focus on in the short term, and what strategies should be started now for longer term benefits?
- How can we get the most value from materials that cannot be recycled or reused?
- How effective is the waste incinerator moratorium at meeting our goals of increasing recycling, enhancing environmental performance and spurring new technologies?
- How can we get the best environmental performance from our materials management system at reasonable cost?
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What BEAT is doing to move toward Zero Waste
See our comments on DEP’s 2013 Solid Waste Plan
We have made tremendous progress in reducing the amount of waste we produce at BEAT. We have cut down on the amount of paper generated by 1) being very conscious of everything we print, and by 2) saving files as pdfs rather than printing them. We can put agendas of upcoming meetings on to our laptop, then take notes at the meeting on the laptop as well. When we do print, we try to always print double sided. (see BEAT’s Environmental Policy pdf)
Jane Winn is executive director of BEAT, and in her household they have also dramatically reduced the amount of waste produced. Most food scraps (other than meat) is composted. Pet waste is flushed. Cloth bags are used for shopping. When buying products, the amount and type of packaging is considered.
In evaluating our waste production we do had one place for major improvement – our workshops and conferences. We now bring cups, glasses, plates, and silverware to our events. For larger crowds, we bring paper as backup. Trying to get better every year.
THANK YOU EVERYBODY!