Most of our readers are already familiar with the state of
waste management in China, where officials are literally digging the country
out from under a pile of trash. The waste management system has been unable to
keep pace with the booming economic development and urban growth that has
resulted in The Middle Kingdom’s current problem.
China produced 221 million tons of MSW in 2010, more than
35% of which is untreated and left on street corners or dumped in unsanctioned
landfills. The lack of foresight on China’s part means that one of the
fastest-growing nations in the world now has to overspend in order to play
catch up. The Chinese government has pledged to spend $42 billion over a
five-year period on waste management. While it has set aside a goal of doubling
its meager 3 percent recycling rate and will also invest in food source
separation, the majority of the money will go to building waste-to-energy
plants.
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| Garbage landfill in Changchun, China. Courtesy: MSNBC. |
China hopes to increase its waste-to-energy capacity to 35%
of all discarded materials by 2015. The country has added 66 incinerators in
the last two years and plans to have a total of 600 by 2020.
The United States has always been ahead of the curve in
terms of waste management and have been able to avoid many of the problems our
fellow superpower is experiencing. Here’s how the U.S. and China’s history of
waste management and philosophy differ:
1. Historically, the U.S. developed its consumer-driven
culture at a slower pace, allowing our waste management infrastructure to grow
along with it.
2. China has previously ignored the waste hierarchy and has
effectively been without any sort of established recycling program in place. It
has historically been left to poor citizens who rely on salvaging recyclables
from the garbage and selling it back to facilities as way of earning a meager
living.
By contrast, Baltimore first began curbside recycling in
1874. By 1965, Congress had passed the Solid Waste Disposal Act, which was
billed as a national research and development program to assist state and local
governments with its disposal programs. Recycling is not mandatory in most of
the U.S. and so the state and local governments oversee recycling and waste
disposal efforts.
3. The size and quality of landfills vary widely in China.
While the best ones are equipped with the technology to control emissions,
hundreds more are unsanctioned dumping sites that have sprung up outside of
cities and throughout the countryside as a result of economic growth. Without
the proper number of public facilities, people began dumping trash anywhere
without regard or understanding of the environmental and health consequences.
The U.S. solved this problem with the Federal Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, which mandated tighter monitoring of
landfills and established a hazardous waste management program.
But before Americans pat themselves on the back, they should
consider how their current philosophy of choosing the cheapest method of trash disposal
affects them long term. There has
been progress in the development of clean waste-to-energy technologies but
landfilling remains the most popular option because of its economical nature.
The U.S. has over 1,900 active MSW landfills in the nation, down from nearly
3,000 a decade ago. As these landfills reach maximum capacity, tipping fees
rise exponentially, which is why states in the Northeast and California are on
the forefront of exploration into alternative methods. Despite these advances, a
tough economy and difficult permitting has stalled the implementation of new
technologies and municipalities continue to return to standard practices of
landfilling – relieving the short term cost burden but heightening the long
term damage.
Similarly, China has opted to go with a solution that serves
short term needs best. The country settled on mass burn incinerators because it
contends that it is the best temporary solution to reducing the massive amounts
of trash lying across the landscape and to generating energy to meet its
rapidly growing needs. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that after building almost
500 new WTE facilities, China is going to be willing to invest in newer,
cleaner technology once it gets ahead of its current problem.
As two of the largest countries in the world in terms of
people and economic influence, it is imperative that China and the United
States put the good of the environment ahead of the almighty dollar to avoid
finding us in a mess similar to the one China is dealing with now somewhere
down the road.
