Over the past few years, recycling prices across the U.S. have soared, with some cities and towns now spending millions of dollars on their programs. To understand the financial burden our communities are facing, I spent the better part of last year collecting recycling data from Massachusetts cities and towns. Here’s what I learned.
Kirstie Pecci is director of the zero waste project with Conservation Law Foundation. She says the MassDEP decision to expand the capacity of the landfill is especially egregious because the landfill doesn’t have a plastic liner.
“Bourne is trading short-term economic gain for long-term pollution,” said Kirstie Pecci, Director of CLF’s Zero Waste Project. “The Bourne Landfill is already leaching toxic garbage juice into groundwater, and this expansion will only make matters worse. It’s time to stop looking for more places to bury waste and get serious about reducing trash before it reaches incinerators and landfills.”
“Toxic garbage water has no place in Lake Memphremagog or any of Vermont’s waters,” said CLF attorney Peter Blair. “Landfill leachate contains a toxic soup of chemicals, including PFAS, which cause serious health issues in humans and animals. Waste companies need to take responsibility for the damage they’re causing to our waters, and this new permit is a huge step towards making that happen in Vermont.”
Can You Slash Your Trash for a Week? Together, we need to rise up and advocate for a zero-waste future. You can start right now with CLF’s third annual Slash Trash Challenge! Follow along on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to join us in taking on a new zero-waste challenge each day! Not on social media? That’s okay! This page outlines… Continue reading CLF Slash Trash Challenge
Wrestling humanity away from single-use plastics will not be easy. But we can start by reducing our reliance on single-use plastic beverage containers.
Located in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts, Uvida Shop is the city’s first-ever Zero Waste store – a retail destination that sells products with no single-use plastic packaging. Owner and CEO Maria began this venture while studying environmental science and sustainability at UMass Boston.
Plastic is everywhere – even in the places you’d least expect, like chewing gum, tea bags, wet wipes, receipts, and microwaveable popcorn bags. Yet, manufacturers continue to make more and more plastic each year – even though how plastic is made fuels a toxic cycle of production, consumption, and disposal.
When first built in 1976, New Hampshire’s Bethlehem Landfill was just a local dump – 400 x 400 feet in total. But thanks to large corporate waste companies with aggressive growth plans, the landfill has swelled in size. Today, it covers 50 acres and buries 175,000 tons of trash each year. The State of New… Continue reading Turning a Spotlight on New Hampshire’s Waste Crisis
Our waste disposal systems, like landfills and incinerators, simply can’t handle the volume of trash that is produced every day. What’s more, these waste disposal problems put us at risk. Burning and burying trash creates health threats and environmental hazards, including toxic emissions that amplify the climate crisis. In the U.S., only 30% of the 268 million pounds of trash generated each year gets recycled. The remaining 223 million pounds? That’s all sent to landfills, which produce toxic garbage juice that seeps into the groundwater, and incinerators, which release harmful emissions into the air. Sadly, these… Continue reading Problems With Waste Disposal in New England
