The endless line of garbage trucks waiting at the incinerator in Peekskill
As a student in a Master Composter /Recycler program this year, one of our class trips was to the place where all of the garbage in our county is incinerated. At least 200 tons of garbage is burned on a daily basis at Waste Management’s Waste to Energy plant in Peekskill, NY. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as you read these very words, that inferno is burning up garbage that you may have put on the curb just yesterday.
I can’t get that image out of my mind. Every bag of garbage I see, I think of it burning and I am concerned about our lungs filling with toxic chemicals from those burning bags of garbage. The folks at the incinerator, oops the “Waste to Energy Plant”, assured me that the many scrubbers on their smoke stacks take a large amount of toxicity out of the air, but I still wonder. What about those workers at ground zero who were told by the EPA that the air was safe to breathe?
The bottom line is: there is no away. When we toss something into the garbage, we are not throwing it “away”. It either ends up in a landfill or else it is incinerated. Either way, we are impacting the health of ourselves and of future generations. We’ve got to reduce our waste stream, no doubt about it.
Here’s a place to start: ban the plastic bag. Its simple and do-able. Start small, in your own town. Get your town board’s sustainability committee to create a campaign. This music video can help.
