What Garbage Crisis? C. W. Baird

The then-emerging economic recession has been given most of the credit, or blame, for these out comes, but there is more to it than that. The general public is, at long last, beginning to take a more cautious, critical attitude toward the claims of the environmental establishment. Envi ronmental values are still important to the elec torate, but so too are other values such as common sense, individual freedom, property rights, jobs, and economic well-being. Moreover, the general public is beginning to recognize that much envi ronmental hectoring consists of gross exaggera tions and sometimes, as in the case of Big Green, directly contradicts elementary scientific princi ples as well as readily available evidence. For example, the advocates of Big Green over stated the risks of pesticides on fruits and vegeta bles by 2,600to 21,000times.1If they had won, pro duce grown outside of California that didn't meet Big Green's pesticide standards could not have been sold there, and the prices of California pro duce would have risen dramatically. Most physiCharles W Baird is a professor of economics at Califor nia State University, Hayward, California. This article was written in association with the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Seattle, Washington.

cians agree that eating fresh fruits and vegetables is a good way to reduce the incidence of cancer in the digestive system. As University of California biochemist Bruce Ames has pointed out, if Big Green had passed, Californians would have eaten fewer fresh fruits and vegetables and therefore would have increased their risk of getting cancer.2 Environmental extremism has become the prin cipal means by which many collectivists hope to achieve their dream of a thoroughly regulated, controlled, and planned economy.3The Red Star is burned out, but the Green Star is rising. A Quasi-Religion Consider, for example, the alleged garbage cri sis. This year, Congress must decide whether to reauthorize the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, whichis the principal Federal waste disposal law. There is no doubt that Congress will indeed reauthorize this act, and, if the Green Lob by has its way, the law will be substantially strengthened. For example, recycling, regardless of whether it is cost efficient, willbe made manda tory for everyone throughout the country.

Environmentalists have already done substan tial propagandistic groundwork. For example, recent TV pictures of garbage-Iadened barges in search of a dumping place were skillfully used by the Greens to suggest that the U.S. is about to drown in municipal solid waste unless we sinful, profligate American consumers reduce our waste ful consumption and take the recycling pledge.

And sin is what they have in mind. For many environmentalists, pantheism has replaced belief in a transcendent God who grants human beings dominion over the earth and all its creatures. This new (actually it has ancient roots) "earth womb" religion comes complete with its own creed. One of its most important doctrines is the recy cling of municipal solid waste. Landfill sites, the litany goes, are scarce, and, in any case, they are hazardous. Incineration, the litany continues, is unthinkable because of the resulting air pollution and the dangerous content of much of the resulting ash. There are, the litany goes on, only two legiti mate acts of contrition-recycling and less con sumption. The litany ends with "Go in peace, and abstain from plastics.Thanks be to Mother Earth." Landfilling There is no shortage of geologicallysafe, poten tiallandfill sites in the United States. Japan, a land poor country, has 2,400 operational sites. In the land-rich U.S., there are only 4,800.While it is true that one-half of existing landfillsare due to close in five years, that is always the case-landfills are designed to stay open, on average, only 10 years.

Stateof-the-art landfill technology makes it possible for all new sites to be environmentally safe and people-friendly. There are vast, empty regions in the West and Southwest that aren't used by anyone for any purpose that could be devel oped into environmentally safe landfills. Only pol itics and pantheism stand in the way of common sense. Private landfill owners have strong economic incentives to use liners, install leachate and methane gas collection systems, and include groundwater monitoring systems. It is only on government-owned landfills that scant attention is paid to such amenities. The reason is simple-pri vate owners are liable for the damages they create, and government operators are not. Similarly,it is in the interests of private owners to charge fees that reflect the full costs of collection and disposal, which include landfill closure and post-closure maintenance costs. Such fees will be different for different kinds of waste. Individuals and businesses can make rational choices about the composition and quantities of what they dump only if disposal fees embody the true costs of that activity.Municipal disposal fees, politically set, are 205 usually uniform for all kinds of waste, and they typically cover only current operating expenses.

This encourages over-dumping and lack of atten tion to the composition of the waste. Moreover, closed landfills don't have to be dead land. Housing developments, golf courses, and conference centers are only three types of already successful post-closure landfill uses. The way to overcome the alleged shortage of landfill sites is to get politics out of the way. All existing landfills should be privatized, and govern ment should get out of the landfill business. The proper role of government in this matter is judicial. If courts held private landfill operators strictlyliable for the real harms they impose on oth ers, the operators would internalize those costs and make appropriate decisions thereon. To overcome the not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) attitude of most people toward landfillsiting,operators would have to offer compensation to people whose prop erty would be in close proximity to landfills. Thus residential and commercial sites that have already been developed would be avoided.

Incineration Stateof-the-art incineration technology makes it possible for new combustor sites to be construct ed and operated that would be environmentally safe and people-friendly. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, "The technology exists to carry out, monitor, and control the processes of incineration of municipal solid waste (inclusive of ash residue management) in such a way as to com pletely ensure that potentially harmful con stituents are not expected to pose risks to humans and/or the environment which would normally be of regulatory concern."4 We incinerate only 14 percent of our municipal solid waste, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a target of 20 percent for 1992. In contrast, Japan safely incinerates over 60 percent of its waste.5 Air pollution from incinera tion is no longer a problem. Even much of the resulting ash can be put to good use-in secondary road construction, for example. The rest can be safely landfilled. If we incinerated at the same rate as the Japanese, we would cut our need for landfill space by almost half. Only the irrational opposi tion of environmental zealots and the NIMBY phenomenon prevent us from siting, constructing, 206 THE FREEMAN • JUNE 1991 and operating sufficient new incinerator facilities.

Just as with landfill siting, NIMBY can be over come with offers of compensation. Prudent choice of incinerator sites would minimize the compensa tion bill. Furthermore, the energy released through incineration can be converted to electricity.Waste to-energy incineration would reduce our con sumption of nonrenewable fossilfuelsin electricity generation. About 40 percent of landfill waste is paper and paper products. Paper is a renewable resource. If we incinerated the paper we now send to landfills we would ameliorate two problems with one stroke. The state of Maine has moved toward prohibit ing private ownership of new incinerators, but rational public policy dictates just the opposite. If private owners are held liable for the damages they cause, and if government sets standards while monitoring private operators for compliance, we willhave safe and effective incineration. If govern ment agencies operate incinerators, less care will be taken. The reason, again, is simple-private owners have their own wealth at stake, govern ment operators do not.

Recycling Recycling is not what it is cracked up to be. While it makes economic sense to recycle some things, especially aluminum and ferrous metals, recycling other things, such as most paper, does not. There are already more stored old newspa pers waiting to be recycled than the demand for recycled paper can absorb. Much recycled paper is too poor in quality to be used effectively in print ing. The bleaches used to de-ink paper during recycling are toxic and present their own environ mental problems. 6 Moreover, most paper comes from trees specificallyplanted for that purpose. If the demand for new paper is reduced by forced recycling, fewer such trees will be planted. Recy cling of paper can be anti-green. The irrational attachment of EPA bureau crats to recycling was illustrated by their pro posal last December that all municipal waste incinerators be required to recycle 25 percent of the trash they received for burning, not withstanding any considerations of the cost and benefits of doing so. Fortunately the Vice President's Competitiveness Council quashed that regulation before it took effect.

The best way to get people to be careful about what they discard is to charge them by-the-can or by-weight garbage collection fees based on the composition of what is discarded. The city of Seat tie has set a target of recycling60percent ofitstrash by 1998.Its current recyclingrate is 37 percent, the highest in the nation.7Seattle's "pay as you throw" system imposes differential disposal fees for vari ous kinds of waste based upon their disposal costs. Seattle adopted its program as an alternative to the construction of a large incinerator facility. Although its municipal solid waste disposal prob lem has been ameliorated by this sensible pricing policy,recyclingalone will not suffice.The 60 per cent target is unattainable without large subsidies. Sooner or later the citizens of Seattle will have to reconsider the incineration alternative. Thirty-nine percent of American cities don't charge for garbage collection. Of those that do charge, half impose flat fees that are unrelated to the amount and kind of garbage collected. Thus about two-thirds of American cities provide no direct incentive for households to consider the costs of their garbage disposal decisions.8 If recy cling must be done, the implementation of differ ential fees based on the separation or non-separa tion of recyc1ablesand the characteristics of what IS discarded is the best way to accomplish the task.

Direct command regulations enforced by garbage police and neighborhood monitors should be anathema to Americans. Worse yet is the real dan ger that school children will be encouraged by their environmentally conscious teachers to become garbage police deputies at home as they try to instruct their parents in environmentally cor rect thinking and acting. Plastics "Plastics" is not a four-letter word. McDonald's recent capitulation to the environmental establish ment on the use of polystyrene foam containers was an act of infamy. It is testimony to the power of the environmental priesthood that McDonald's felt it had to take this public-relations step to defend its goodwillcapital. Ironically,McDonald's switched from paper to plastic in the 1970s at the behest of environmentalists who were then con cerned about excessiveharvesting of trees. Styrofoam is clearly superior to paper in hot food and drink containers. Moreover, plastics are just as recyclable as paper. Almost 200 companies are in the business of recycling plastic food con tainers, milk containers, bottles, knives, and forks into such products as carpet backing, paint brush es, scouring pads, appliance handles, floor tiles, automotive parts, and fiberfill for pillows,sleeping bags, and ski jackets. High density polyethylene plastic is recycled into such things as traffic cones, trash cans, and plastic lumber.

Plastic takes up less landfill space per compara ble item than does paper and, unlike paper, plastic will not decompose and produce leachate that could find its way into groundwater. Polystyrene foam makes up only one-quarter of 1 percent of landfilled waste, and all plastics make up only 8 percent. Paper, in contrast, constitutes 40 percent.9 Moreover, plastics, just like paper, can be safely incinerated. There are simply no grounds for the widespread plastiphobia that the environmental zealots have created. The AsepticPackage Many environmentalists seem to fear and loathe any kind of technological innovation irrespective of its environmental impact. The aseptic package is an excellent case in point.10 An aseptic drink box, for example, can store fruit juices for extended periods without refrigera tion or chemical preservatives. These boxes, in sin gle-serving sizes, are sold in most supermarkets across the country. They have become popular with consumers who wish to include such bever ages with packed lunches at school or work. They are unbreakable, light in weight, use less material than any other packaging alternatives including those that require refrigeration and chemical preservatives, are energy efficient in production, and have the lowest environmental impact of any alternative single-serve package on the market.

Notwithstanding the fact that in 1989 the Insti tute of Food Technologists voted aseptic packag ing to be "the outstanding food processing tech nology of the last 50 years," the state of Maine, in that same year, at the behest of environmentalists as well as producers of alternative packaging, banned it. The ostensible reason was that since WHAT GARBAGE CRISIS? 207 aseptic packaging takes more packages to hold the same volume of product as a larger package of a different type, aseptic packaging increases the amount of discarded waste. But this is a non sequitur. For any volume of product, the total amount of packaging material required by aseptic packaging is lessthan that used by any alternative. It takes more separate boxes, but all those boxes together require less material than one larger package of a different type that could hold the same volume of product. Maine's action cannot be defended on rational grounds. It was decision-making on the basis of misinforma tion, superstition, and ignorance.

We should forsake the environmental priest hood and adopt an integrated approach to munic ipal solid waste management. Such an approach would include sensible landfilling and incineration along with recycling and prudent packaging deci sions, all based on cost-benefit comparisons. If we adopt that strategy, the "garbage crisis" of the 1990swillbe seen to be as chimerical as the "ener gy crisis" of the 1970s, and for the same reason. Both were caused by faulty government policy. The cure is simple: discard counterproductive gov ernment interventions, privatize, get the prices right, and allow individuals, guided by those prices, to make their own choices. D 1. Warren Brookes, Revengeof the Killer Watermelon:Califor nia'sBig Green Initiative(San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, July 26, 1990), p. 5. 2. Bruce N. Ames, oral discussion of "Misconceptions About Environmental Pollution and Cancer," paper presented at the Gen eral Meeting of The Mont Pelerin Society, Munich, Germany, September 3, 1990.

3. Robert James Bidinotto, "Environmentalism: Freedom's Foe for the '90s," The Freeman,November 1990,pp. 409-420. 4. IncinerationofMunicipalSolid Waste:Scientificand Technical. Evaluationof the Stateof-the-Art(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Confer ence of Mayors, February 1, 1990), p. 8. 5. Kenneth Chilton, TalkingTrash: MunicipalSolid Waste Man agement (St. Louis: Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, September 1990), pp. 9-12. 6. Lynn Scarlett, "Integrated Waste Management: A Primer on Solid Waste Problems and Policy Options," paper presented at Inte grated Waste Management Systems: A Seminar for Academics, sponsored by the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Seattle, Washington, November 2-4, 1990,p. 13. 7. Chilton, op. cit.,p. 12. 8. Scarlett, op. cit.,p. 5. 9. CharacterizationofMunicipalSolidWastein the UnitedStates:. 1990Update(Washington, D.C.: Environmental Protection Agency, June 1990), p. 10.

10.This section is based on Harry Teasley,Jr., President and CEO of Coca-Cola Foods, "Presentation on Aseptic Package to Maine Waste Management Agency," October 9,1990.