[GreenYes] New GRRN Web Section: End Landfilling

["Bill Sheehan" <zerowaste@grrn.org>]

END LANDFILLING

The  GrassRoots Recycling Network website has a new 
master page called END LANDFILLING at 
http://www.grrn.org/landfill/index.html.  The page is a 
portal to several GRRN campaigns targeting landfilling and 
contains links to resources for those seeking to understand 
wasting and end landfilling.  This is only a start: we will be 
adding significantly to this section in the next few months 
and welcome suggestions for important information.

From the END LANDFILLING page:
 
WHY END LANDFILLING?  Landfills are a flawed 
technology and a cancer on the land. Landfills waste 
resources and compete directly with beneficial resource 
conserving enterprises such as reuse, recycling, 
composting. Even so-called 'state-of-the-art' landfills 
merely delay, rather than eliminate, massive pollution to 
groundwater and are a leading contributor to global 
warming. Waste can and should be designed out of our 
industrial system. Waste is not inevitable. Nor are landfills. 

***  WHAT ABOUT INCINERATION?  Burning garbage 
is a costly and doubly flawed technology. Incineration 
captures far less energy than recycling saves, releases 
toxics into the air, and still requires landfills for toxic ash. 
GRRN focuses on landfilling because (1) other 
organizations do an excellent job of exposing the 
shortcomings of incineration (see especially GAIA [off-
site]); and (2) landfilling is the primary economic 
competition with recycling in the USA at the present time 
(53% of U.S. discards are landfilled compared with 16% 
incinerated, according to U.S. EPA, in large part because 
'tipping fees' for incinerators average more than twice 
those for landfills). 

GRRN CAMPAIGNS
 
STOP ENERGY SUBSIDIES FOR LANDFILLS  
The waste industry is working to declare garbage a 
'renewable resource' and secure federal tax credits for 
making energy from collecting landfill methane gas. GRRN 
believes such measures should be required, not subsidized, 
for such an antiquated technology. 
 
KEEP ORGANICS OUT OF LANDFILLS  
Waste Management Inc. is trying to recapture grass and 
leaves for its landfills by supporting efforts to overturn a 
successful state law that bans yard trimmings from 
landfills. 
 
DOW'S HERBICIDE THREATENS COMPOSTING  
The discovery of the herbicide clopyralid in compost 
around the country is threatening not only growers and 
gardeners but solid waste management systems that depend 
on composting to divert tons of yard waste, food, land-
clearing debris and other organic material from landfills. 
 
LANDFILL RESOURCES 
etc.


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