[greenyes] RE : [greenyes] any laws requiring public tours of landfills?

[m.laquerre@no.address]

Hi Éric,

If yours municipalities are customers of that landfill, why not ask them to
included in their contract the obligation of "Open doors" to anyone asking
to visit the operation ?...

Mario Laquerre
Coordonnateur
Secteur municipal
RECYC-QUÉBEC


-----Message d'origine-----
De : Eric Lombardi [mailto:eric@no.address] 
Envoyé : 7 octobre, 2005 12:19
À : greenyes@no.address
Objet : Re: [greenyes] any laws requiring public tours of landfills?

Hi Toni, Wayne, and all others who have responded, (I love this email
community!!),

The situation is this.  Eco-Cycle has been running a huge School Recycling
Program for over 15 years, and we have a program called the Follow The Waste
Stream Tour that is very popular with our local teachers.  We take busloads
of kids to the landfill, then the recycling center, then a local grocery
store to teach them how to make choices while shopping.  Last year we took
900 kids and adults to the landfill.

Over the last five years, Eco-Cycle has really turned up the volume on  "the
problems with landfills" as a community advocate, but we are NOT allowed to
be political in our school programs.  It's all science based, or else we'd
be booted.

Now we're involved in a local landfill expansion fight, and that has proven
to be the last straw for our local landfills, all of whom are privately
owned.  We got shut out last week while a yellow school bus was on the way
there!  I have been successful in getting the landfill to reverse their
decision because I was ready to go public and had enlisted a State
Legislator and the Local County Commissioner to join me... it would have
been a big public media mess for them, so we've been able to resolve it
quietly this time.  But I see the trend here in my backyard, and across the
nation ... I think the landfill industry is going to try to pull the curtain
closed on public scrutiny of their activities for fear that the USA will go
the route of the EU and start squeezing their future into a smaller role.

So, I don't know how we do it, but I like what Toni Stein sent me about
First Amendment Rights related to "community" issues, and since landfills,
both public and private, have impacts OFF their sites and must be regulated
and inspected by public officials, then maybe we all have the right to
inspect what our inspectors are inspecting?

My goal is to keep the kids going to the landfill because they love it and
they are shocked by it ... and that helps recycling.


Eric Lombardi
Executive Director
Eco-Cycle
Boulder, CO
303-444-6634
www.ecocycle.org

 


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http://www.recyc-quebec.gouv.qc.ca