Praise for Patrick's Solid Waste Policy

By Lee Ketelsen, ONE Massachusetts founding member and guest blogger

Governor Patrick's decision to retain the moratorium against new waste incineration is the right decision.

He has committed the state to green solutions that protect public health, promote energy and resource conservation, and create green jobs. Recycling creates more jobs and saves more energy by far than waste incineration.

Instead of destroying discarded resources in incinerators, we need to make the most of them through reuse, recycling, and composting. Recycling saves three to five times the energy that can be captured by incineration, and without the harmful impacts on public health and the environment.

Every 10,000 tons of garbage that goes to disposal creates only one job, but the same amount of discarded products can employ dozens of people in recycling, and hundreds more in reuse and repair.

There was pressure from the proponents of the new variations of incineration to lift the moratorium, but the Governor has acted in the best interest of Massachusetts. Many attempts to process municipal solid wastes with high- heat technologies have ended in operational failures, violations and bankruptcies.

These are simply high tech variations on the 19th century approach to unwanted items-burn them. Instead we're moving in a direction that can boost economic development in our cities and towns.

We particularly applaud the Governor for throwing his support behind legislation for Producer Responsibility for electronic waste. In the past waste reduction was considered solely the consumer's responsibility, and a local government burden.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a new approach to reduce, reuse, and recycle that shifts the financial cost of managing discarded products and packaging from the cities and towns to the brand owners who design and market the products.

EPR will provide needed relief to municipal budgets-taking the burden of garbage disposal off of taxpayer funds. In addition, by providing industry with a financial incentive to redesign their products for reuse and recycling, EPR encourages business innovation to make less toxic and wasteful products.
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Lee Ketelsen, Clean Water Action New England Co-Director, has been active in solid waste policy issues since 1985, working with citizens around the state to give input, including participating in the legislative process to pass the Solid Waste Act of 1987 that mandated the Solid Waste Master Plan process, participating in the first Master Plan and moratorium on increased incineration capacity. She is a founding member of ONE Massachusetts.