While this is a preliminary study, focused mainly on developing a procedure for waste management analysis, some tentative conclusions emerge.
Even without added population, upward trends in per capita waste generation and increasing public demands for improved environmental quality-particularly the cutting down of air and water pollution will require much greater attention to waste management.
However, the potential for improving waste management is so great that higher levels of environmental quality can be achieved even while the Region’s population increases substantially. In other words, projected waste quantities are manageable and do not seem so economically burdensome as to require efforts to limit population growth.
Different patterns of urban growth do not seem to change waste management costs sufficiently to justify basing a regional plan solely on the differences.
However, efficient waste management must be based on what is known about the prospective urban pattern of the Region.
Efficient management of wastes requires analysis of the entire waste management system, beginning with waste generation. Limiting waste generation offers a great opportunity for improved waste management. The usual approach to waste control — limiting waste discharges — may be less effective than controlling the generation of wastes. For example, limiting the sulfur content of fuel oil may be a better waste management technique than limiting S02 discharges.
One form of waste can be transformed to another during handling and disposal. Solid wastes, for example, may result in gaseous wastes when incinerated, liquid wastes when ground in garbage grinders, or remain as solid material disposed of in landfills. This suggests that integrated policies should be formulated for all forms of wastes at all stages in the waste management system, rather than separate policies for solid waste disposal, air pollution control, and sewage disposal-although administration of these programs might well remain separate.
Waste management policies should apply to the entire metropolitan area, even though elements of an efficient waste management system, such as refuse collection, can be carried out on a less-than-regional basis.
Federal participation is required for effective waste management, including regulations for environmental quality control. For example, control of automobile emissions must be national to be fully effective, although standards in individual states might be more stringent.
Waste management decision-making can be improved if costs and benefits are viewed in terms of a regional waste management system and, in some instances, the national economy.
One way to achieve more economical waste management is to place the costs of waste handling and disposal on those who produce the wastes. It may be that changes in production processes are less costly than handling and disposing of wastes after they are produced. For example, if a manufacturer is charged for dumping effluent into a stream, he may find it cheaper to recycle water he is using for cooling purposes rather than drawing in fresh water and discharging it as a waste.
Greater reuse of water will be economically justified in this Region as the demand for water increases.
About This Study
The consultants who wrote this report were asked to sketch the dimensions of the waste disposal problem in the Second Regional Plan Study Area between 1965 and 2000 and to set out a method for more precise waste projections, to suggest the costs and uncertainties of alternative management policies, to outline the information needed for a systematic approach to waste management, and to relate different patterns of urban growth to the quantities of wastes each might generate and to differences in management costs. Basically, Regional Plan wanted to know what effect waste management problems might have on the Region’s future and hence on the Second Regional Plan.
The major contribution of this study is a process for developing waste management policies for a metropolitan area. This process has four steps: (1) projections of total population and employment for the Region to the year 2000; (2) selection of different distributions of total population, jobs, and other activities — termed Variants I, II, and III in this study — to show the impact of alternative settlement patterns within the Study Area; (3) selection of various “generation conditions” to analyze the effects of factors contributing to waste production — such as changing technology, consumer preferences, and packaging practices — which yield assumed quantities of wastes that will be generated; (4) choice of “management conditions” to show the impact of different techniques and policies for handling and disposing of the generated wastes, including waste reduction, transformation of a waste from one form to another, different handling or disposal costs, or salvage and reuse. The multiplicity of possible variants and assumptions about waste generation and waste management yield many combinations. This analytical framework can be used to test the costs and benefits of policy proposals.
The data and assumptions used in the study only illustrate the analytical procedure. They are not firm figures, either for waste quantities or management costs. Few of the necessary data are now available; among the objectives of the study are to point out what information is necessary for efficient waste management and how it might be obtained and used.
Although this report is a response to environmental pollution, a basic premise of the study is that the discharge of wastes does not necessarily result in “pollution.” Pollution only occurs when discharges are of such duration and concentration that they have deleterious consequences for users of air, water, or land. This study emphasizes the effects of policy alternatives. It does not suggest how “clean” the environment should be, nor what levels of “cleanliness” are desirable. These are qualitative goals which require political determination. But the determination is best made when the facts about alternatives and their costs are clear. Making these facts and alternatives clear is one purpose of the study.
