Time for W’chester to Hire Zero Waste Consultant to Meet Emissions Goals
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
I am a member of the Westchester Alliance for Sustainable Solutions (WASS), based in Peekskill, where 90 percent of Westchester’s garbage is burned.
As a Hastings-on-Hudson resident, I don’t see the plumes rising from the stack at Wheelabrator, but I know the burning of my garbage harms Peekskill residents, and less directly, the whole county.
We need to create a road map for the county to rapidly close the Wheelabrator facility and prioritize zero waste solutions. The first critical step is the county hiring a certified zero waste consultant.
To backtrack a little bit, when the first load of Westchester’s garbage was brought to Charles Point in 1984, incineration was considered the greener alternative to landfills. The 1980s was the heyday for waste-to-energy facilities. and it is understandable that the county deemed incineration the best way to handle Westchester’s garbage.
Since then, the adverse environmental impacts of incinerators have become painfully apparent. For example, we know now that Wheelabrator is the largest source of industrial greenhouse emissions in the county. We know incinerators are so dirty that even landfilling would be better for the climate and public health. We know Wheelabrator emitted almost 800,000 tons of CO2 equivalents in 2017. So the question really is, now that we know better, will we do better?
Westchester County has made great strides in decreasing the amount of garbage incinerated since 2003, due in large part to a robust recycling program. However, the county is far from meeting the goal of 0.6 pounds of solid waste per person per day by 2030, as outlined in New York State’s Solid Waste Management Plan. We generated close to four pounds per person per day in 2021, and we burned 390,000 tons of garbage in 2021.
New innovations in technologies and reuse markets present opportunities for the county to manage discards in a less polluting and more cost-effective way.
I return to a question I posed earlier: Now that we know better, will we do better? Step one in doing better is hiring a certified zero waste consultant to create a roadmap to move Westchester towards zero waste.
Caitlin Chang
Hastings-on-Hudson
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