Blog 3- Sarah Pearson

I remember in August I became upset over people’s lack of action with recycling. That was the first day I heard about Covanta’s proposed Advanced Recycling Center in Indianapolis.  My dad was telling me about how it would increase recycling rates and how he thought it would be beneficial to Indianapolis. I remember being more content that action was being initiated to create less waste in the form of recyclables. Covanta’s plan makes it seem like the no-brainer solution, but there are many downsides to its proposed plan. As with any issue, there are always at least two sides. After reading multiple articles and information from both sides on the Covanta Advanced Recycling Center in Indianapolis, I am extremely opposed of such a facility within 25 minutes of where I live. There are better options to create sustainability than through a process that uses incineration. 

First of all, commingling trash with recyclables results in poorer quality of materials that can’t be recycled as well. Paper products will get wet and won’t be usable, glass wouldn’t be recovered at all which would hurt the state of Indiana that is a big manufacturer of glass and depends on glass recycled materials. In addition, all other recyclables would be dirtied and put to lower quality grades which aren’t marketable. If you are going to do successful recycling, you have to have a market for such goods. And then you get the fact that incinerators run well on materials that include such recyclables. If you don’t have the recyclables, they won’t run as well. Such a plant would allow the continuation process of incineration (as some like to say it ‘waste to energy.”) Even though this process gets energy from waste, it doesn’t make it good or sustainable. Having a filter assists in keeping much of the pollution from going into the air, but you still have a problem of the solid ash waste it creates that is hazardous and later needs to be placed in landfills. We need to create ways to make being sustainable the no brainer option. Getting to this better world is no easy solution.

            We went to Covanta’s waste-to-energy plant today in Indianapolis. I remember a worker said to me that their process creates less pollution than if someone were burning their trash by themselves with no filter. This brought me back again to documentaries I have watched that include severe dumping of hazardous chemicals on third world and developing countries. While Indianapolis’s Covanta plant converts waste into energy, people in third world countries find themselves getting rid of unwanted items through burning because such items are dumped on them by first world countries. So you have a waste that can be used to create energy, then you have the waste that is dumped on third world countries with few environmental regulations.

            What you find is that what companies say they are doing is different than what they are actually doing. For example, I did a lot of research on the Nike Corporation in Indonesia for an Anthropology assignment. I personally listened to a presentation from a man name Jim Keady who created a documentary called “Behind the Swoosh.” In his documentary and presentation, he talked about how Nike doesn’t pay its workers a living wage in countries like Indonesia. Nike takes advantage of countries like Indonesia, and keeps them in dire situations in which they are unable to escape. Nike takes advantage of the lack of environmental regulations in Indonesia and dumps imperfect shoe rubber from Nike Indonesia worksites and burns them. Here you have an issue of people inhaling toxic fumes and dioxins that can affect future generations and people’s health.

            In my eyes, burning trash doesn’t sound like a good idea. There are better ways to achieve more sustainability and decrease waste. A better project for the Indianapolis area would be to provide free curbside recycling. When you charge people an extra rate to recycle, not all people will participate. But if you make it free, more people will do it. We need to make the right thing to do for the environment the easiest thing to do. We have other solutions to decrease waste than through incineration. Burning trash, no matter how good of a filter you have creates hazardous waste and poor air quality in our environment.

Keady, J,. (2000). Behind the Swoosh. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/6109896