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House plans to take up sweeping new PFAS bill with waste implications | Waste Dive

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House plans to take up sweeping new PFAS bill with waste implications | Waste Dive

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to take up a bill (H.R. 535) this week that would nationally regulate at least some per- and polyfluoruoalkyl substances (PFAS).

Among other significant components, the PFAS Action Act of 2019 would require the U.S. EPA to establish destruction and disposal guidance for a range of materials, including landfill leachate, biosolids, and "solid, liquid, or gas waste streams" from facilities that manufacture or use PFAS. It is likely the bill — which is set for a committee hearing on Tuesday afternoon — will see markups reducing impacts to chemical companies.

The GOP-controlled Senate has also shown no interest in taking up the legislation. But disclosures show the waste industry's largest companies are lobbying on PFAS and trade groups have signaled the issue will be an important one in 2020. While some waste companies have been wary of PFAS legislation, others are open to the potential upside. Bill Fahey, a senior vice president with Veolia North America, told Waste Dive in a statement that regulations could create "an interesting and challenging opportunity in the hazardous waste space."

Against Recycling

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Against Recycling

Earlier this month, the New York Times posted a video op-ed correctly debunking “The Great Recycling Con.” According to the Times, the plastics industry has sold generations of consumers a lie about just how much of the waste they produce could be recycled in order to create the false possibility of eco-friendly, guilt-free consumption.

It comes painfully close, but misses the full story. The true “Great Recycling Con” runs far deeper than lies about which products can and cannot be recycled; it is an ongoing political battle waged by waste-generating corporations against the public to evade regulation, shift responsibility for environmental destruction onto consumers, and protect the ecocidal and highly profitable business model that lies at the heart of industrial capitalism.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Recycling | Matthew King

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Recycling | Matthew King

Tierney’s critique persuasively calls out the hypocrisy in how recycling has been sold to the public, the ways the liberal conscience falls prey to feel-good distractions, which are at best ineffectual and at worst counterproductive, even harmful. But then he sprints away from the problem, taking comfort in another false savior: the landfill. The article is a stunning time capsule of “end of history” optimism, channelled through a defense of modern garbage systems. 

The Era Of Easy Recycling May Be Coming To An End | FiveThirtyEight

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The Era Of Easy Recycling May Be Coming To An End | FiveThirtyEight

Americans love convenient recycling, but convenient recycling increasingly does not love us. Waste experts call the system of dumping all the recyclables into one bin “single-stream recycling.” It’s popular. But the cost-benefit math of it has changed. The benefit — more participation and thus more material put forward for recycling — may have been overtaken by the cost — unrecyclable recyclables. On average, about 25 percent of the stuff we try to recycle is too contaminated to go anywhere but the landfill, according to the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade group. Just a decade ago, the contamination rate was closer to 7 percent, according to the association. And that problem has only compounded in the last year, as China stopped importing “dirty” recyclable material that, in many cases, has found no other buyer.

Planning ahead for mounting challenges of special waste at landfills | Waste Dive

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Planning ahead for mounting challenges of special waste at landfills | Waste Dive

More and more, landfill operations are identifying those waste streams which predictably cause problems due to odors, reactions, fires and difficult to manage leachate. The list includes aluminum smelting and other metal wastes, high sulfur content waste streams from the oil and gas industry, and high moisture-containing wastes including biosolids and sludges. Growing coal ash disposal volumes also add to the complicated chemical mixture.