Throw away less, waste less

By The Gazette Editorial Board

If trends continue, it will take only five years to fill up the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency's recently opened 9-acre landfill cell, only 25 to 30 years to exhaust the current full site.

The 125,000 tons of waste generated annually in Johnson County consumes about an acre at the Iowa City Landfill and Recycling Center each year, according to recycling officials there.

Both Linn and Johnson counties are lucky to have access to well-run facilities, but even the best-run landfills are wasting space and resources - millions of dollars and acres of land used “just to dig a hole and fill it with garbage,” as Iowa City Landfill Recycling Coordinator Jennifer Jordan told us.

“The vast majority of it doesn't need to be there,” she said.

We agree: We can do better.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 75 percent of what goes into this country's landfills could be recycled, composted or otherwise diverted.

In 2009, Linn County residents recycled 16,336 tons of materials, according to Joe Horaney, communications director for Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency. Even so, nearly 30 percent of the 190,000 tons of trash that goes to the landfill - 50,000 tons of paper, plastic and scrap metal each year - could have been recycled.

And that doesn't even take into account the money and space that could be saved by diverting biomass and waste wood from the landfill. The agency has targeted that waste with a new biomass wood recovery program to try to divert such material from the landfill to be used as fuel.

In an effort to promote the program, the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency will be collecting waste wood for free at Cedar Rapids and Marion Menards stores from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Saturday. You can find out more at www.solidwasteagency.org.

This weekend is also Iowa City's annual Rummage in the Ramp sale, an annual event that encourages residents to donate items rather than throw them away - diverting 25 tons of reusable materials - mostly furniture, books and clothing - from the landfill each year. You can find out more about that program and sale at www.icgov.org/rummageintheramp.

Even as waste technologies improve, like the increasingly promising plasma arc technology that converts waste into energy, it will continue to be critical for Eastern Iowa residents to reduce the amount of waste we produce, to reuse whatever materials we can and recycle the rest.

It's up to all of us to reduce the waste, and the cost and space it takes to deal with it. To remember that when it comes to garbage, there is no such place as “away.”

“It really does come down to what people decide they're going to throw away,” Jordan said. “It sounds too simple, but that really is it.”