Interstate garbage transfers are a topic that has been under intense public scrutiny from all sides. This scrutiny comes not only from environmental protection agencies and lobbyists, but also from concerned, outraged, and/or disgusted citizens. The natural metaphor would reduce this situation to neighbors. Imagine if one’s neighbor took his trash and through it in one’s trash cans. Who gives him the right to do such a thing? How can he justify giving the things that his family has deemed “trash” to another family? He simply cannot. But if this metaphor is evolved into a more comparable situation to interstate waste transfer, opinions can change. Say this same neighbor took his trash, put it in another family’s garbage, explained that he was
doing so because he cannot store all of his garbage on his premises, and then paid them five dollars a bag. With the idea of money and the necessity to dispose of the garbage introduced into the situation, the attitude toward it changes. It becomes a question of why not allow him to throw his trash into this family’s trash cans, the opportunity to rent the space that is available is an enticing one. This is the argument for interstate garbage transfer. Interstate garbage transfer is a necessary commodity, one that when utilized properly can be beneficial not only to the state relieving themselves of their garbage, but also the state that is received the garbage.
As of January 1, 2003, the Canadian city of Toronto, Ontario started to ship one hundred percent of its garbage into the landfills of Michigan. In 2003, Toronto exported garbage at a rate of 7.2 tons per minute. Garbage trucks from Toronto run seven days a week twenty-four hours a day, so at the rate of 7.2 tons per minute it works out to be that Michigan imports 10,368 tons of Toronto's garbage per day. But it wasn't always like this, Governor John Engler and his administration turned garbage into a growth industry. The state lowered the liability standards for landfill owners and also provided tax-free financing for new facilities. The result of these changes lead to too many landfills and not enough garbage to fill them. So the landfill owners lowered their prices and searched even harder for garbage. Today, Michigan's private landfills charge ten to fifteen dollars per ton to dump while other landfill owners in neighboring states charge twenty five to fifty dollars per ton. Toronto did the math and realized that it is cheaper to haul its garbage 300 miles and dump it in Michigan then it is to dump it close to home. And on top of that, Michigan has eliminated funds fo...
...s Clear as Muddy Water: A Short Story about How Politics Can Mess up What Appears to be Such A Simple Concept.” Pollution Engineering May 2010: 7. General OneFile. Web. 27 April 2014.
The problem of dumping refuse into the ocean became a public concern in 1987 when medical waste, such as syringes and needles, washed up on the shores in New Jersey. At the time, AIDS was making headline news. This worried and concerned many people. People wondered where it came from, what it was doing there, if is it contaminated with AIDS or other viruses, and how it got there. Police looked from months to find the cause of this strange event. Then finally they found their victim. A company was paid, in New York, to properly dispose a large load of garbage, which contained medical waste. The company took the load and dumped it into the ocean. In theory, they believed it would be carried away by the Gulf Stream and would eventually sink. Unaware that it contained medical waste such as syringes that floats, they dumped the large load of garbage into the ocean. To a...
Waste Not, Want Not: if you use a resource carefully and without extravagance, you will never be in need. In a 2009 essay, “Waste Not, Want Not”, writer Bill McKibben argues on the excess of unnecessary waste. To halt climate change, he proposes to convince the reader to shift priorities in waste management and go back to the frugality of simpler times. Bill approaches his argument with a vast amount of informative charged words to convince the reader into taking his side of the argument. The writer’s intended purpose in writing this piece is to make a statement and develop his argument against the unnecessary waste. To make this argument effective, the writer utilizes logic to persuade the audience with overwhelming data and reason. His primary instrument of choice in this essay is using logically charged words followed by factual evidence to back up his claims. Although his use of emotion and pathos are less obvious, but where used, is effective.
Authors Michael D. Cohen, James G. March and Johan P. Olsen theorized a model of organizational decision making called the Garbage Can Theory developed to explain the way decision-making takes place in organizations that experience high levels of uncertainty, in what is described as organized anarchy. (Ireland, n.d.) As its name suggests, these organizational decisions are a result of random collisions between various elements thrown together with no regimented process or direction. Almost simultaneously within this garbage can model, elements like problems arise within and outside the organization, solutions are being developed with no specific problem in mind, workers are spinning their wheels of productivity with no end goal to work toward and choices or options are generated for no specific problem. (Fioretti & Lomi, 2008) The organization is essentially a dumping ground for the many streams and functions could collide or intersect resulting in decisions almost by accident.
Park, S. Rozeila. 1998. “An Examination of International Environmental Racism Through the Lens of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 5 (2): 659-709.
This paper seeks to explore the issue of collective responsibility in regards to climate change. More specifically, an analysis of Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s foundational distinction between situations in which the government’s failure to respond makes civilians morally obligated to act or not to act. Sinnott-Armstrong incorrectly places all moral obligation on the government in a hypothetical bridge situation, however individual are also morally obligated to act to reduce potential pain, suffering, or death experienced. Examining Sinnott-Armstrong’s bridge example reveals how individuals are morally obligated in collective action issues, and how that relates to climate change. Further discussion demonstrates that individual obligation has
Finding ways to move goods from one point to another at a reasonable cost and within an acceptable time frame is a growing challenge for global businesses today. The costs and risks associated with transportation are increasing with the advent of globalization and low-cost-country sourcing. Even for companies with local operations only, they have to supply their products to various parts of a country which increases the costs and risks. Since the cost of gasoline has been on an upward trend, high level of efficiency in transportation is required to lower the costs involved and the risks associated with the costs. Costs concepts in transportation include economic, social and accounting costs. The risks and costs involved increases if the various modes of transport are used. There has been concern over many businesses failure to strategically think when they employ multimodal transportation services. Many businesses prefer the least expensive multimodal model instead of choosing the most effective; this trade-off is very expensive with hidden costs and risks increasing significantly (Molenaar, Anderson, Schexnayder, National Research Council (U.S.)., National Cooperative Highway Research Program., American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials., & United States, 2010).
(R1) In closing the first argument Summer commits to subjective fallacy when he states dumping toxic waste is “logical” and “impeccable”. He develops this argument by using errors in reasoning, such as these examples. Summer also makes ambiguous claims by make a personal attack on the reader. The phrase “we should face up to that” tells the readers they have been denying something. Summer uses this phrase to conclude his argument of pollution dumping.
American utilitarianism views politics from an angle of “switch” trolley problem, where the sacrifice of the Canadians saves the larger population of America. Conversely, Canadians view politics as “footbridge” problem, symbolizing its population as an outside force sacrificed despite being originally uninvolved in the problem. By endangering Canadians health by exporting their hazardous waste, Americans push the theoretical “fat man,” Canada, onto the tracks to save its people. The American train symbolizes the inevitable harm and economic disenfranchisement faced by the Canadians because of experialist policy, which is the policy of sending American nuclear waste to Canada supported by president Johnny Gentle. As noted by Katherine Hayles’
But suppose the best policy is known. The owners of the polluting industries seek to influence legislation to prevent the best policy. Because of their campaign contributions and other favors, the government adopts the poorer policy. The cause in this case is greed, both by the influence seeker...
“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell what kind of man you are,” a famous quote by the lawyer, gastronomist, and author, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Although proper recycling is probably the goal of many people, there are some who still overstuff a plastic garbage bag for the trash guys to pick-up. According to Edward Humes in his book, “Garbology, Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash,” newspapers make up point six percent of the nation's landfills, but paper contributes twenty-eight point two percent.” My narrative essay assignment which is designed to record what type of garbage I create and how much accumulates during a pre-determined time frame can result in a positive outcome. Hopefully, this assessment gives me insight into whether my most surely negligible amount of trash makes any difference.
People should know the negative impact throwing away a water bottle or newspaper, purchasing meat from the grocery store or consuming gasoline has on the environment, and many do not. By informing society about how their decisions affect the environment, we can help save our planet and change our attitude toward the land we live on, the water we drink and the air we breathe” and truly show respect for the stuff that we depend on. The United States produces “about 8.25 billion tons of solid waste each year” (Russell 1). People do not realize the impact they have on our planet and the environment. When people throw anything in the trashcan, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet.
We often forget about the consequences from our actions because we believe that we are not obliged to Earth, instead Earth is obliged to us by nature. The waste that is being produced globally, including electronic, chemical, and residue-liquid, is hazardous to all living things and so the status quo of dealing with these kinds of waste is by incinerating and then burying them underground. However, the waste facility that my group and I did research on, Scholl Canyon Management, does not take in hazardous waste nor burn any because of the dangerous effect. Since the Scholl Canyon facility does not take in hazardous waste due to regulations, it raises a question on our current ethics and practices on waste management. On the other hand, they do handle regular non-recyclable waste by collectively packaging it underground layer after layer. Although the Scholl Canyon facility does not take in hazardous waste, they still practice techniques that could have unforeseen consequences, and so, if Leopold, Abbey, and Berry were at the dump sight, they would all agree on changing the practice of recycling due to limitation, unforeseen consequences, and internal
“A good example of this confusion occurred at public hearings on proposed air quality regulations for the State of Hawaii… The hearings dealt with a proposal to ban the burning of sugarcane in the fields in order to reduce the amount of smoke in the air and so to improve the environment. However, opponents argued that this would also make it uneconomical to grow sugarcane in Hawaii because of the additional processing that would result. One of the workers from the sugarcane fields pointed out that he lived near the fields, and the air he breathed had much more smoke i...