This morning’s New York Times contained an article titled “Nudging Recycling from Less Waste to None,” a description of some communities’ efforts to eliminate practically all landfilled waste.  According to the Times, “Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to the mainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.”

             An underlying but only partially developed point in the article is the undisputed fact that we are producing more and more solid waste while land-based disposal options are fewer as cities and towns sprawl into the country sides and as citizens who produce the waste become more and more hostile to landfills in their community.  Elected officials try to sound wise and forward thinking by calling for “regional solutions,” which is a poorly disguised call for sending one community’s waste to a distant county.

             I read the New York Times every day and generally do not concede to claims of its liberal bias in news reporting.  (Editorials are a different matter).  I noticed, however, that there were no alternative or competing viewpoints expressed in this three-page (online version) article. 

             Let me start.

             The article begins featuring a photograph of recycling on Nantucket Island, an exclusive resort attracting a narrow-based demographic. Upscale enclaves exist sporadically in all states, with upscale being a loose description of a concentration of highly to over-educated habitants or visitors with high net worth who lean to the left of the political spectrum.  Chapel Hill would be an all-too obvious North Carolina example.

             “Zero waste” policies require three things: 1) popular sensitivity towards environmental problems and self-sacrifice and personal commitments as parts of the solution, 2) a government with the ability to understand the broader issues and the backbone to impose such policies or ordinances, and 3) a populace willing to accede to strict “zero waste” governmental policies.

             If there is such a thing as a political “fact”, zero waste policies have about as good a chance of passing in most North Carolina counties as regulations moving us towards zero guns or abolishing the death penalty.  Nonetheless, private companies attempting to solve the mounting waste problems created by the state’s citizens will encounter at every turn angry citizens who make few personal sacrifices yet who call for zero waste policies only as long as the “threat” of a landfill in their area looms.

             In the meantime, North Carolina has a growing population, increasing consumption and waste production, landfills with shortening shelf lives, and fewer and fewer waste disposal options.