Green Space
By Scott Fisher
THROWIN’ IT ALL AWAY— A recent report by New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer's office, entitled “Recycling: Are We Throwing It All Away?” attempts to determine the effectiveness of the Solid Waste Management Act of 1988, which required that recycling begin in our state. The report says that the results are “decidedly mixed.”
Recycling has become increasingly important because the number of municipal landfills in New York State has dropped from 294 to only 28. This is largely because of landfill regulations imposed by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in response to the leaching of chemical pollutants into the soil and water, as well as the generation of large amounts of greenhouse gases such as methane.
The recycling rate has leveled off in recent years, partially because of the “trashing” of a certain amount of recyclables rather than actually recycling them, the report says. Citizens in several cities around the state have complained that, “Private waste haulers were commingling the recyclables left separated at curbside with regular trash.” One agency, the Montgomery-Otsego- Schoharie Solid Waste Management Authority, reported that it does not even pick up recyclables. Shame on them.
Some private haulers and even municipalities have tried to avoid separating recyclables by saying that current state law doesn’t expressly require that separated materials actually be recycled. The Attorney General’s office and the DEC reject this argument, thankfully.
Recycling or no recycling, the total generation of solid waste continues to increase, thanks to the popular belief that we must continually “grow” the economy by selling more and more consumer goods. But like they say, what goes around comes around...
PONDERING PANDORA’S POISON — A recent book by Joe Thornton called ‘Pandora’s Poison’ puts forward the idea that it’s time for a “new system of environmental protection that can unite the various strands of the environmental community behind a few shared goals and a common agenda,” according to Rachel’ s Environment & Health Weekly #704.
Thornton, a molecular biologist, studied the use of chlorinated chemicals and how the current system of environmental protection has failed to protect us from their destructive effects. With over 11,000 different chlorinated chemicals in production, as well as thousands of other unintended chlorinated byproducts, living things are continually suffering irreparable harm. Thornton says that “every species on earth ... is now exposed to organochlorines that can reduce sperm counts, disrupt female reproductive cycles ... alter sexual behavior, and cause birth defects...,” among other things.
Thornton makes the argument that the risk paradigm presently used is “an entirely inadequate tool for managing ... persistent or bioaccumulative pollutants like mercury, lead, asbestos, and biologically active radioactive elements such as plutonium.”
Instead, he recommends three principals: Zero discharge, clean production, and reverse onus.
Thornton is one of a growing number of scientists who believe it is time to get rid of risk assessment. Like that bumper sticker says: “Resist The Dominant Paradigm.”
FROM A MEXICAN JAIL— I wonder if the name Rodolpho Montiel Flores came up when George Dubya went down to visit Mexican President Vicente Fox’s hacienda recently to talk about horses, oil and electric power. Probably not. Montiel, a Goldman Environmental Prize winner last year, and another campesino-ecologist, Teodoro Cabrera Garcia, have been sitting in a prison cell in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico since May 1999, convicted on bogus weapons possession and marijuana cultivation charges. Both charges have been refuted by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, according to Rainforest Action Network (RAN) Action Alert 151, from December, 2000.
RAN says, “International observers have condemned the convictions, believing that the charges were politically motivated.” Amnesty International has named both men Prisoners of Conscience. The real reason they were arrested is because they had organized others to peacefully protest the actions of U.S.-based logging conglomerate Boise Cascade, which had been clearcutting much of Guerrero’s forest cover from 1995 until 1998. After all of the logging, the hillsides near Montiel and Cabrera’s homes began to erode, causing streams and springs to dry up. “By ’97, there was nothing but garbage and plastic in the riverbed,” Montiel said.
Montiel, Cabrera, and other campesinos had formed an organization to educate people about the unrestricted logging, and wrote letters to government officials, which were ignored.
In 1998, Boise Cascade closed its sawmills, citing an inconsistent wood supply and bad weather, according to RAN. But the profiteers put the blame on the shoulders of the environmentalists, and a crackdown by the military on the campesino-ecologists began. Montiel and Cabrera were arrested, tortured, and forced to sign confessions, according to Amnesty International.
If you would like to help these men, please write a letter to Presidente Fox in care of Ambassador Jesus Reyes Heroles, Mexican Embassy, 1911 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC 20006, and ask him, in the name of human rights and the environment, to release both of them immediately.
THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH— Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. —Albert Einstein