Trash Culture

TRASH CULTURE

HAD NEW YORK PRESS been publishing in the late 1890s, we no doubt would have applauded Streets Cleaning Commissioner Col. George Waring's decision to ban the practice of dumping city garbage directly into the sea. More than 100 years later, we were around to nod our approval when Giuliani finally stopped forcing one of the five boroughs to permanently imitate a trashcan. (Not only that, but one of the few trashcans visible with the naked eye from outer space.) We applauded again when Bloomberg announced a plan in 2002 to transport the city's estimated 11,000 to 14,000 tons of trash daily from eight marine transfer stations out of state.

Now comes this month's announcement of a somewhat scaled-back version of Bloomberg's original plan, in which the city's trash will be sent off on barges that will dock at four renovated waste stations in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Supporters of the plan are correct to laud it for lessening traffic congestion and air pollution. But the plan is still just tinkering. It doesn't address, much less change, the fact that New York City is generating an enormous and unsustainable amount of garbage at a growing rate.

Missing from the discussion about the city's trash problem are any ideas about how to reduce the problem at its source-that is, how to produce less trash in the first place.

Doing so means more than just providing optional recycling. Though any politician who dared suggest it would face a severe backlash at first, one place to start would be educating New Yorkers about over-packaging. Which products and companies create the most unnecessary waste? Why not identify them in a public campaign to discourage the practice? Another effort could educate people about container reuse, another tried, tested and inexpensive source-reduction technique.

Taxes-corporate and sales-offer a surefire way to cut down on trash. In 2002, to pick just one example, the Irish government cut down on plastic bag use by 90 percent (1 billion bags) simply by instituting a 13-cent tax on the things. If New York rammed through a similar tax, people would bitch and moan-and a few would cry "Ecofascism!"-but soon people would adjust their habits and forget about it. The result would not only be fewer bags overflowing from New York's trash bins, but fewer tons of plastic bags being shipped off to Ohio at taxpayer expense and windswept into other parts of the world.

More important than the specifics of any program is a general recognition that the amount of trash generated by American cities-and this city in particular-is neither desirable nor sustainable. This country is the world's reigning trash champion, with the average American producing 51 percent more than the average resident of any other industrialized nation. That central fact isn't going to go away by tinkering with garbage truck routes.