Disposable culture underlines environmental concerns and shift away from ‘interdependence’

Kimberley McGee

Wednesday, Aug. 18, 1999 | 10:03 a.m.

Imagine a nice picnic in the park: the red-checked plastic tablecloth laid out on the recently clipped grass; the plastic forks and knives neatly arrayed next to the thick Chinet paper plates; a plastic wine "glass" nestled in a bed of cubed ice in the styrofoam cooler; the chicken sizzling on the throwaway tin grill.

And when the lovely meal has been devoured, the products that no longer serve their use can all be tossed away -- generating a mere minimum of 10 pounds of garbage. No fuss! No mess! But, hey, where's it all go?

"The results are subtle," Jeff Van Ee, an environmentalist in Las Vegas for more than 10 years, says, adding that the average consumer is blissfully unaware of all the trash for which each person is responsible.

Las Vegans generate 2.5 million tons of trash a year, Allan Gaddy, vice president of Republic Silver State Disposal, says. He adds that, excluding recyclables, most of it -- including everything from soda cans, pizza boxes and razors to disposable cameras, beach slippers and golf towels, not to mention the aforementioned picnic items -- ends up in the Apex landfill just northwest of Las Vegas.

The United States generates 210 million tons of waste annually and of that, 42 percent is paper and textiles, 23 percent is metal, plastic and glass, 18 percent is yard clippings, 7 percent is food and 10 percent is miscellaneous other substances.

"Our landfill space fills up quickly," Van Ee says. "A few years ago there was a real shortage of landfill space" all over the country.

To make up for that, regional cities such as Sacramento, Calif., now send their garbage to Northern Nevada landfills. "Some (cities') shortages were exacerbated by the throwaway society that we have," Van Ee says.

That throwaway mentality gives a sense of self-reliance to society, but Dr. Ward Swallow, psychologist at Mountainview Behavioral Healthcare Inc. & Associates in Las Vegas, says the disposable products created to make life easier actually tug at society's already strained cultural ties.

"As we became more disposable, it took away a certain interdependence we all have on each other," Swallow says.

As a nation, he says, America started to develop a sense of disposability in the 1960s with transistor radios and newer technology. "People began to shy away from (tradition)," he says. "Instead of taking the radio in to be repaired, they would just toss it and get another one. It really changed how we look at things."

Throwing something out when it no longer serves its useful purpose has created a lack of responsibility to the world around us, he says. "We took care of things -- that (sentiment) has disappeared. Now we just toss it all away," Swallow says. "Clearly there isn't the same notion that we have to depend on each other at the same level that we once did. There's just not that strong feeling of community or neighborhood."

Part of this mentality is related to the state of our economy -- the healthier the cash flows, the more that waste flows into landfills. "Raw material prices are low in comparison to the past," Van Ee says, so it's cheaper just to buy new materials rather than recycle. "It's all very complicated because we live in a global economy."

Las Vegas is a big trash generator in the middle of the desert, so sending waste to a recycling plant costs more than in other cities, which are closer to processing plants and therefore use less time, energy and money to recycle.

"As raw material prices go down, the cost of collecting waste material can be rather high and can end up costing more to collect and recycle," Van Ee says.

Plastic bottles collected in Las Vegas need to have the same economic value as those collected in, say, San Francisco, in order to compete in the market. Sometimes recycling can be more expensive than just pushing all the plastic, paper and aluminum into the waiting landfill.

"We in Las Vegas are almost last on the list for getting rid of those (recyclable) products," Van Ee says. "What we need to do is provide incentives to industries to convert the material into more useful products."

Most of the country's reusable waste is sent to processing plants out of the country.

"A lot of our materials that are disposed of, or would be disposed of, are being sent overseas for reprocessing ... scrap metals, paper, certainly," Van Ee says. "But there's a whole other economy that could be established in this country by converting these waste products into useful products. Why is it necessary to send them overseas when jobs could be created here?"

The federal government increased regulations for landfill operations in the early 1990s to ensure the safety of ground water and also to monitor toxins in the air.

The Sunrise landfill was subsequently closed because it was too expensive to upgrade, Rick Holmes, Clark County assistant manager, says. Now waste has to travel to the Apex site. The farther garbage travels, the more expensive that can of Coke costs to destroy.

"The Apex (landfill) has about 90 years of capacity," Holmes says. "But that's a real ball park number because capacity depends on recycling, the extent to which we reduce our waste per capita."

And it's not just paper cups littering the landscape anymore. Americans have upgraded waste to include obsolete computer parts and accessories. "The primary area of concern right now is with the personal computer trade," Van Ee says. "There's increasing concern being expressed of landfills being taken up by computer products."

Every few years consumers upgrade their personal computer and its by-products, such as printers and scanners. In the early days nonprofit organizations were thankful to get technological hand-me-downs, but now they are just as computer savvy as their profitable peers.

"It's very difficult in many cases to get rid of old computer parts (so) more and more are ending up in landfills," Van Ee says. "As the cost of computers comes down, people will just throw the old ones out."

Some companies are trying to motivate consumers to return unwanted appliances and electronic products such as televisions and stereos. "It takes tremendous initiative (from consumers)," Van Ee says. "Some companies, like (computer company) Hewlett Packard have tried to recycle parts. The numbers are starting to become staggering. Billions and billions of printers and scanners become obsolete."

In Europe, parts of appliances that can be recycled are labeled for convenient recycling at the end of the appliance's life. "This country is lagging in other parts of the world in products that can be recycled," Van Ee says.

Yosemite National Park has replaced the deteriorating wood-planked boardwalk around the Old Faithful geyser with recycled plastic planks which will last at least twice as long and can be recycled when its life as a boardwalk is over.

"We need to recognize the roll of the economic system in guiding the choices which people make in their personal lives," Van Ee says. "We need to provide greater financial incentives for people to take the route that, in the long run, is better for the Earth and all of us."