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On December 11, 2009, the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
announced that Massachusetts will retain the moratorium on additional
incineration capacity. The statement also outlined a plan to reduce burning
and burying by new approaches that will increase recycling.
“Focusing on incineration and landfills is the wrong end of the waste
equation,” said Secretary Ian Bowles.
While the Solid Waste Master Plan for the next decade will be drafted in
the first quarter of 2010, the December release committed the Patrick Murray
Administration to “an aggressive agenda” that gives cities and towns
assistance to expand and improve their waste reduction efforts.
MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) consists of two general categories of
discards: (1) products and packaging and (2) organics (decomposables, such
as food and yard waste).
For reducing products and packaging waste, the Administration supports
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation and regulation. EPR
requires brand owners to pay for the costs of managing their discarded
products. This requirement would provide a financial incentive for producers
to design products that are non-toxic and easy to disassemble, repair, or
recycle.
“By urging passage of the Extended Producer Responsibility law for
electronics, and an expanded bottle bill, Massachusetts will reduce the
volume and toxicity of the waste it generates," said Roger Dietrich, Chair
of the national Sierra Club Zero Waste Team, in an email message from
Virginia. EPR programs for electronics also create new businesses and jobs
in collection, reuse, and recycling.
Since 2001, 180 Massachusetts municipalities have passed resolutions
supporting EPR for discarded electronic products. An EPR bill for
electronics is now in the House Rules Committee and is expected to pass if
it comes to a vote. Since the December announcement, the city of Holyoke and
the town of Milton have both passed resolutions supporting a comprehensive
statewide EPR bill that will allow additional product categories to be added
over time by the MassDEP.
To address waste of discarded food and other organics, the Administration
will focus on composting, both residential and commercial/institutional. A
promising technology to produce energy from discarded organics is anaerobic
digestion, which safely captures all the methane formed by decomposition of
the material, and leaves a “digestate” which can then be composted.
Secretary Bowles also announced that MassDEP will suspend review of
permit applications for facilities proposing to use construction and
demolition materials (C&D) as fuel for energy until “a comprehensive
assessment of the environmental impacts” is completed.
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