Pesticide and Environmental Update
Taking
Action Locally Strategic Campaign of the Week:
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Compost
The problem of "waste" in the
U.S. is both a local and a federal issue, with the Environmental
Protection Agency providing the scientific veneer, among others, for the
nation's profit-at-any-cost, multibillion dollar sewage sludge, garbage,
and chemical fertilizer industries. Several decades ago, after public
pressure forced corporations and municipalities to stop dumping toxic
sewage sludge into the oceans and waterways (it was killing all the fish
and marine life and polluting beaches), the EPA decided it was time to
rename this hazardous waste "organic fertilizer" (or "biosolids")
and to begin to spread municipal sewage sludge on millions of acres of
non-organic farmland and rangeland. Emboldened by their success, EPA and
the sludge industry then tried to tell us in 1998 that it would be OK to
spread sewage sludge on organic farms as well. Fortunately OCA and the
organic community beat them back as part of a massive nationwide
grassroots campaign called Save Organic Standards (SOS).
A steady stream of greenwashing and false
solutions that encourage waste production instead of waste reduction are
coming at us from corporate marketing departments and the federal
government. OCA believes that positive action to encourage waste
reduction, reuse, recycling and composting (real organic composting, not
renaming sewage sludge or industrial waste as compost) is most likely to
arise at the local level. Several cities have taken positive actions in
the direction of zero waste, but the devil is in the details.
Take household and industrial sewage sludge
for example. For decades sewage sludge (the end product of the nation's
thousands of Wastewater Treatment Plants) was dumped in the oceans and
rivers, now it is spread on non-organic farms and rangelands, while
current industry plans include burning it and turning it into an energy
source; but the fundamental problem isn't what to do with billions of
pounds of toxic sewage sludge produced every year (obviously we must
isolate and contain it as hazardous waste), but rather how can we stop
producing it in the first place. Household sewage, contaminated as it is
with chemical cosmetics, toxic household cleaners and any number of
pharmaceutical drugs poured into toilets and kitchen sinks, isn't
pristine; but, to paraphrase Bob Hope, it's not the shit, it's what we've
done to it. After the toilet is flushed or the drain is emptied, household
waste is funneled into a vast underground sewage system, where it joins a
toxic stew of industrial and hospital wastes and rainwater runoff from our
streets and highways. Allowing corporations to flood the environment and
the waste stream with 100,000 synthetic, mostly toxic chemicals, (most of
which end up in sewage sludge), less than 1% of which have ever been
proved to be safe for the environment and public health, is a form of
insanity. Besides contaminating the water and soil, this irrational
so-called "sewage treatment" process wastes enormous amounts of
potable water.
At a certain point, cities and towns must
come to the realization that using clean water to flush away household
waste; engineering rooftops, roadways and streets to funnel rainwater into
our sewage systems (instead of capturing it or percolating it back into
the soil); and allowing industry and hospitals to discharge toxic
chemicals into our wastewater stream just doesn't make sense. Composting
(non-water) toilets, rooftop water catchments and cisterns, and zero
discharge of synthetic chemicals potentially or actually proven to
hazardous to human health and the environment (the "precautionary
principle") are not fringe ideas, but rather the wave of the future.
That is if there is a future.
Human and animal manure, (separated from
and free from chemical and pharmaceutical residues), throughout the
centuries, and in the present time can and should be safely composted and
utilized as a fertilizer on fields, farms, and forests. Although current
organic standards prohibit the use of compost derived from human manure
(properly composted animal manure is allowed) on food crops, feeding the
soil with properly composted "humanure" (or producing methane
gas for energy use through bio-digesters) will no doubt become the norm in
the future as fossil fuel and water supplies dwindle and chemical
fertilizer costs become prohibitive.
Tune in to future issues of Organic Bytes
for OCA's ideas on how we can and must reform our garbage, sludge, and
chemical fertilizer industries and put an end to the rampant consumerism
that is literally poisoning the planet with garbage and toxic chemicals.
Organic Bytes is a publication of Organic
Consumers Association
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