A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD PROBLEM

[Music] you're looking at the garbage explosion Americans throw away four billion tons of garbage every year if that figure is hard to grasp think of it as five and a half pounds per day for every man woman and child in the country in the next few minutes we're going to talk to some thoughtful practical experts in the solid wastes industry and take a serious look at how they're handling the garbage explosion here we are in Kansas City Missouri on refuse collection day where the homemakers and their assistants take the garbage out to the curb in bags Kansas City has been in a bag system since March 1971 and today 142,000 homes are collected on a once a week basis these bags represent a step forward according to Al Beck operations engineer for the Kansas City Public Works Department effective utilization of the bag system in any city depends upon a cooperative effort of the homeowner the collector and the city administration however mr. Baek cautions that it's essential to use the bags properly especially since the collection schedules may be cut because of the current fuel shortage so make sure the bags are filled to capacity and make sure they're tied securely to keep animals from spreading the contents around the bag system has been highly satisfactory for residents and collectors alike there's less weight to handle it takes 20% less time to collect and the neighborhood streets stay cleaner and neater after pickup in Garland Texas they use the bag system - and they have their own unique system for collecting the bags this train with the train system one man can easily collect from both sides of the street since the plastic bags have made the work easier according to Superintendent of Sanitation Ken Smith as each car is fully loaded it is separated from the Train picked up and unloaded by the mother truck this large sanitation vehicle equipped with forklift simply lifts up the little cars and dumps the contents into an open back [Music] the empty car will rendezvous with another two-man train be reached and go on to the next collection area now let's discover how plastic bags allow one machine and one man with good depth perception to collect garbage from between nine hundred and a thousand homes per day the man runs a collection vehicle called the mechanical bag Retriever or MBR the MBR was designed by Gulf oil engineers to cut down on manpower and operating costs the crane arm swoops down and cages the bags then lifts the bags and deposits them on a conveyor belt the belt moves the bags to the back of the truck [Music] we've seen some modern methods of collecting garbage how do we dispose of it once collected the answer is 90% of all municipal wastes are returned to the land and fill sites of all these fill sites only 6% are operated as sanitary landfills a strong advocate of this method is mr. Beck of Kansas City Missouri who describes some of the criteria for a good landfill when taking a location for a landfill one of the main criteria is good access so the trucks can have been off of a major highway without upsetting the environment of a residential neighborhood operating the bill is also important the material at the people who look her away as waste should be quickly deposited into the bill and covered with earth landfills like these receive about 800 tons of refuse per day which is compacted to reduce volume and covered with six to 12 inches of earth when a sanitary landfill is completed normally it is put to some useful purpose this one will become an industrial park for Kansas City sanitary landfills are a workable way of disposing of refuse the city of Madison Wisconsin has found a way of appreciably reducing the amount of land needed for a fill listen to ed news insky Director of Public Works for Madison we operate a normal sanitary landfill where two-thirds of the breakfast generated is disposed oh and in addition we operate a landfill with shredded refuse we have an excellent opportunity to compare the two methods and by our own experience we are convinced that shredding of refuse prior to disposal on sanitary landfill is a preferable method over the usual sanitary landfill method once collected refuse is trucked into a mill and crédit milled refuse has several advantages it looks like confetti it doesn't need to be covered every day odors are minimal and so are rodents and flies shredding not only saves space but is environmentally considerate and makes for a truly sanitary landfill as we have seen sanitary landfill procedures can return good useful land to ourselves and our fellow citizens it can be used for industry or for recreation like baseball beyond that the reclamation of wastes themselves must play a major part in any disposal system in America's future we cannot continue to bury the byproducts of our affluence in the land much longer if America is in a garbage explosion it's partly because we're in a blizzard of paper 30 million tons of paper about half of all municipal refuse is thrown away every year and paper is one of the easiest most profitable materials currently being recovered more and more American cities are investigating the profitable reclamation of waste paper for example Fort Worth Texas is expecting a return of 250,000 dollars per year from its scrap paper recycling plan Madison Wisconsin also recycles paper using an efficient system of collecting separating compacting and baling the paper the bales are sold and converted back into useable pulp waste paper no longer something to throw away but an excellent place to begin recovering our waste materials we continue to amass 234 million new tires per year the tire is virtually indestructible it can't be burned or shredded can't be buried and of course it can't be sunk in the ocean dr. Norman Brayton an engineer at the University of Wisconsin hit upon an idea listen we knew that by putting a tire in a hammer mill or in a mill of any kind because of its resiliency it won't come very easily and so by freezing it becomes as brittle as glass and then subjected for the hammer mill it shatters like glass this is suppose that rubber reclaimed in this manner can be used in many ways furthermore the steel from the high-strength wire and the nylon from the nylon cording in the tires can also be reclaimed through the cryogenic recycling process if you live in a densely populated part of the country or any kind of landfill space is scarce you've probably seen incinerators at work because of an adequate design most incinerators now being used cannot meet the standards of the Clean Air Act passed in 1970 which regulates pollution emissions and even the more efficient plants like the Gansevoort incinerator in New York City only destroy refuse they return nothing to the mainstream of industry or society only ashes remain to be carted away to a landfill site while incineration as we have just seen doesn't return anything useful to society it is still the most practical method for urban areas what if we could significantly reduce the volume of waste and recover useful byproducts all in the same incineration process listen to dr. John Anderson at Union Carbide Research Center described their new pure oxes 'dom basis of the system of the shaft furnace which were feeding in oxygen at the bottom of the furnace and when feeding in refuse at the top at the bottom of the furnace we are taking out a stream of molten metal and glass at the top of the premise we have a stream of fuel gas and fuel oil this gas stream then proceeds to an electrostatic precipitator whereby remove all the oil from the gas and this oil can be used as a byproduct in its own right by the time we have got to gas out of the condenser we then have a gases of premium fuel value however in the long term we feel that there are gonna be other potential advantages especially for the slag that is coming out the bottom for instance we could consider getting out the metal values and taking out things such as molten iron molten copper and other things that might be present in the refuse we could also consider taking the molten glass and form any any number of Crump of products such as glass wool or fiberglass insulation material a responsibility the valid solid waste management system must rest with the local government but the local government is representative two people rely on the people within that government the homeowner has responsibility the refuse collector themselves have a responsibility the system managers have a responsibility and the municipal government has a responsibility we have seen how mr. Beck and his colleagues around the country are dealing with our ever-growing refuse problem but we must all as individuals take responsibility we must halt the indiscriminate consumption of our limited natural resources we must seek an orderly systematic environmentally sound means of managing solid wastes we must encourage recycling above all we must reject the idea of a disposable society and a theory of built-in obsolescence it's up to us to save this country [Music] [Applause] [Music]