Wandering Waste

story by Rebecca Santana Illustrated by Maria Blokhina

Everyone’s talking about trash these days, and most of those conversations focus on how to produce less of it. But it’s not so easy to reduce how much waste you produce. If you have trash, you just throw it away. It’s not something most people keep track of. Unfortunately, the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality doesn’t work when it comes to waste because everything we throw away goes somewhere.

Alachua County produces anywhere between 600 to 900 tons of garbage every day, according to Shelly Samec, a waste alternatives specialist. All of that garbage is collected from homes, businesses, apartment complexes, etc. and is taken directly to the Leveda Brown Environmental Park and Transfer Station for sorting.

Any waste that ends up in a garbage can goes straight to a landfill. There is not enough time or manpower to sort through the thousands of pounds of trash this facility processes daily. The trash sits in big piles until it is pushed onto truck beds for out-of-county transportation. There are no active landfills in Alachua County, which means we have to transport our garbage elsewhere. Long-haul trailers go back and forth about 40 times a day to move all the trash that comes through.

Our trash goes to die a long and smelly death in landfills. Piled up pounds of trash create a low-oxygen environment. This can inhibit decomposition, meaning our trash piles up for years and years. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the slow decomposition of these garbage heaps creates methane, a greenhouse gas linked to global climate change.

Recycling is a little more involved. It goes beyond just chucking a bottle into a green bin.

“Everything has to be bailed by type in order to be sent off to be recovered into new materials,” Samec said.

But nonrecyclables always sneak into those green bins, slowing down the process. Products like styrofoam, black plastic and take-out

THE LEVEDA BROWN ENVIRONMENTAL PARK AND TRANSFER STATION

containers are not recyclable and will eventually end up in a landfill. Paper, glass, steel, plastic and aluminum are recycled at this facility. Once sorted, they’re sold to the highest bidder. The waste products go to mills to be turned into raw material. Companies buy that raw material to make its products and are more likely to buy these recycled materials if virgin materials are more expensive or rare.

“It’s like the stock market. The values of those commodities go up and down on a daily basis,” said Alanna Carinio, a waste alternatives specialist.

In 1999, the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department created what is known as the Alachua County Hazardous Waste Collection Center. This is a free hazardous waste disposal service for all Alachua County residents, and it aims to keep these toxins out of our environment.

Hazardous waste includes more than just harmful chemicals and pesticides. This facility sorts prescription drugs, paint and other hazardous materials in order to keep these toxins out of landfills. When things like battery acid, pesticides and lighter fluid end up in a landfill, they seep down to the very bottom, attacking the plastic liner that separates our waste from the land. The more fluid that accumulates in these liners, the faster they break down, leaving all those harmful chemicals to penetrate into the soil.

This contamination can be especially dangerous in a state like Florida where almost all of the residents get their water from an aquifer. Any hazardous chemicals that leak into the soil will inevitably end up in our drinking water. The best way to prevent this is to keep your hazardous materials out of landfills. Batteries, electronics, cleaning products and even cooking oil are all considered hazardous waste that should be carefully disposed. Some items like pesticides and herbicides need to be incinerated. “They incinerate it at a temperature hot enough that it breaks down all the molecular bonds,” said Benjamin Marquez-Ayala, a hazardous waste management specialist. “It’s pretty much in its pure elemental form that it once was originally in, so it’s no longer hazardous.”

The Leveda Brown Environmental Park and Transfer Station offers a variety of unique services free to all Alachua County residents. This facility gives away free compost. It recycles tires, kitchen appliances and scrap metal, and it doubles as an environmental park. Where most facilities would have a runoff area for any contaminated waste water, this one serves as a wildlife habitat.

“The vegetation is helping to circulate the water and clean it,” Samec said. “We’ve got alligators, migrating birds, turtles, ducks, you name it.”

Waste management is a serious issue for any county, and the Leveda Brown Environmental Park and Transfer Station is taking a new approach. This facility does more than manage waste. It acts as an educational space for all of Alachua County. Anyone can see exactly what happens to our trash after it leaves our homes and the journey it undergoes. But people don’t realize that not all trash is created equal, and each material requires different processes.

Managing this amount of waste takes resources, time and money, and our current processes are only a temporary solution. Waste is harming our environment, and it will continue to if we don’t make a change. It’s important that we take advantage of educational resources like the Leveda Brown Environmental Park and Transfer Station, looking closer at the waste we contribute.

There are small things that each of us can do every day to reduce our footprint. Do your best to remember those reusable shopping bags. Try composting that moldy bread. Think about thrifting the next time you need a new outfit. It’s practically impossible to be completely waste-free. But if each of us consider the consequences of our consumption, we may find a solution. O&B