This is important while discussing about waste management and sustainability, as the topic of junk disposal cannot be separated from environmental justice.
The air standard, for instance, was established through the Clean Air Act (even though it does not go far enough to protect human health) as the result of successful environmental justice organizing. Historically, though, environmental threats have been unequally imposed on marginalized communities: junk out and waste management practices are no exception to these disparities.
Working here and around the world, low-income and minority communities too often get stuck handling more than their fair share of waste disposal facilities, landfills or even illegal dumping, which in turn produces serious health and environmental inequities.
The Link between Garbage Disposal and Environmental Justice
Junk disposal is related to environmental justice since the siting of waste management facilities like landfills, incinerators and recycling plants tends to cause more harm than good to these often low-income communities.
This trend is often called “environmental racism” because it can be a result of minority populations being more likely to live near waste disposal facilities and other heavy polluters. These communities are often less politically powerful to resist the siting of such facilities and, by virtue of historical patterns of segregation and economic discrimination, more likely to live in areas written off for anything else.
For instance, many peer-reviewed studies have shown that landfills and waste transfer stations in the United States often find homes in low-income neighborhoods of color. They also expose nearby residents to higher levels of air pollution, due to the toxic emissions these facilities frequently produce (along with soil and ground-water contamination and increased pests — all of which contribute to decreased health outcomes).
Everything from respiratory illnesses, lead poisoning and water contamination has been connected to residents who live in the surrounding areas of disposal sites.
In addition, the same communities also frequently lack access to complete waste management services such as curbside recycling, composting options or hazardous waste collection sites. This lack of access worsens the problem by adding local environmental degradation and reducing local participation in sustainable waste management practices.
This means that junk disposal is an issue of environmental justice—because communities and populations who are underserved and economically/disparately antagonized bear the brunt of hazards while reaping fewer benefits from solutions.
The Unhealthy and Environmental Consequences of Unfair Litter Disposal
Local junk disposal sites in underprivileged neighborhoods have the potential to pose a real hazard to public health and environmental quality.
Landfills emit methane gas, a powerful greenhouse gas that is involved in climate change, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which can cause respiratory problems, headaches, and other health disorders. Incineration, another common waste disposal method used in low-income sites, produces hazardous compounds like dioxins, and heavy metals, and particle issue which have been considered causes of cancer and birth defects as well as other enduring ailments.
Next, the quality of water is now a principal issue in municipalities they satation nearby waste disposer. As water filters through waste in a landfill, the liquid created is called leachate, and that substance can infiltrate groundwater or surface water while collecting dangerous chemicals like arsenic, lead, and mercury. This contamination can have serious health consequences and environmental impacts on aquatic ecosystems, ultimately causing permanent damage.
These impacts can be multiplied through the cumulative effect of living near numerous pollution sources simply, a “cumulative environmental burden”. Those same communities that face hazards posed by waste disposal sites, according to the grounding provisions in Senate Bill 64: are already perfect storm scenarios of environmental injustice with industrial pollution, emissions from transportation and lack of green spaces.
Layering these environmental hazards seems to doom those who live in the region and also makes waste management more than just a livelihood issue; It becomes an activist one, seeing how it drastically affects the health of residents and impairs their quality of life (affecting human rights).
Examples: The Inequity of Junk Disposal in Communities
Junk disposal disproportionately affects some communities: Here is how several high-profile environmental injustice cases. A classic case in point is Chester, Pennsylvania—where the largely African American and low-income community hosts several waste treatment facilities.
For decades the residents of Chester have struggled against what they say is an unfair share of incinerators, landfills and waste treatment plants that blanket their small southeastern Pennsylvania town in a smog of pollution believed to be killing them. Providing both the city and state with services it could not do cheaply for itself has helped sink their fortunes deeper than anyone now living in this underappreciated rust-belt relic of America’s industrial era would want to bear.
Take the South Bronx in New York, for example, the city hosts numerous waste transfer stations, contributing to a problem called “waste infrastructure inequality.” One of the city’s most impoverished districts, the South Bronx bears a disproportionate bulk of New York’s waste, resulting in poor-air-quality days so frequent that they have been linked to unusually high rates of asthma among residents. For years, community activists have tried to bring attention to the environmental health disparities facing their area.
As well as some of the Native American Reservations have also been sited with waste, hazardous materials. In the past, reservations were considered ideal sites for locating toxic waste dumps because of the absence or limited regulation and as a form of economic exploitation.
The Navajo Nation, for instance, has struggled with the cleanup of uranium mines for decades, but it also contends with illegal dumping of toxic materials. Such cases demonstrate how the fallout from dumping junk exacts a greater toll on marginalized groups, among them those who are less politically and economically empowered.
Solving The Unequal Problem Of How We Dump Our Junk
There are structural shifts and a grassroots advocacy which is currently underway that both seek redress for the inequities of the junk disposal industry. At the policy level, we need more environmental law enforcement and fair location selection of waste disposal facilities.
This includes laws like the Environmental Justice for All Act, which seeks to end environmental racism by forcing federal agencies to take into account every other toxic burden in a community when they’re allowing new ones. Transformation of the waste management policies that support zero-waste objectives, minimize landfill and incineration dependence, create recycling and composting opportunity may help to reduce junk disposal related environmental burden towards vulnerable communities.
And, tackling the issues of equity that arise requires more than just cumbersome court litigation or federal or state government action because there is an important role for local, grassroots activism.
Community-driven mobilizations have historically been initiated and led by people within these areas to draw attention to this issue, providing the necessary pressure on decision makers so that it can stimulate a resolution; Organizations like WE ACT for Environmental Justice and the Environmental Justice Network build capacity in communities to push back against environmental injustices, including those associated with waste disposal.
As this example demonstrates, the nexus of trash disposal and environmental justice reveals a constellation of larger systemic inequalities that burden communities on the margins. These waste management practices further aggravate social and environmental disparities as they disproportionately impact impoverished and minority-area inhabitants.
Tackling systemic inequities demands significant policy overhauls, enhanced environmental legal enforcement and ongoing advocacy by communities demanding their rightful access to clean air, water and land. The U.S. will only begin to inch towards a fair and righteous form of junk disposal if these disparities are brought to light.
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