Via The Overhead Wire:
The Atlantic Cities has a piece about trying to minimize the energy/emission footprint of transporting garbage, and looks at New York City’s efforts to shift from hauling garbage to landfills in trucks to moving it on barges.
Our region has a similar challenge. Our landfill in is in Gilliam County, east of the Dalles. During David Bragdon’s tenure as Metro President, he was interested in the possibilities of barge transport up the Columbia, but our garbage (the portion that is not recycled, which is generally smaller than in other places) is still trucked up the gorge, albeit with a lot of measures to reduce the footprint.
One response to “What’s the VMT of Your Garbage?”
On a recent trip to NYC I was appalled by the almost complete lack of recycling in the city. Walking the streets on garbage day in a residential area in Manhattan is a horror show of waste and disorganized collection processes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the per capita garbage coming out of NYC is worse than most NW cities.