MEMORANDUM

DATE: TO: FROM: SUBJECT: 14 August 2012 Metro Louisville Solid Waste Management Board Sarah Lynn Cunningham, Board Advisory Committee Concerns re Draft Solid Waste Management Plan

This memo is intended to communicate to you that I have some concerns about certain elements of the draft Solid Waste Management Plan for 20132017. I aired a few of them at our last Advisory Committee meeting, but my list has grown as considered the plan further and continued to field inquiries from the general public; Ill bring them up at tomorrows meeting. I urge you to instruct the committee to consider them, too, please: 1. Im regularly asked by citizens if the contractors disposing of the electronics they deliver to the CyberCycling program handle the components properly. (Its common knowledge that some contractors ship electronics containing heavy metals and other hazardous materials to poor, Third World countries where they are not properly handled, resulting in contamination of the environment, if not the workers sometimes including childrendoing the dismantling.) Since Metro Solid Waste no longer sends those materials to the federal program that engendered my faith, I will propose that it conduct at least annual audits to confirm that materials disposed via its CyberCycling program are safely handled per First World standards. 2. It has come to my attention that a significant portion of the yard waste disposed at the Outer Loop landfill not being composted into and used as a soil amendment, but is instead being used as daily cover by the landfill. That practice creates several problems, including: a. The material ends up in the landfill, just as it did before we banned it from the landfill. b. The public has been led to believe that its being composted into a soil amendment. c. It fuels the long rumored myth that recycling programs are bogus, e.g., that recyclables arent really being recycling, but dumped into the landfill.

Concerns re the 2013-2017 SWM Plan

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14 August 2012

If I understand the thinking behind this never publically communicated decision correctly, it was in response to the problem of plastic garbage bags. I will propose that the board ban those plastic bags, and require the public to use paper bags, other containers and/or backyard composting. I will also propose free workshops around the community for showing the public how to compost in their backyards. 3. I regularly see spent fluorescent lamps stored improperly when Im at Metro Solid Wastes facilities on Meriwether Avenue, most recently when visiting the CyberCycling program, i.e., which is visible to the general public. These regulatory violations both pose an environmental health hazard and misinform passers-by. My repeated requests that Metro Solid Waste be a model of compliance (with the applicable Universal Waste Regulations) have fallen on deaf ears. I propose that the department undergo an annual environmental audit, too, with findings provided to the district, the advisory committee and the management chain. 4. I continue to hear from suburban residents who cant understand why as many as five haulers travel their neighbors, at least once weekly each, if not more. I believe that franchising could be designed to benefit a) customers, b) haulers, c) road safety and sanitation and d) air quality, and propose that we earnestly consider itnotwithstanding the haulers opposition before the idea has left the gate.
SLC/Activism/SWM/SWM Plan, 2013-2017 Concerns.doc