For most people in Seattle, disposing of household garbage is a chore that requires pulling full trashcans to the end of the driveway once a week and then wheel them back empty at the end of the day. But what happens to trash beyond the curb?Seattle trash goes a long way before it's fully disposed of. In fact, Seattle doesn't have a single dump for trash. The Cedar Hills landfill in Maple Valley takes garbage from parts of King County surrounding Seattle, but not from within the Seattle city limits. Instead, the city's trash is taken to one of its neighborhood transfer stations where refuse is sorted, compacted, boxed and ultimately packed onto trains bound for a landfill in Arlington, Ore. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) handles the mainly private contracts for exporting Seattle's many tons of trash across state lines.Hans Vandussen of SPU estimates that more than 2,500 tons of Seattle garbage is added to the Arlington landfill every day. This, he says, is good news for Arlington residents due to the revenue and the jobs the landfill creates in the community. Vandussen noted that there haven't been any garbage dumps in Seattle for more than 40 years since space became tight due to urban development.Mark Wolken, a private consultant and expert on solid waste transport, disposal and economics, explains that while the population has grown and changed, so has our definition of what constitutes trash. TRASHY DEFINITION"What we call trash today is different than what it was 100 years ago," Wolken said. "A century ago people simply burned unusable scrap or wood, and there was no plastic." The issues around waste disposal changed with the introduction of different types of materials to landfills, including paints, solvents and dyes. The degrading of these toxic materials began to cause concern because many of the old city landfill sites were near the water table. "By the late '60s and '70s the realization hit that these landfills needed to be managed," Wolken said.Seventy years ago landfill sites were chosen based on convenience and reclamation. The city used landfills to fill in the low spots in the landscape, which were often wetlands or gravel pits. Husky Stadium, Genesee Park and the Interbay driving range sit atop a few of Seattle's retired landfill sites.The combination of more trash, increased environmental concern and better waste disposal technology has led to high-tech landfill sites like the one in Arlington. Wolken said that the geology around Arlington is remarkable and very well suited for a landfill. There is approximately a 300-foot layer of Selah clay below the landfill site in Arlington, adding extra security against contamination in the case of a leak. "Even if one of these landfills did leak," said Wolken, "It would take centuries to cause an impact." Due to concerns about environmental impact, the pressure is high these days to reduce, reuse and recycle. But despite the outsourcing of city trash, Seattle is ahead of the national curve in its recycling efforts. SEATTLE ABOVE AVERAGEAccording to a recent article in The New York Times, Seattle recycles 44 percent of its trash, compared with the national average of around 30 percent, making it an exceptionally "green" city by national standards. The goal, according to city waste management officials, is to reach 60 percent by 2012 and 72 percent by 2025. Seattle is also setting standards for the collection of residential and commercial food scraps, which the city collects along with yard waste. After collection, the city pays Everett-based Cedar Grove Compost Co. to take the material and turn it into compost. The final product is a rich, loamy soil, which is bagged and then sold back to consumers for use in their yards and gardens. Seattle plans to make the recycling of food scraps mandatory in 2009.TRAVELING TRASHEven though Seattle is great at recycling and getting good at composting, it's still hard for some to get over the fact that our sources of garbage often spend more time traveling to us, and from us, than it does with us. Outsourcing our trash not only increases the environmental impact of every piece of garbage thrown away in the city, it also adds an incentive to buying local. With this in mind, many Seattleites go to great lengths to buy their goods close to home to cut back on the impact of distributing products by trucks, planes and trains.Wolken explained that Seattleites could greatly decrease the reliance on landfills if we can find profitable recycling programs for all the organic waste as well as finding more uses for other kinds of waste. "Perhaps someday we won't have anything potentially toxic to throw away, and we could conceivably go back to the reclamation approaches from a century ago," Wolken mused. Jennifer Ware may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com.[[In-content Ad]]
