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  4. Environmentalists Urge Industry to Stop Trying to Repeal Landfill Bans on Yard Waste

Environmentalists Urge Industry to Stop Trying to Repeal Landfill Bans on Yard Waste

Date: January 10, 2011

Source: News Room

Environmental groups are urging the waste management industry to stop lobbying to repeal state laws that prohibit the disposal of yard waste in landfills. A Jan. 4 open letter from environmental groups that include the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and others, urge Waste Management Inc. and the National Solid Waste Management Association (NSWMA) to stop lobbying for the repeal of the laws, which 23 states have enacted, mostly during the 1990's. They argue that the laws have been "responsible for almost half of the [landfill] diversion that the American people have achieved," have "provided a source of nutrients for composters to help restore fertility to our depleted soils," have reduced "the release into the atmosphere of greenhouse gas and hazardous air pollutants," and lessened "a major cause of future instability in landfills that threaten surface and groundwater. Yet, beginning in 2002, there has been increasing efforts by the landfill industry to repeal these successful laws, reaching a crescendo in the last year, when you are reported to have led efforts to repeal these statues in Georgia, Michigan and Florida," according to the letter. To date, the only successful effort has been in Florida, where the state legislature late last year overturned Gov. Charlie Crist's veto of House Bill 569. Industry groups for their part, argue that in many cases municipalities do not have the wherewithal to establish composting programs and that landfilling yard waste yields methane that can be recaptured for energy.

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