What are some of the projects and activities of the Solid Waste Management Committee?
There are a number of issues that the committee is working on. We just finished a book on reuse of landfills. This coming year, one of our goals is to look at biodegradation of solid waste; the less space we can take, the better we’re going to be. We’re going to be looking at recycling; the way we are managing recyclables is constantly changing, and we need to really understand that. Another area we hope to spend time with is the issue of employee safety. A lot of people don’t know that picking up solid waste is one of the most dangerous jobs in a municipality, if not the most dangerous, relative to injuries. And one of the things that we’ve been talking about is to really understand why these injuries are being caused, and the principles we need to put into place to protect employees from the injuries. The last concerns the whole issue of terrorist acts, and how you manage the solid waste component—managing the landfill, managing cleanup, protecting employees from the air emissions th
