Recession Harbinger: Less Trash

It's fighting a plan to ship Hawaii garbage to Washington state

(NEWSER) - Hawaii's landfill space is in such short supply, the state decided to transport thousands of tons of trash 2,600 miles to Washington. Making the journey even more bizarre: The waste would travel over the Yakama Indians' sacred hunting grounds to get to its destination, and the tribe is none too happy about that. "This whole dispute leads us to believe the federal government doesn't want to honor its commitments" to Native Americans, says the tribal chairman. More»

New tech could burn off Vancouver's garbage and make electricity

(NEWSER) - Vancouver may have a fix for its garbage overflow crisis: Burn the trash into a gas that makes electricity. A Canadian company called Plasco Energy Group has proposed a plant that zaps waste into ionized gas, or plasma; about a fifth of it would run the plant and the rest could be sold off. A few plasma plants by other companies have reportedly tanked, but the Vancouver Sun's Harvey Enchin urges the city to try this one. More»

Cities who divert the least from landfill named and shamed

(NEWSER) - The average American city recycles about a third of its waste, but the lack of any unified national standard for trash disposal means some cities rate way, way, below average. Mother Jones lists those with the biggest trash piles:

• Oklahoma City recycles only 3% of its waste. Households have to pay a steep price to recycle, resulting in the worst recycling rate in the land.

Trash crisis in tourist mecca heats up along with weather

(NEWSER) - Mounds of smelly garbage are piling up in the streets of Naples, as a shortage of places to dump it has reached a crisis: the last landfill in Naples closed Saturday. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano is pleading with politicians and citizens to save the the country's image, the Times reports. More»

Curb-to-landfill records stretch back to 1989

(NEWSER) - Etan Patz's killer may have been found, but the same may never be said for the 6-year-old's remains. If Pedro Hernandez did indeed kill Etan and put his body in a Dumpster, figuring out which landfill the body wound up in would be a painstaking task even if sanitation records reached back as far as 1979—which they don't, the Sanitation Department revealed yesterday, according to the New York Times . More»