Will Other States Follow Florida's Lead Repealing Yard Waste Landfill Ban?

By P.J. Heller

    The lifting of a long-standing yard waste ban in Florida landfills could prompt other states to launch or revive similar legislative efforts, much to the consternation of the composting industry and environmental organizations.
    “Composting of yard waste material is environmentally preferable to landfilling,” insists the Missouri Recycling Association. “The advantages of composting yard material are well-substantiated by research and form the basis for public policy across the United States. Recently, however, some landfill operators have advocated lifting yard material landfill bans in order to increase methane generation and boost energy production at landfills. We should be concerned the environmental consequences and costs of lifting yard waste landfill bans significantly outweigh any potential increase in energy recovery.”
    The U.S. Composting Council, which boasts some 700 members including compost producers, regulators and consultants, also opposes any repeal of the yard waste bans.
    “The U.S. Composting Council is firmly opposed to landfilling yard debris and other source-separated organics when viable alternatives are available,” the organization states in a position statement on Keeping Organics Out of Landfills. “It is an inefficient way to use our organic feedstocks — wasting resources, reducing recycling and potentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
    “. . . We need to keep the bans and other policies in place and not allow yard trimmings to end up in landfills, bioreactor or otherwise,” it says. “The path to a sustainable society may be long and difficult, but composting organics is clearly a step in the right direction.”In a joint statement in 2006, the Composting Council and the Solid Waste Association of North America agreed that composting organic wastes was preferable to landfilling.“SWANA and the USCC agree that composting of organic materials is the highest and best use of these residuals and that emphasis should continue to be placed on recovering and recycling as much organic waste as possible from the solid waste stream,” their statement reads.
    Repealing the yard waste bans “is not something that we feel is a good idea,” agrees Wayne H. Davis, co-founder of Harvest Power, a company that develops, builds and owns and operates state-of-the-art facilities that produce renewable energy and compost from discarded organic materials.
    “Lifting the landfill yard waste ban would represent a step backwards in the fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the dangerous implications of human-induced global warming,” the Missouri Recycling Association adds.
    An estimated two dozen states currently have bans on yard wastes at landfills, many of which have been in place for more than 20 years and were designed to preserve dwindling landfill capacity, an approach that has proven successful.
    “. . . States or counties with landfill bans receive significantly less yard waste on a per capita basis then those without bans,” notes the Delaware Solid Waste Authority.
    Attempts as late as last year by some states, including Missouri, Georgia, Michigan and Iowa, to overturn the yard waste bans in an effort to support green energy production have been unsuccessful.
    The yard waste bans have helped spur the growth of the composting industry.
    Stuart Buckner, executive director of the U.S. Composting Council, reports compost production is up 4,200 percent — from about half a million tons in 1988 to about 21 million tons in 2008 — since bans went into effect on yard trimmings in landfills. At the same time, there has been a 538 percent increase in the number of composting facilities, from about 650 in 1988 to some 3,500 in 2010, he says.
    Many compost facility owners feel that repealing the ban on yard waste disposal could force some composting companies to close.
    “It would put us out of business,” says Tom Turner, owner of Spurt Industries, a commercial compost processing facility and wood waste recycler in Zeeland, Mich.
    Driving the move to lift the bans appears to be coming from garbage haulers, who would benefit financially by increased tipping fees, and landfill operators with methane collection systems, who could mix the yard trimmings with solid waste to generate energy in the form of landfill (methane) gas.
    “While one would think that recycling organics into methane for gas consumption would make some sense, the conversion ratios are highly inefficient and it doesn’t really make good economic sense to overturn the whole structure of a system that’s built to return organics to the environment in lieu of a rather wasteful gas collection process,” notes Bob LaGasse, executive director of the Mulch and Soil Council.
    LaGasse’s position echoes that of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which supports landfill bans for yard trimmings and opposes adding organic wastes to landfills in an effort to create waste-to-energy facilities.
    “There are documented inefficiencies in landfilling yard trimmings to generate methane for energy,” the agency said in opposing lifting the ban in Georgia. “EPA strongly supports landfill gas collection systems, but they do not capture 100 percent of the methane generated inside a landfill.”
    The agency estimates that only 60 percent to 90 percent of the methane generated is captured, with the rest being released into the atmosphere.
    “. . . These gases have the potential to impact our environment today and in the future. The methane gas produced by landfills has over 20 times the greenhouse gas potential of carbon dioxide generated by composting,” it says.
    Buckner of the Composting Council concurs.
    “No matter whether it is a conventional dry tomb or bioreactor landfill and no matter how efficient a collection system may be installed, some amount of the methane produced is released to the atmosphere,” he says.
    “. . . Even if all landfills were required to install conventional gas collection systems, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the methane produced by organic wastes would be completely missed (emitted to the atmosphere) due to the lag time between waste deposition and onset of gas collection,” the Composting Council contends.
    “On the other hand,” it says, “diverting organic wastes from landfills can be a highly effective practice for avoiding methane emissions in the first place. The most common alternatives to the landfilling of organic wastes include composting, use as a nutrient source on agricultural land, and use as a renewable energy source for waste-to-energy facilities. Emerging technologies such as anaerobic digestion, gasification, and production of cellulosic ethanol are also likely to create additional demand for organic resources. All of these processes either avoid significant methane production or produce methane under enclosed and highly-controlled conditions where methane collection efficiency is, by design, close to 100 percent.”
    The Earth Engineering Center of Columbia University, however, disputes the data on emissions.
    “Unfortunately, opponents to landfill disposal too often do not differentiate between those practices that are helpful and those that are detrimental from a climate-change perspective,” writes Patrick Sullivan in The Importance of Landfill Gas Capture and Utilization in the U.S.
    “When landfills are reviewed on a life-cycle basis, the negative comments from landfill opponents do not accurately portray the greenhouse gas emissions from landfills in the United States, and data are often misused to suggest that landfills are collecting far less of the landfill gas than actually is occurring nationwide,” he said. “Recently, these opponents have urged policy makers not to support measures aiming to increase landfill gas capture and recovery. The main argument is that increased landfill gas capture makes composting less attractive than landfilling.
    “Some landfill opponents claim it is better environmentally to control landfill methane by keeping organics out of a landfill rather than installing methane control technology at the landfill,” he adds. “Proponents of this position want to have it both ways. They want to discredit landfills as being methane emitters; however when landfills are able to effectively control and reduce methane emissions and recover energy from it, the same proponents of organics waste diversion are reluctant to recognize these reductions because, from a greenhouse gas standpoint, it diminishes their arguments in favor of landfill waste diversion.
    “Organics diversion, composting, and/or other waste management options, which are sometimes viewed as alternatives to landfills, are more properly considered as complementary waste management tools,” he says. “All such practices must be judged on their own merits, including cost-effectiveness, environmental impacts and operational efficiency, and not on the back of unfounded negative statements about landfills or other management options. Progress in lowering greenhouse gas emissions is best achieved by a concerted, integrated approach that employs all available technologies and methods, including reuse, recycling, composting, waste-to-energy, and landfilling with capture of landfill gas.”
    In arguing against lifting the 15-year-old yard waste ban in Michigan, opponents such as the Resource Recovery and Recycling Authority of Southwest County argued that such a change would negatively impact the state’s economy and environment while having an insignificant impact on energy production.
    “. . . It is clear that all landfills should capture their methane and generate electricity from it when feasible and safe,” the authority said. “However, this can be effectively done without allowing yard clippings to be landfilled and the negative consequences of circumventing existing waste management practices far outweigh the minimal benefits.”
    The Michigan legislation would only improve the state’s electricity generating capacity by about one-tenth of one percent, opponents said, adding, “The trade-off for this insignificant change is a loss of Michigan jobs, increased costs to Michigan businesses and cities, and increased pollution.”
    The Mid Michigan Waste Authority agreed.
    “Simply landfilling the material is a step backward that kills jobs and creates an insignificant amount of energy, while being harmful to the environment at the same time,” it said.
    In Florida, however, legislators voted to lift a ban, in effect for approximately 20 years, to allow yard wastes in landfills where methane gas was captured and burned to produce electricity. The measure was subsequently vetoed by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist.
     “Although the bill requires landfills to capture and make beneficial use of methane gas to qualify to accept yard trash, it directs materials to landfills that would otherwise be recycled,” Crist said in his veto message. “I have not been presented with compelling reasons to abandon this long-standing state policy that provides an opportunity to reach our recycling goals.”
    The veto was met with applause by the composting industry and others.
    “Floridians have a proud history of protecting the environment and looking for ways to recycle organic materials,” noted Tom Kelley of Harvest Power. “The Florida Legislature committed a huge error in passing this legislation, but the organics recycling industry joined together to communicate the environmental and economic impacts of yard waste bans. The good news, Gov. Crist did the right thing — he vetoed this bill.”
    Crist, out of office after running unsuccessfully as an independent for the U.S. Senate, had his veto overturned following the November elections. Seven other bills he had vetoed were also overridden by the Republican-dominated Legislature.
    Rule-making efforts in Florida, including yard wastes in landfills, have since been put on hold by newly elected Gov. Rick Scott. He issued an executive order directing all state agencies to suspend all rule making and created an Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform to review proposed and existing regulations.
    The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is “working closely with the governor's office and the newly formed Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform in carrying out the provisions outlined in the executive order regarding both rule making and contracts,” a department spokesman said.