Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 1 of 3 · from the scan, no model involved
Manage vs. dispose
Cynthia Bailey, director of Virginia’s Department of Waste Management, made a significant point during her remarks to RLEP Monday evening. She said that society must begin to think in terms of the management of garbage rather than the disposal of it.
The concept goes well beyond a bureaucratic fondness for semantics. „
“Disposal” implies that one discards something, and then has no further thought about it: “to get rid of,” according to Webster's Dictionary. That’s what society has been doing with its garbage for years. Whether in the local landfill, or over the hill on many farms in rural communities, garbage has been dumped and forgotten.
“Management,” on the other hand, implies a continued concern: “to have charge of; direct; administer” (Webster's again). Waste management means that household trash, sewage sludge, hazardous and radioactive byproducts are no longer forgotten when they leave the user’s hands.
That seems to be a sensible evolution.
No one likes to admit that they create waste. But we all do.
And nobody else wants them. Or, if they are willing to dispose of them for us, it will cost us “a fortune,” in Ms. Bailey’s words. And, as time goes on, that cost — which is already becoming prohibitively expensive — is going nowhere but further out of sight.
Sensible alternatives need to be found.
Recycling, for example, is a good first step. Sure, it’s a pain: sorting the glass into colors, bundling up all the old newspapers, washing and crushing the tin cans, hauling the used oil to a collection center. But alternatives are so few that three states have recently enacted mandatory recycling laws. In other words, sort it or your garbage bags sit on your lawn.
The new county landfill, wherever it’s finally located, would be an excellent place to put a recycling center. The counfiy might even make some money from the operation.
We hope that the current concern over trash and its management doesn’t disappear when the landfill siting question is resolved. The trash won’t vanish, and neither will the problem of how to manage it with the least detriment
88.0%