21st Century Policy Project

A Brief History of Solid Waste Management

In charting a course for municipal solid waste management in the 21st century in California, it would be instructive to review the California experience in waste management in the century that is drawing to a close. This involves both the events and cultural realities that shaped the response of the existing waste management infrastructure at the time, and the profound advancements in engineering, operations, legislation and regulation that have reversed imprudent practices and put us on course to achieve our future goals.

In the early 1900s, workers operated as scavengers, using horse-drawn wagons to collect municipal solid waste. What they did with that waste revealed the double-edged sword of waste management in those early days.

Those first recyclers recovered metals, paper, rags, reusables, bottles, and food waste, which were sold by them to eager industries. Thus, we can see that recycling is nothing new, and that market responsiveness was the key element of waste operations from the beginning.

On the other hand, there were unsafe and unhealthy methods of dealing with waste that, in that time, were considered acceptable. Backyard open burning was commonplace, and the ashes and other nonrecoverable wastes were delivered to burn dumps located within each region.

During World War II, new technologies were developed out of a necessity to meet the needs of our troops, and some of these provided a glimpse of future practices. For instance, the invention of "K" rations to feed our soldiers preceeded convenience packaging of products in the consumer sector that continues to this day.

Following the war, California was at the forefront of unprecedented growth in the American economy. And as we grew, lifestyle patterns changed almost as dramatically. We moved out of the inner cities and into suburbs, in the process establishing new localities in need of services. The role of solid waste management was intensified, and again, there were practices that were sound, and some that were not.

Some waste was being regularly barged to the oceans and dumped there. Some was being placed in open dumps and burned every evening. And some was sent to no frills incinerators. Each of these activities were taking place without any pollution controls.

The focus of collection companies changed in the 1960s. New equipment enabled quicker and heavier loads of waste. Recovery of recyclables was taken down to the individual customer level in the 60s. The driving force was to keep costs low for residents and businesses, and to accommodate a lifestyle change that revealed a "throw away" society.

The focus on sanitary landfilling had begun in the 1940s and one of the nation’s leaders in the effort was Californian, Jean Vincenz, the Fresno Director of Public Works. He is recognized as a pioneer in developing sanitary methods for disposing of trash in large urban areas. Later, the California Department of Health Services became one of the first State Health departments in the nation to establish landfill standards and seek elimination of open dumps.

The 1970s saw new regulations and federal air pollution standards focused on the new construction standards for sanitary landfills and operating incinerators. The result of the standards were better engineered landfills and the closure of old incinerators. The Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 encouraged resource recovery.

From the late 1980s to the present, two events defined California’s mission for the future. The first was the passage of the Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989. The second, in 1993, was the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Reauthorization, which set unprecedented national standards for safety and efficiency for landfill management.

The driving issue of the 1980s was a perceived landfill shortage issue which was best illustrated by the 1987 "garbage barge," which left Long Island, New York in search of a final disposal site. The floating barge was a lead story in the print and television mediums throughout the nation. National emphasis was focused on MSW management.

These events spurred renewed emphasis on reducing, reusing and recycling materials within the wastestream. The commitment to ensure safe landfilling and combustion of MSW was reinforced through legislation and regulations to strengthen the commitment to the health and safety of our citizens in California as well as the protection of our environment.

AB 939 mandated cities and counties, working off the base year of 1990, to reduce the amount of waste landfilled in 1995 by 25 percent and in 2000 by 50 percent. This mandate carried an attention grabber--$10,000 per day fines for cities and counties that refused to be part of the solution.

As a result of the commitment by citizens, cities, counties, solid waste management companies and other recyclers, an infrastructure costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build is in place in California, collecting, sorting, processing and transporting recovered recyclables. Elements of this infrastructure include collection programs, recycling facilities, materials recovery facilities and processing facilities.

Among those reliant upon this infrastructure are California's cities and counties, who have developed and are implementing source reduction and recycling elements--the menu of programs a jurisdiction will look to in its quest to reduce their trash going to landfills by 50 percent.

A great amount of personal and public money has been borrowed to build this infrastructure in response to the mandates established by AB 939, and with such a formidable infrastructure in place, the programs resulting from adherence to the law will continue beyond the year 2000.

There can be little doubt that a concerted effort is critical. For most of the first half of this century, we recovered for reuse about 75 percent of the waste we generated. That impressive figure dropped to 7.5 percent in the 1970s and 9 percent in the 1980s.

California is doing much better today. We've restored the concept of market responsiveness to promote greater uses for high quality, postconsumer materials. We've instilled greater confidence in waste disposal through environmentally sound, technically state-of-the-art landfills. And we've seen a pronounced shift in consumer culture, with greater philosophical value placed on diversion over disposal, and in practice, more sensible disposition of household waste. In 1997 we were diverting 32 percent of our waste, staying on track toward 50 percent by the year 2000.

California is a prosperous state, and we generate more waste every year as a result of strong economic development and population increases. We must remain well-positioned to effectively manage our waste, and recover recyclables through an infrastructure that rivals any in the world.

Our mission now is to predict the future, identify the challenges it presents, and fashion our response.

Last updated: October 18, 2007