File photo.
By Linda Serafin, Alamitos Beach Neighborhood Association | As we celebrate our Nation’s independence on this Fourth of July, let’s also declare independence from the unnecessary landfilling and incineration that plagues our communities. Many of us in Long Beach will be spending the long weekend with our friends and loved ones, enjoying food and drinks, while watching local firework displays. But what happens in the aftermath? The reality is many of the excess food, bottles, cans, and other waste produced by our celebrations will be landfilled or incinerated instead of being recycled or composted. This is a major issue that should be addressed by our city leaders if they are serious in wanting Long Beach to reach its full potential as a green city. Furthermore, improving our waste and recycling has the potential to be a boon both environmentally and economically.
Our current problem can be attributed to multiple factors. For starters, many people in our communities do not have adequate access to recycling and composting, meaning that even if you want to place your food scraps from this weekend’s celebrations in a composting bin, or you wanted to recycle your paper plate, you would most likely be forced to place your items in the trash as composting and recycling is nearly non-existent in Long Beach. In addition, there isn’t ongoing public education and outreach by the city to ensure that residents know where to recycle or compost materials. Compounding the issue even more, our city currently disposes of its waste and recycling in a very archaic fashion, depending on non renewable technology like landfilling and incineration to dispose of most of our waste. This is not only wasteful of renewable resources, it is also terrible for our environment.
If Long Beach continues to depend heavily on landfilling and incineration to manage its waste, it will continue falling behind other cities in the region that have already taken initials steps in increasing access to recycling and composting. Although Long Beach is the second largest city in Los Angeles County and prides itself on being a green city, it is among the few cities in the region that does not have a three bin system in which residents have access to waste, recycling, and compost collection. As a member of the board of my neighborhood association, I constantly hear from my neighbors that they would be interested in learning and adapting to a three bin system in order to properly dispose of their recyclable materials and keep their food waste and yard clippings out of landfills, yet options to do so are limited.
Long Beach is a global city, and if we want to declare ourselves as leaders, we must do better. We have an opportunity to lead, not only today, but for generations to come. We know that the Earth’s resources are not infinite, and we are quickly running out of space to place our waste. Puente Hills, one of the largest landfills in the region, reached its capacity and closed in 2013,
yet we continue to send our trash to landfills at an unsustainable rate. It’s only a matter of time before we reach capacity at other surrounding landfills, which will drive up the costs of waste disposal for all of us. We are literally running out of time to address this issue. If we continue to rely on outdated, environmentally detrimental systems for waste disposal, we will in essence be robbing our future generations of a green and sustainable future.
So on this fourth of July, as the Alamitos Beach Neighborhood Association celebrates our nation’s independence, we encourage our city leaders to declare our independence from landfilling and incineration for today, and for generations to come.
Linda Serafin is a board member of the Alamitos Beach Neighborhood Association and Chair of our Community Improvement Subcommittee. She’s been a resident of Long Beach for four years and has partnered with Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) to produce this piece regarding waste management.