Public Education
Project: Public Education
Question: How can public officials, policymakers, and the general public become informed about the detrimental effects of landfills?
Answer: Through study missions, person-to-person briefings, testimony at public hearings, and the preparation of articles for the legislator and policymaker, IeRM can bring to bear the scientific facts concerning the environmental harm and financial costs of landfills and what to do instead. By making presentations at public meetings, writing articles for the popular media, reaching out with blogs and social media postings, and using other channels, the public can also be informed.
Background: For hundreds of years, Americans have become accustomed to disposing of unwanted materials in landfills. America, after all, is a huge country, with lots of space not really suitable for anything. The marginal cost of disposal was zero, or so it was thought.
As the population grew and trash became a more pressing issue, public jurisdictions set aside areas as “dumps.” There was little regulation or even oversight, except to prevent fires and perhaps to keep the trash out of the water supply. A surge of environmental awareness in the late 1960s led to the establishment of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, and many states followed suit with their own agencies. Landfills began to be regulated, although the assumption remained that landfilling was the cheapest and most effective method for managing solid waste. It has been only relatively recently that the total environmental impacts, and the true hidden costs, of landfilling have been exposed.
Solution: It is very difficult to change public perceptions regarding an issue that was thought to have been settled. (A good example is the decades it took to convince the public of the dangers of cigarettes.) Thus, it is crucial to focus attempts to change perceptions on elected officials and policymakers, who are in a position to assess the facts and make decisions that can change regulations.
By taking legislators, policymakers, and business leaders on study missions to see where alternatives to landfilling have been successfully implemented, and to hear from their counterparts in these locations how the environment has been improved and the costs of waste management have come down, perceptions can be changed. In-person presentations and the use of all public and social media will also be effective in helping to change public perceptions.
Your donation will greatly help us to act immediately, based on sound science, proven methodologies, and the ability to implement changes.
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