Ever-increasing mandates for waste diversion, pressure from zero waste advocates and community organizations, environmental justice concerns, the changing disposal landscape in many regions, and expectations to do more with less pose unprecedented challenges to solid waste agencies. We will tackle these issues and more in this interactive panel discussion. Come learn about our coast-to-coast experiences and offer your suggestions and solutions.

There’s probably never been a more challenging time for solid waste master planning. Master plans must provide solid waste agencies with robust outcomes for meeting their service obligations in the near-term while also providing flexibility to respond to the changing landscape for solid waste diversion and disposal options available over the intermediate-long term. As such, successful plans must accommodate several moving parts (e.g., collection, drop-off, diversion, processing, transfer, disposal). This panel discussion will focus on four main concerns that have emerged as recurring themes on recent master planning efforts. First, many agencies need to address how to meet increased state or city mandates for phasing in waste diversion targets within their wasteshed, particularly for food scraps and organics. However, the public and local political leaders often do not appreciate the additional infrastructure, logistical issues, and financial burden associated with implementing organics diversion systems and are reluctant to raise rates or fees accordingly. Long-standing NIMBY attitudes and growing environmental justice (EJ) considerations also make siting new composting or AD facilities harder, despite public demand for such facilities. Second, meeting increased targets for waste diversion means that getting to know the characteristics of your disposal and recycling waste streams is more important than ever. However, traditional waste characterization studies are time-consuming, expensive, generally reflect a “snap-shot” in time, and are highly location specific. A more systemic approach based on statistical analysis of nationally available data will be discussed. Third, in some areas of the country, local disposal options are disappearing and must be replaced with long-haul contracts (e.g., waste-by-rail) for which developing appropriate transfer infrastructure is a financial challenge, again made harder by long-standing NIMBY attitudes and EJ considerations. Finally, financial modeling remains the centerpiece of any master plan; however, uncertainties over labor and capital costs, supply chain issues, interest rates, and inflation make this a greater challenge than in the past.
Using a panel type presentation format, six different master planning efforts from California to the Mid-Atlantic and Florida to New England will be compared and contrasted so the audience can better understand some of the issues and challenges involved.