Every Litter Bit
HODES, JEFFREY L.
Every Litter Bit NOT SO RICH AS YOU THINK By George R. Stewart Houghton Mifflin. 248 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by JEFFREY L. HODES Assistant to the Budget Director, New York City "The breakfast...
...The very notion of recycling, of course, is contrary to the myth of ceaseless American abundance, for it implies that our resources can be depleted...
...The materials needed for bringing old systems up to the new standards were not readily available, and the city's already overburdened sanitation faculties could not possibly have collected the unburnt garbage if it was left on the streets...
...Automatic computerized measuring devices could be made for calculating the costs and benefits of clean air or water for a region...
...George Stewart's absorbing primer on how man is laying waste his environment goes behind these sardonic lyrics by Tom Lehrer, examining the society that produced such an effrontery to mankind and the ecological results of the disorder...
...Reviewed by JEFFREY L. HODES Assistant to the Budget Director, New York City "The breakfast garbage they throw out in Troy, they drink at lunch in Perth Amboy...
...and techniques are being developed that will make it possible for sulphur gases from generating processes to have additional industrial uses...
...This would be in keeping with our market economy, would avoid bureaucratic red tape, and would provide the funds for governmental pollution control research...
...The polluter would be free of governmental restraints and regulations, but would be responsible for coming up with a solution in his particular situation if he wanted to reduce or eliminate his tax...
...Several economists have suggested that industrial polluters pay a social tax for emitting pollutants against the public interest...
...But whatever the abatement scheme, time is not on our side...
...Unfamiliar with their environment and narcotized by the artificial world they have inherited, they may see little value in restoring the ecological balance between man and nature...
...and in the nation, Congress allocates pathetically little for the fight while hampering Federal agencies that are trying to curb the worst culprits, the industrialists and auto manufacturers...
...As our neglect leads to the creation of ever more artificial elements to replace what we are destroying, Stewart is haunted by the thought that whole generations will soon not know what "better" or "pure" mean...
...But recycling is basically a preventative for the future, and doesn't solve our immediate problem...
...Last spring the Lindsay Administration embarrassed itself by trying to enforce legally enacted air-pollution standards for apartment house incinerators...
...Con Ed then went North beyond suburbia to upper Westchester, only to encounter there the wrath of conservationists and local townships...
...The urgency of what he has to say is apparent from recent troubles in New York City, which suggest that even the technocrats have a lot to learn...
...While the law was reasonable, it wasn't feasible...
...Today, "we are being poisoned by our own effluents," Stewart writes, and the public will to clean the environment is at best timid...
...For anyone alarmed by the prospect that children soon may breathe in artificially purified air, just as they already drink chemically purified water, this literate guide to understanding the totality of pollution is requisite reading...
...Although he carefully avoids minimizing the barriers to effectively controlling or abating pollutants, Stewart applies common sense to the technical complexities of disposal problems plaguing America today?a domain usually reserved for a breed of technocrat known as the systems analyst...
...Ultimately, Stewart contends, we must learn not to dump (disposal) but to recycle (re-use...
...Landlords were ordered to upgrade their equipment or shut down incinerators in a drive to reduce the stench and flyash from tons of burning garbage...
...And where was Con Ed to build these atomic-age generators...
...Disposal, he says, entails "something which had once been useful and pleasant, but had come to be useless, unpleasant and possibly dangerous...
...Now we have to renounce the "assumption that the way to get rid of something is to let it drop...
...Americans have developed a psychological state of mind in which anything to do with saving or re-use is opprobrious," he declares...
...It could be either a fixed charge for emissions above permissible levels set by law, or scaled to a measure of the social damage caused by the pollutant...
...These incidents underscore Stewart's message: We are paying for our own neglect...
...Yet dumping runs counter to that other sacred American value, efficiency, and in at least some instances appears to be giving way...
...The utility did respond positively—but part of its effort involved closing down archaic fuel plants and replacing them with nuclear power plants...
...When the company suggested Queens, residents in the densely-populated borough quickly vetoed the idea for fear of possible radiation leaks...
...Municipalities lack the fiscal resources for sustained attack...
...Con Edison, meanwhile, was prodded to cease belching ugly black soot and poisonous sulphur dioxide from its power-generating plants into the air New Yorkers breathe (equated with smoking three packs of cigarettes daily...
...We have run out of space...
...Thus, to replenish dwindling copper supplies, industrialists are currently seeking to recover copper ore from scrap metal...
...To utilize anything fully has become almost unpatriotic, since we are persuaded that the affluent economy depends upon rapid turnover...
...plans exist to use garbage as a fuel to produce energy in urban areas...
...It is a comprehensive schedule of what has to be done if we would roll back the physical refuse of society...
...Such a social tax would be levied on the amount of pollutant emitted, not the originating activity or fuel...
...states, fearful of antagonizing corporate interests, abdicate responsibility...
...In the past, man's response to waste was simply to dump it...
Vol. 51 • April 1968 • No. 8
