Every election, there is at least one politician who will stake his or her political future on garbage. That politician may campaign against a proposed landfill or against out-of-state waste going to an in-state disposal facility.
Most politicians know that voters are more apt to favor a candidate who says “No” to garbage than someone who will say, “Disposal facilities are necessary because we all produce garbage.”
The politics of garbage usually gets particularly odd. Some politicians from Virginia alleged that contributions made by a New York governor’s political action committee to candidates for the Virginia state council were an attempt to “buy some legislators.”
Purportedly, the governor was trying to encourage conflict over shipping the garbage from his state to Virginia disposal grounds. Over the past few years, politicians from Virginia have expressed opposition to this. Yet, the same politicians that are against this remained silent about Virginia’s shipments of hazardous waste to disposal sites in other states.
Waste disposal and management makes for great political theater. The image of protesters in a new landfill are irresistible photo opportunities. Many local cities ship rubbish to other cities, states, and even other countries and these actions are taken because due to economic reasons.
In fact, many communities are willing to welcome the waste because this yields income from host-community fees. We cannot expect politicians to suddenly turn against landfills. But we should ask those politicians to think of better alternatives to landfills. If they argue in favor of recycling and minimizing waste, we hope that they are candid enough to demonstrate support for other energy conservation practices like taking public transport to all their political campaign rallies.
If you’re a simple citizen in a community or a business owner who’d like to step away from the political drama and just do your own part in disposing waste properly, hiring Lake Macquarie skip bin service is probably one of the best ways to save the environment by disposing garbage in a professionally managed way. Hiring skip bin services will prevent illegal garbage dumping, which does harm to the environment.