[GreenYes] Fw: Please Veto Repeal of Florida Yard Waste Ban

[Gary Liss]

Please send your own letters like this on 5/14. Governor must act by 5/15.

Gary

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

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From: Gary Liss <ga...@garyliss.com>

Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 13:19:54 -0700

To: <Charli...@MyFlorida.com>

Cc: Gary Liss<ga...@garyliss.com>; <pb...@capitolsolutions.biz>; <cary....@compostingcouncil.org>; <rican...@aol.com>; Bill Sheehan<bi...@productpolicy.org>; Linda Christopher<li...@grrn.org>; <er...@ecocycle.org>; <stu.b...@compostingcouncil.org>

Subject: Please Veto Repeal of Yard Waste Ban

Honorable Charlie Crist
Governor of the State of Florida
The Capitol
400 South Monroe Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-0001

        RE: HB 569 and SB 1052, authorizing the disposal of yard trash at a Class I landfill

Dear Governor Crist,

I am writing as a leading advocate for Zero Waste in the United States.  I have recently learned that HB 569 and SB1052 passed your legislature that would repeal the ban on yard waste from landfills.  I am joining colleagues in the composting and recycling industries and Zero Waste advocates to urge you to veto these bills.  Overturning this ban is bad for the economy and bad for the environment.

The reasons to veto this language are many:

• Will hurt Florida’s small businesses. The 264 facilities registered in Florida who manufacture compost and mulch from yard trimmings are at risk of going out of business. Along with this will be a loss of 1000s of jobs. These small businesses are for the most part owned and operated by Florida residents who sell their products to other Florida businesses, keep profits within the state and use the services of other small businesses. The Institute for Local Self Reliance recently documented that composting creates four times as many jobs as landfilling the same material.
• Will not contribute to energy independence. Yard trimmings, due to its high lignin content, decompose slowly and only partially in a landfill environment, contributing an insignificant amount to Florida’s energy needs. The energy argument is a convenient smoke screen to obscure the real goal, increased revenues at landfills.  More energy can be conserved from composting these materials and returning them to the soil than can be produced from landfill gas recovery.  Landfill gas recovery is also the least efficient way to recover energy from such materials.
• Will hurt the environment. Only a fraction of the methane that is generated will be captured by the collection system (estimates vary considerably: the EPA puts the capture rate at 75%, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that over the landfill's entire life that rate may be as low as 20%). The methane that escapes is 72 times more harmful to global climate change over the next 20 years than the carbon dioxide that would be generated if the yard trash were composted instead of landfilled. That does not count the missed benefits to the environment from NOT using the compost that would be generated, including improved water quality, reduced irrigation needs, healthier plants and improved stormwater management. As Florida State researchers have shown, compost’s benefits would help improve yields in a number of crops.
• Contradicts your own laws and the US EPA. Title 29, Chapter 403, section 703 of the Florida Statutes, defines "Recycling" as “any process by which solid waste, or materials that would otherwise become solid waste, are collected, separated, or processed and reused or returned to use in the form of raw materials or products.” Burying yard trash in landfills, methane collection or not, is NOT recycling, because there is no return to use. Directing the DEP to award recycling credit for disposal defeats the purpose of tracking waste reduction and recycling quantities, and is contradictory to the EPA hierarchy of reduce-reuse-recycle.
• Undercuts the public trust in recycling.  If this legislation is adopted, once the public finds out they are doing all this work to separate yard debris from garbage and it is all going to the same place, they will be furious.  This is a violation of the social contract between government and the people.  The public expects that when they are asked to do something important for the environment, it will be meaningful.  This will undercut that trust completely, and could undermine all of the state's recycling programs.   When the media starts digging into this story, the headlines will not be anything you want your name associated with.

Please be aware that of the 23 states that have bans in place on landfilling yard debris, NONE have been overturned, despite repeated efforts by large waste corporations. There is even precedent for a governor’s veto of a ban repeal passing the legislature. That is what Governor Vilsack did in Iowa in 2003, when he stated that without his veto, “this action will be a major step backwards for integrated solid waste management.”

Floridians have a proud history of protecting the environment and looking for ways to divert materials away from landfills. The Florida Legislature committed a huge error in passing this legislation, but you can make it right.

Please do the right thing, Governor—veto this bill.

If you require additional information, please contact the US Composting Council, www.compostingcouncil.org

Sincerely,

Gary Liss
Gary Liss & Associates
4395 Gold Trail Way
Loomis, CA  95650-8929
916-652-7850
Fax: 916-652-0485
ga...@garyliss.com
www.garyliss.com

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