Do you have a landfill litter problem?

Neal Bolton of Blueridge Services Inc. wrote a book "Landfill Operator's Handbook" which is probably the most useful book to a landfill operator that you'll find.  He also writes numerous article on landfill operation and safety.  In his writings, he often talks about litter control.  If you don't have his book, you should check it out.  Look up the web page for Blueridge Services Inc. 

In his writings, Mr. Bolton makes the statement that "all landfills have litter, but not all landfills have a litter problem".   Based on this statement, in my courses that I teach on this topic, I ask the following questions:

-  Do your neighbours complain about litter at your landfill?
-  Do the regulators comment on litter problems when they do inspections
-  Do you think you have a litter problem. 

If you can answer No to these 3 questions, then you might not have a litter problem. Of course, if the answer is Yes, then you have a problem that you need to address. 

I had this discussion today with a contractor of one of our operations.  We were out doing an inspection around the site and now that the snow has almost melted away, the ugly side of litter that has collected over the winter is showing its ugly head.  As we talked about getting after the spring clean up, I mentioned that my belief is litter on your site reflects your image.  If you don't tackle the litter problem, your image will certainly be negative.  When a site is kept clean, you display a positive and professional image. 

In my former life as a regulator, if I went onto a site that was clean, well organized, and had excellent litter control, my inspections were less likely to get too intrusive.  You might say I didn't look under the carpet to see what was hidden.   On the other hand, if I went onto a site that was disorganized and litter was abound, I would start looking deeper into the operation to see what else was wrong.  This was really because of a natural human reaction.  If everything visually looks right, there is an instant level of trust.  If it doesn't look right, there is no trust.  

The same can be said for the public reaction.  A clean site will gain trust, and messy site will lose trust.   A few years ago, well maybe more than a few (I'm getting to be an 'old guy" in this business), I got involved in a landfill with a severe public image problem.  The neighbours had lost complete trust in the landfill owner, the landfill operators, and the government regulators.   This one landfill consumed almost 80% of my time in that one year.  The regulators began looking into every detail including design, operating plans, groundwater,  waste acceptance, site controls, and of course litter.   This landfill had an ongoing litter problem that the site operators ignored even after their image was severely damaged.  The landfill operator, owner, regulators and public ended up in a lengthy legal hearing that only the lawyers seem to come out ahead, the municipality owners lost political credibility, the regulators lost credibility, and the landfill contractor eventually lost the operating contract.   If the litter problem had been properly dealt with by all parties in the first place , I don't believe this long drawn out nightmare would have happened. 

This is only one example of where lack of litter controls at a landfill have caused public distrust and loss of credibility by the owners and operators of a landfill.  I have seen too many examples over my career.  

There is an old saying "Perception is Reality".   You can apply this to your landfill.  If the public perceives that you aren't managing the litter at the landfill, chances are that your aren't. 

Stay tuned!  In future posts, I'll be talking about various techniques for litter control.