What’s measured This section quantifies the disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) and construction and demolition (C&D) debris. Both North and South Carolina maintain annual data by county on waste disposed at landfills. Both states also adjust their county-level data to exclude waste imported from other places and to include waste exported to other places, providing a measure of waste generated from within each county that is disposed at landfills, regardless of where the disposal occurs. However, the two states differ in how the three main categories of landfill waste are reported, making it difficult to construct a regional indicator covering all 14 counties. South Carolina uses the EPA’s definition of MSW and reports it separately from waste disposed at C&D debris landfills and land-clearing debris (LCD) landfills. North Carolina reports a combined MSW and C&D disposal figure. Because some LCD waste may be included in C&D landfill data, it is not possible to obtain a precise measurement of South Carolina C&D waste disposed that, when added to its municipal solid waste data, would be directly comparable to North Carolina’s combined MSW/C&D data. Nor is it possible to subtract North Carolina’s C&D waste from its combined MSW/C&D data. For this reason, separate indicators for the North and South Carolina portions of the region have been constructed. Data for these indicators are from the North Carolina Solid Waste Management Annual Report for 2005-2006 and the South Carolina Solid Waste Management Annual Reports for fiscal years 2001 through 2006. Why it’s measured Reducing waste disposal is a goal for both states, neither of which has achieved success in reversing the historic trend of increases, despite increases in recycling programs and reduce-reuse-recycle public-awareness efforts. Land for landfills is increasingly scarce and expensive, and the cost of managing waste disposal and constructing and maintaining landfills is large. Indicator results In fiscal year 2006, disposal of MSW and C&D debris amounted to more than 3,200 pounds per person in the North Carolina portion of the region, and more than 2,000 pounds per person in the three-county South Carolina portion of the region. The actual figures were 3,211 (North Carolina) and 2,032 (South Carolina). Cabarrus County leads the North Carolina counties with the highest per capita waste disposal rate, followed by Mecklenburg, Iredell and Stanly counties. Anson, Rowan and Union report the lowest per capita waste disposal rates among the 11 North Carolina counties. The South Carolina counties reflect their respective degrees of urbanization: York has the highest per capita disposal rates, while Chester and Lancaster report rates at roughly half that of York. Evaluation South Carolina’s three-county average increased by three percent over the last three years, while North Carolina’s 11-county average increased by almost 12 percent from 2005 to 2006 after almost no change from 2004 to 2005. A significant portion of the North Carolina increase is attributable to demolition of the former Pillowtex plant in Kannapolis, which pushed Cabarrus County’s disposal rate up 45 percent between fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006. It is not surprising that some rural counties are among the lowest in per capita waste disposal rates. Urban areas collect waste generated by both urban residents and by urban workers who commute from suburban and rural areas. The greater concentration of industrial and commercial production in urban areas also contributes to a larger per person waste stream than in more rural areas. Construction also occurs disproportionately in and near urban areas than in rural areas, generating construction and demolition debris. Therefore, urbanism tends to play a more significant role in increasing the waste stream. Even in this rapidly growing region, municipal solid waste is typically a much larger component of the total waste stream than construction and demolition debris. Efforts to meet disposal reduction goals have thus tended to focus on household and commercial/industrial waste disposal. Reductions can come in four areas: reduced consumption, reduced packaging, increased re-use and increased recycling. In areas of the region where household and commercial/industrial waste reduction efforts are estimated to already have yielded their maximum impact, efforts to reduce C&D waste disposal may have a greater impact on overall waste disposal reduction. Connections Solid waste disposal represents environmental, economic and even social costs. Transporting waste to landfills adds to mobile emissions of air pollutants, and protecting groundwater from landfill leakage requires costly engineering and decades of site monitoring. Waste-management decisions are often fraught with political issues. Social justice questions may arise when landfills are located in economically depressed areas or low-income neighborhoods, while the exporting of waste across state lines may raise concerns as well. Viewed as a measure of a community’s efficiency in using and managing resources, reductions in landfill waste represent an opportunity for economic efficiency and productivity gains.
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