Too much garbage

Garbage, garbage, everywhere. It’s yet another problem made worse by the pandemic – as people increased their use of throwaway masks, latex gloves and plastic bags when grocery stores stopped allowing reusable ones, along with all the usual day-to-day trash.

The garbage problem in the Peñasco area is two-fold and familiar all over the county, as a story by reporter Michael Tashji details this week.

One, Taos County’s Solid Waste division hasn’t been able to keep up with demand.

Two, people produce too much trash. Take the first problem: The solid waste division lost a couple of drivers and only recently hired a new one, along with turning to a private company to help ease the load (likely at a higher cost to county coffers). So the county needs to take a hard look at how to stay fully staffed and perhaps even add an additional person. Without the proper staffing, the garbage bins fill up and overflow leaving responsible people no place to properly dispose of their trash.

This is a big county with miles in between communities. Picking up garbage bins and processing them is a tough and dangerous job (think needles, glass and other unsavory things we all throw out). Is the pay scale reasonable? Do they need to offer a higher salary or other incentive? With all the people who say they are desperate for jobs, this one should be easier to fill since it includes vacation, overtime, health insurance and other benefits. What else can county commissioner Candyce O’Donnell do to help her constituents in this mess?

Peñasco-area residents who use the Chamisal station are rightfully upset about the situation. When you live in a rural area without the niceties of curbside pickup, your own pickup or Subaru becomes the trash hauler. If the transfer station is closed, that could mean several days worth of trash piling up in one’s ride.

Which brings up the second part of the problem – modern-day people produce too much trash. When they can’t leave the trash at the transfer station, they are dumping it on public lands or along the side of the road. This creates a public health hazard.

On average, each person tosses nearly five pounds of garbage a day, according to the statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency. Of the total, nearly a fourth is paper and cardboard, which can be recycled or composted instead of thrown in the landfill. Another 21 percent is food, a huge source of waste. This could be composted, if the County was serious about starting a public-education program. Plastic makes up another 12 percent, and with no recycling for plastic currently, it is a material that doesn’t compost and lasts for years. (TiLT, an organization in Taos, is working to launch a program for reusing plastic as a structural building material.)

Solving that second problem is a matter of each person doing what they can to toss less, use up food before it spoils, recycle paper as you can and compost everything possible. It’s also about looking for products with less packaging or perhaps, doing without some products.

The Taos recycling center reopened Jan. 18 and is still accepting tin, aluminium, cardboard and paper. That can take a lot of waste out of the waste stream and reduce the load at local transfer stations. Could the County place recycle bins at the Chamisal center and haul them to the recycle center twice a month? Or could Peñasco volunteers offer to drive the bins once a week to the recycle center? This is another case where the community and the County can work together to find a solution.

Everyone is busy nowadays and trying to survive. But taking a few extra minutes to reduce garbage output can reduce the stress on landfills and be a little kinder to the environment. Spring is around the corner and it is the perfect time to start a compost pile if you don’t already have one.

In the meantime, the county needs to ensure the Chamisal transfer station and the rest of the stations in the county have the resources needed to help residents dispose of their garbage.