Property wrongs

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has proposed to expand the current ban on backyard burning for communities with populations over 20,000 to all communities, regardless of size. The proposal has produced passionate responses on our own letters pages and in other local papers.

There is no doubt that a ban on backyard burning would pose an inconvenience to those who currently practice it. And it can certainly be argued that, in a county with perennial landfill problems, it seems foolish to make things worse by prohibiting a method of waste disposal that literally makes the problem disappear into thin air.

But weighing the alternatives to burning against the costs of continuing it, we believe that a comprehensive ban is the right idea.

The landfill is not the only alternative for disposing of the vast majority of substances that make up our garbage. Recycling and composting can handle a huge portion of it. In any cart full of groceries, practically everything that isn’t eaten can be recycled: cans, plastic jugs and glass bottles, paper containers, Styrofoam—the major exception is the plastic wrap stretched over meats and, by some grocery stores, produce; and meat waste and bones.

Anybody who has a backyard to burn in also has space for a compost pile, which will dispose of vegetable waste while yielding free organic fertilizer for them or their gardening friends. Why pay three or four bucks for a 40-pound bag of humus? Those who didn’t want to use compost themselves could even sell it to those who do.

But how about shipping and packing materials? Much of the bulk of packing products comes not from the corrugated cardboard, which can be recycled, but from insulating materials like Styrofoam chips and bubble wrap. Do we really want to add all that to the landfill?

No. But burning it is even worse. Burning of the items identified above as un-recyclable—plastic wrap for foods, Styrofoam packing chips and the like—produces a host of toxic chemicals including arsenic, formaldehyde, lead, carbon monoxide, benzene, furans, PCBs and dioxins (a group of 30 chemicals classified as persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic pollutants). Health consequences can include damage to the lungs, kidneys, nervous system and liver, long-term effects such as cancer and emphysema, delays in child development and damage to the immune system.

Sticking such substances in a landfill is admittedly not a long-term solution; but filling the air with poisons from burning them is not even a short-term one. If the air over people’s properties were hermetically sealed so that they were the only ones who had to live with the fumes of the garbage that they burned, we might come to a different conclusion. But we all share the same air, and what we do to the air on our own property very quickly becomes something we have done to our neighbors’ air.

Property rights are important, but we have to recognize that when our actions on our own property harm other properties, that’s a kind of trespassing. This principle applies in a wide variety of cases. If I create toxic smoke on my property and it drifts to yours, I have trespassed on your property. If I clear-cut my property and the resulting stormwater runoff floods yours, I have trespassed on your property. If I allow gas drilling on my property and your well is poisoned, I have trespassed on your property. My property right can’t be somebody else’s property wrong.

So as inconvenient as it might be to stop backyard burning, we think it’s the best option we’ve got. We agree that better solutions are still needed for disposing of non-recyclable refuse. Wouldn’t it be great if the Post Office, for instance, opened up collection bins for used packing materials and let people dump off used Styrofoam chips and bubble wrap and let others pick them up as needed? In the meantime, we can buy canvas shopping bags, sort out our recyclables, avoid buying intensively packaged items and pursue a lifestyle that creates less waste in the first place. It might take a little more work, but it’s better than breathing poison—or forcing our neighbors to.

(The comment period on the burning ban ends July 10. Comments may be sent to 215fires@gw.dec.state.ny.us.)

Also in this issue:

• Ignoring sound science

Dr. Punnybone

Sinko de Mayo