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On December 11, 2009, the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs
announced that Massachusetts will retain the moratorium on additional
incineration capacity. The statement further outlined a plan to reduce
burning and burying by new approaches that will increase recycling.
“Focusing on incineration and landfills is the wrong end of the
waste equation,” said Secretary Ian Bowles.
While the Solid Waste Master Plan for the next decade will be
drafted this winter, the Patrick-Murray Administration committed to
“an aggressive agenda” that gives cities and towns assistance to
expand and improve their waste reduction efforts.
The administration also supports Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
legislation and regulation. EPR requires greater responsibility from
manufacturers of certain products to pay for the cost of reusing or
recycling them.
“By urging passage of the Extended Producer Responsibility law for
electronics, and an expanded bottle bill, Massachusetts will reduce
the volume and toxicity of the waste it generates," said Roger
Dietrich, Chair of the national Sierra Club Zero Waste Team, in an
email message from Virginia. EPR programs for electronics also create
new businesses and jobs in collection, reuse, and recycling.
Since 2001, 180 Massachusetts municipalities have passed
resolutions supporting EPR for discarded electronic products. An EPR
bill for electronics is now in the House Rules Committee and is
expected to pass if it comes to a vote. Since the December
announcement, the city of Holyoke and the town of Milton have both
passed resolutions supporting a comprehensive statewide EPR bill that
will allow additional product categories to be added over time by the
MassDEP.
To address the organic fraction of the waste, notably food and yard
trimmings, the Administration supports composting and anaerobic
digestion, a technology that safely captures all methane formed by
decomposition for energy, and leaves a “digestate” to be composted.
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