Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

89,582 tons of garbage in 2007. 84 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that
since 1960, the amount of waste each person generates has increased from 2.7 pounds per
day to 4.62 pounds per day – from 985 pounds a year to 1,686 pounds per year. 85
VULNERABILITIES
1. The collection of waste and recyclables is essentially a trucking function,
wholly reliant on liquid fuel for operation.
While the City’s Sanitation Division has taken the prudent step toward reducing vehicle
miles travelled and saving the taxpayers money by moving to a four‐day work week, its
functioning is still wholly dependent upon liquid fuels. Given a dramatic decline in cheap
fuel, the Division would have to reduce all collection services and possibly eliminate its
appliance collection service and/or pass on the increased costs to residents. This might
result in some residents not paying for trash disposal and instead illegally dumping their
garbage in undesirable places. A fuel shortage might also result in an inability to pick up
trash, resulting in illegal trash dumping and/or accumulation of trash at residences – both
threats to public health.
2. The transport of our community waste 55 miles away is wholly dependent on
the availability of liquid fuel.
In the absence of a local disposal site, the community would likely have to continue
shipping its waste out of the community. Again, rising costs of such shipping due to fuel
scarcity would likely be passed on to residents with the aforementioned consequences.
84 Note that this figure includes trash picked up by the City from residences with four or fewer unit s, multi‐
family units serviced by private haulers and trash hauled from Indiana University.
85 US EPA, Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2007 Facts and Figures, EPA530‐R‐08‐010, 134; See
further, Elizabeth Royte, Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, 275 (2005).
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force
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