Waste_Inbox

Freedom of Choice: The city of Wichita, Kan., wants to organize its waste hauling companies into a cooperative, and a group of residents who aren´t pleased with the idea are taking to the Internet to fight the proposal, the Wichita Eagle reports.

The city´s proposal to institute a trash-hauling cooperative would replace the current system under which about 20 companies compete for customers´ business. The proposal has some residents miffed because they believe a cooperative would quash competition, raise rates and hurt customer service. So they´ve launched an online movement called My Trash, My Choice that includes a website, a Facebook page and a Twitter account to see if they can halt the city before it puts its plan into action.

Space Junk Superfund: The authors of a new study on orbital space junk are proposing an earthly solution to the problem: a Superfund-style program to tackle the cleanup of debris whizzing around in space.

Space.com reports on the study, titled "Catcher´s Mitt," which was recently completed by RAND, a nonprofit think tank. RAND prepared the report at the behest of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a unit of the Defense Department responsible for the development of new military technology.

According to Space.com, "At the core of the RAND report is an analysis of how industries on Earth have approached their pollution problems, and how those lessons can be applied to cleaning up orbital debris. ... One observation from the report is that the space Superfund could serve as an effective model for orbital debris cleanup. A Superfund for space would make space polluters pay for cleanups while creating strong incentives for nation-states and private industry to take appropriate preventive steps to avoid creating additional space debris."

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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