“That’s a swamp maple,” said Karen Blumer, passing the majestic tree, its elegant root foundations gripping the shoreline of the Carmans River. “And I’m hearing a red-winged [blackbird].” Blumer, an ecologist and authority on freshwater wetlands, should know. She is president of the Open Space Council, which she cofounded in 1987, and is administrator for the Carmans River Watershed Trust Fund.
Her resume is a kind of love letter to Earth, including the three years she was part of a Brookhaven National Laboratory team that studied how waste could be treated through artificially built marshes and ponds. That’s just one among many benchmarks.
Now she is a co-convener along with Beth Fiteni, founder of Green Inside Out, and Mark Haubner of DrawDown East End Policy Committee, in Taking A Lead on Zero Waste, a consortium formed as a working group to include experts already developing zero-waste approaches. Environmental and civic organizations, the Long Island waste industry, municipal officials, members of the New York State Legislature as well as concerned individuals and civic leaders are also in the mix.
It’s a big ambition, but one that is necessary, especially with the Brookhaven Landfill’s closing looming in 2024. “It must be bipartisan and we want to create leverage to make it happen quickly,” Blumer said. “We’ll all bring a wish list, but our group just has one wish. We want to work with staff to devise a zero-waste plan.”
Blumer said that can be accomplished via committed Zoom meetings or through phone calls. “We want focused discussions,” she said. “The main question is, How do we transition from a waste economy to a sustainable economy?”
“We’re working on actionable items," she said. “Maybe towns or villages can offer incentives on composting. We should be able to come up with a good pathway with support from the legislative branch.”
Meetings had been percolating in the past on waste management, including a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation-led Long Island Solid Waste Leadership Committee in 2018 for recommendations on a regional waste plan. Recommendations were formalized and sent to the DEC in March 2019. But nothing was implemented, Blumer said.
“So the impetus for TALZ was our meeting on Feb. 12 with the Long Island Environmental Roundtable, an environmental group convened by Sen. Ken LaValle and continued by his successor Anthony Palumbo,” she said of Palumbo, who was elected in November 2020.
The Feb. 12 meeting via Zoom included over a dozen environmental organizations as well as federal, state and town government officials.
According to Palumbo’s district office manager Angela Noncarrow, a meeting has been set up for April 30 for the senator to discuss TALZ with Blumer.
“We’re hoping Sen. Palumbo will convene with the Long Island Environmental Roundtable as well as the two chairs of the state environmental conservation committees, including assemblyman Steve Englebright, who has given a nod to this, and Sen. [Todd] Kaminsky, who we haven’t spoken to yet.”
“They have introduced an Extended Producer Responsibility bill,” she said.
The bill mandates that producers cannot sell or distribute “covered materials” within three years of the bill’s passage without an approved plan. There would be exemptions for producers under certain revenue and waste generation thresholds.
Blumer said the single largest category of non-recycled waste is paper, followed by food waste and plastics. New York’s bill is among several states with active Extended Producer Responsibility bills.
Blumer gave some statistics: Each year, Long Island throws away more than 2.3 million tons of waste. That means 4.6 pounds per person, per day.
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