Virus Strains Waste Industry, Regulators Weigh Relief

from Bloomberg Las. I'm your host, David Schultz, And no surprise, I'm recording another episode in my spare bedroom and my upstairs neighbors, I believe are doing a peloton class, so you may hear that during this episode. So it's no surprise that landfills are often a major source of pollution. I mean, they're basically just big piles of trash. But that means that landfills are regulated by the folks at

the EPA and those in state environmental agencies. Their jobs are to make sure that no toxic substances seep out of the landfills and into soil, water, or air well Now, fills across the country have a new toxic substance to deal with medical waste contaminated with the new coronavirus that's been spreading around and at the same time, the waste management industry has a lot of folks who are getting

sick with the new coronavirus that's been spreading around. These two developments are putting huge pressure on the industry and in turn, they're asking regulators to cut them some slack. And here to talk about what that might look like is reporter Sylvia Kargden, who covers waste management. Sylvia, Hello, hi David. The pandemic has clearly caused a spike in the amount of medical waste that these landfills are dealing with, and it will continue too. I don't think there's any

doubt about that. How does this get disposed of? Is it treated just like regular trash that we throw out or is it treated differently? It's a good question. It is not treated like the rest of the trash that we usually throw out, so medical waste, since it can have infectious bugs in it, Sometimes it's treated with something else called an autocli, which is this container that you can put materials in to be sterilized by high pressure steam.

The steam gets hot enough to kill the bacteria or a virus or whatever might be living inside, and after it goes through the autoclave, then it can go to a typical landfill, got it. Sometimes it's just incinerated. It just burned to a crisp and all the ashes are disposed of somewhere. So a very small amount of medical waste is incinerated. So let's say you have someone who is infected with the virus. They're wearing a mask. That mask needs to be disposed of. How do you dispose

of that? It kind of depends on where you are at the time. If you happen to be someone who's working from home, maybe you're in like caring for somebody who's stuck in their house and you're their caretaker coming to them, you might end up putting the mask in the trash, just municipal trash. But if you are working in a hospital, there are certain protocols in place. So it really depends on where you are when that waste is generated or when it's created, and how it gets

thrown away. I see, So how are the cities and the companies, because you know, landfills are operated by you know a number of different entities. How are they handling this? Are they increasing capacity? Are they ramping up? I guess these autoclaives that you talked about. I imagine they can only handle so much waste. You know, how is it's working right, There's only so much capacity for those kinds of things. The private companies in waste management that I've

been talking to, they are preparing right now. They're not seeing an overwhelming amount of medical waste just yet, but they are sort of waiting for that peak to eventually happen. There's ways that they can prepare just within their offices themselves and also when they're sending personnel out to pick up the waste. So they're making changes in their usual practices to deal with this. But they're you know, the folks at the landfills have to manage all of this.

These are people, they have to encounter all of this material. What are the companies doing to keep them safe and to make sure they don't contract the virus from one of some of this medical waste. Well, there's some waste management companies out there that are sending personnel to hospitals

to pick up waste, and that's a usual practice. Sometimes they'll pick up things like needles or syringes, you know what they would usually call sharps, and these people who would usually go into patient rooms to pick up that material are saying, we're not going to be able to enter any places where patients are being isolated. So if you're a nurse's throwing out a use syringe, for example, you would have to take it to a common area outside of that isolation room where it's safer for that

person to come in and pick it up. So it doesn't sound initially, it doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it's just one more complication. It's like one more thing that makes medical professionals' lives more complicated. Now when you know everything, it seems to be happening all at once, right, it's one more box in the checklist. Yeah, who regulates medical waste is because I could see an

argument for having the EPA do this. I could see FDA saying, no, this is us, Like, who's responsible for making sure this this process happens the way it's supposed to do so, Like like a lot of other waste, medical waste is regulated under a tangled web of rules, wonderful and so for example, the EPA will regulate air emissions from medical waste incinerators. OSHA regulates the employees who are handling those needles and syringes that go in the

sharp's disposal. I forgot about Ocean DOT. The Department of Transportation regulates the waste while it's being transported. States can say, you know, any one of these things isn't strict enough for us, and we're going to go a little bit further. So there's a lot of different regulations that people have to follow when they're getting rid of medical waste. So

we've got an alphabet soup here. You know, what, have you heard about any of these agencies, either on the state or federal level, doing anything differently in the last couple of days or weeks to regulate this waste or are they you know, do the normal rules still apply. We've been writing a lot about the EPA, and the EPA just issued some guidance on their enforcement practices during

the pandemic. To some extent, they're giving some leniency on like reporting emissions, for example, So that kind of thing where you're worried about meeting a deadline, agencies maybe a little bit more flexible there. We might see a little bit more of that as the pandemic sort of drags out. That's a great segue into our next topic, which is everyday you know, normal waste. But before we get to that,

we're going to take a break. But stick with us, because we come back, we're going to be talking about how landfills are going to keep up the work even though they may have fewer people to do that work. Stay with us. We're back and we're talking with Sylvia Carrodenin about the waste management industry and the pandemic beyond medical waste, Sylvia, let's just talk about regular, everyday waste,

like the trash that we all throw out. You know, landfills are still going to be filling up at the sort of normal rate I would imagine, but there are going to be some staffing issues at these landfills because people are going to get sick. Like, what's happening with that? How are these companies dealing with them? So our office is in Arlington County, Virginia, and the county has said please hold off on your spring cleaning for a little bit longer because we're just getting so much volume front

of household waste. We're getting so much more stuff from homes as opposed to businesses because everyone's working from home. Wow, so they're also I think they might also be asking people to delay putting out bulky waste, like, for example, if your spring cleaning results in an extra couch, because you want to buy a fresh new couch, you put

the old one out on the curb. No one's going to come by and pick it up if you're living in certain municipalities, because they're worried that the workers are going to be exposed to the virus by touching the couch or other bulky items that you leave out. So there are some changes to people's everyday lives at this point just because of the way that the waste is

picked up. So yeah, that indicates to me that they really are worried about staff issues and that this is this is an actual problem that the waste management industry is grappling with. Right What about the landfills themselves, though, I mean, I imagine there's a lot of work that has to be done to make sure that again, you know, the sort of toxic substances don't get into the environment from the landfills. I mean, is that something that can be automated or do you have to have people on site.

So there were a couple of associations that represent waste management companies and handlers, and they were asking the EPA to help them out with some leniency on emissions reporting deadlines because they weren't sure that they would be able to get out there and get the people on site in the amount of time that they were required to. So some of that may eventually affect the environment, you know, in the weeks to come. It's just hard to tell. Now.

Of course, there are the environmental advocacy groups who are concerned about giving any leniency to people are who are handling waste or hazardous waste. But on the flip side, that leniency is also allowing companies to keep their workers safe and abide by social distancing guidelines where they have to, and the stay at home orders that are spreading throughout

the country. Yeah, it just seems like an impossible choice for the EPA here because on the one hand, you want to give, like you said, give these companies leniency. On the other hand, you know, if they're missing reporting deadlines, that's information that we don't know about what's in the air,

what's in the soil, what's in the water. The companies do have to explain why they're missing those deadlines if they do miss them, so there is sort of a paper trail to explain, like it's not just blame it on the virus, it's that something was happening in our

operation and that's why we weren't able to meet this requirement. Yeah, you know, I've seen a lot of people, I guess on social media say like, oh, the EPA and Trump administration is sort of you know, all environmental laws are lifted now, and they're using this as a pretext to like, you know, just kind of let companies go wild. I mean, I think that's an exaggeration at best, but you know, this is the kind of thing that makes people really apprehensive.

I mean, what is really going on here? Is this actually sort of you know, letting these companies and these polluters do whatever they want, or you know, is it not like that. I don't think it's exactly like that. Well, but I mean, we'll have to see when the dust clears on all of this. What kinds of reasons were the companies using to explain why they weren't able to meet certain regulations that they normally do. And that's what we'll be looking out for as reporters when those documents

start coming in. Yeah, and then you know you mentioned that right now, the companies are just sort of missing reporting deadlines. If this goes on for a lot longer, let's say, through this month and maybe next month and maybe even June, who knows what's going to come next, Like what sort of things are they going to miss next? What sort of exemptions are they going to ask for that go beyond just you know, reporting. It's a good question. I think that really depends on how much of the

country ends up getting the virus. I mean, if a significant amount of people are not able to do any work whatsoever, even if it's from home, a lot of things are going to slow down. Maybe trash collection changes from once a week to once a month. It really depends on how we're able to deal with those cases as they come up. Wow, all right, well that'll do

it for today's episode of Parts per Billion. If you want more about how the pandemic is affecting the environment, our website news doop Bloomberg environment dot com is the place to go. That website once again is newsdop Bloomberg Environment dot com. Great stuff there. Today's episode of Parts Billion was produced by myself along with Josh Block and Marissa Horn. Parts. Brivilion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. Music for today's episode is a message by

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