The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has authorized $118 million dollars for the purchase and major improvements to the 100 year old Greenville Rail Yards in Jersey City, New Jersey. When completed, this barge-rail link will carry solid waste across New York Harbor in sealed containers between Brooklyn and Jersey City.
The plan is projected to remove 360,000 garbage trucks per year from trans-Hudson River roads, bridges and tunnels. “The board just approved it so we are still working on the property acquisition. It is scheduled to be completed and open for business by 2013,” said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the port authority.
From Jersey City, via Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX, cars loaded with waste can then be railroaded long distances to landfills, thereby cutting highway traffic and road wear. The trash can be offloaded at landfills actually bidding for the business in states as far away as Ohio and South Carolina. This makes a winning concept for New York-New Jersey highway congestions and one example of why rail is a growing alternative for solid waste disposal. ...read more
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Medical waste disposal meets humanitarianism
Regulated medical waste (RMW) is a far-reaching term that encompasses everything from syringes to prescription drugs, new and used medical supplies to human and animal parts, to laboratory and hospital equipment. That just begins to describe an entire universe of constituent components.
Adding to the scope of this category is the exploding size of the American healthcare market due to the aging of baby boomers, new technologies requiring ever more supplies, the mushrooming use of prescription drugs and the increased generation of home medical waste. For instance, the obesity problem has triggered more use of onset Type 2 diabetic supplies, like blood testing and insulin syringes, leading to a surge in RMW disposal.
RMW is a complex, ultra sensitive branch of the solid waste stream. It is subject to special regulatory compliance depending on where it is generated, comes with legal liabilities throughout the flow of the waste stream and requires higher collection and disposal costs. ...read more