Banality of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Commons is the sad fact that commonly shared resources and places tend to be neglected, vandalized, stolen. Waterways are perhaps the saddest example of a Commons. The world’s oceans have become a global garbage can. Here in Western Massachusetts, the Connecticut River is an open sewer. Virtually every community here has dumped its sewage and landfill leachates into the region’s rivers for many decades: all of them running into the Connecticut and down to Long Island Sound. As the landfills were inundated with heavy metals and PCBs in the past half-century, waste management practices did not change. As plastic packaging replaced traditional paper and glass packaging, local governments didn’t seem to notice. Landfilling, incinerating, and waste-to-energy plants cause toxic airborne pollutants and debris resulting from burning waste, as well as water contamination from landfilling and sewage. Seventy percent of municipal solid waste will not be recycled, and thirty percent will never be recyclable (non-recyclable plastic, contaminated plastics and medical waste, sewage sludge) Waste to energy plants in Western MA polluted communities and collapsed in 2022; the Chicopee landfill recently closed.

Today, local towns haul and dump our waste in Vermont, South Carolina, Ohio and in New York along the Canadian border - often on native reservation lands. There it is incinerated or landfilled in what are typically lowest income and most vulnerable communities. It is an immoral society that exports its toxic waste to poorer communities. In the process, however, these Western Massachusetts neglected to export one thing into someone else’s body: their legacy landfill leachates.

And as Forever Chemicals became a ubiquitous presence in virtually all food packaging in the past few decades, the practice of running landfill leachates through waste treatment plants was maintained. There perhaps was the delusion that, as if chemicals used to decontaminate sewage would somehow “treat” PFAS - the Per Fluoryl Alkyl Substances that cause a dozen deadly diseases and sterilize children, not to mention do the same to fish and all living things, and which bioaccumulate in all of us when we eat them. In Northampton, the City dumps PFAS-laden sewage into the Connecticut River on a weekly basis. Without discussion or thought, despite awareness of the problem, the City government quietly poisons its own people.

Perhaps it should be called the Pathetic Commons, more pathetic than tragic, because no one is crying. We have seen this before, with climate change, where a widely recognized problem goes unaddressed for 35 years until it is declared to be “too late.” What then? The state commences to building sea walls, the federal to bail out displaced homeowners. They wait until it is too late, then the Big Spend comes, on stupid things, ineffective: too little, too late. The world is irreparably damaged, late investments misinvested, a future squandered, a society undermined. Enshittification.

At least, with climate change, the cause was tragic: energy. We feel a common responsibility for destroying the Commons of a habitable planet, because we need energy. The problem we have seems to be technological: how to meet our needs. But there was no need for PFAS. It was not about needs. It was about convenience and comfort: stick-free pans, wicking underpants, grease-free pizza boxes, waterproof to-go coffee cups. PFAS are found in most toilet paper, clothing, furniture, adhesives, food packaging, heat-resistant non-stick cooking surfaces, home furnishings, insulation of electrical wire.

Pathetic. For these obese, lazy extravagences, we bioaccumulate chemicals that cause kidney cancer, testicular cancer, damage to reproductive health and fetal development, reproduction, thyroid function, damage to the immune system, liver disease, and increased cholesterol issues. PFAS do not break down in the environment, can move through soils and contaminate drinking water sources, and build up (bioaccumulate) in fish and wildlife.

It is not only the ocean that is a garbage can: you are. Part of the tragedy the Commons is that commonly held resources are squandered. The other part is that everyone is guilty. Every community in Western Massachusetts is doing it. All the landfill leachates from all communities in the entire Connecticut River Watershed are doing it, from the Canadian border to Lyme, Connecticut. Like the Endless Wars, we are unable or unwilling to stop them because we are guilty of having allowed them in the first place.

When you do evil, you become evil. The question is, are we destined to remain so? Against this pathetic human and democratic failure is an inconvenient, hopeful truth: there are other ways to manage waste. There are existing technologies to prevent PFAS and plastics from entering the food chain, and we could be using them today.

We are not. Instead, we are looking the other way.