[Music]
no one we know is particularly fond of
taking out the garbage how about the
prospect of not being able to get rid of
it at all in 1986 a once successful
Alabama builder named Lowell Harrison
was headed for bankruptcy when he heard
about an opportunity 1200 miles away in
Islip New York
I slipped landfill was nearly full and
town officials were desperately looking
for a new way to get rid of their trash
they seemed like they were willing to
cooperate and we agreed to make a test
run one trial run to see if my grand
idea was really workable Harrelson's
grand idea was simple to ship ice lips
garbage by barge to landfills in the
south but he needed help from this man
Tom Aegis Wally owner of the only
private dock in New York City licensed
to barge garbage they had no one who
knew anything about bocce and garbage so
they come to me and ask me could I
borrow it from giuse Wally also lined up
investors chief among them the Mafia
captain Salvatore Avellino with $300,000
backing his plan harrelson just needed a
couple of boats I had friends in
Louisiana in the maritime business
contacted them and was able to lease me
a tugboat with a big barge the mo bro
the mo bro left port in March of 1987
just after Houston found a landfill in
North Carolina that seemed willing to
accept its cargo like a magnet for
refuse the barge by now had collected
over six million pounds of trash from
all over Long Island in New York City
everybody's garbage everybody had a
problem getting ready to garbage and we
were the best game I guess at the time
at that point in time everything looks
so good it was the start of something
that I had great hopes for
harrelson predicted profits for
disposing of the Mo Bros load in the
first place and eventually for
generating electricity for the methane
gas created as the garbage decomposed it
was an idea that I had read about a lot
of experts said it's a coming thing so I
just arbitrarily on my own decided to
give it a whirl but on April Fool's Day
shortly after the barge docked in North
Carolina a local TV news reporter was at
the scene and sparked an outcry the
first call we got was your shipping New
York City's rats down to us there's no
rats on it no one said a barge load of
waste it was a barge load of New York
waste as juice Wally remembers that the
pivotal moment came when a state
environmental officials spotted a bedpan
on the barge and they claimed because of
the bedpan that the barge had Hospital
waste so we were told to get it out of
there the barge then headed for a
landfill in Louisiana but when it got
there
state officials again borrowed it from
unloading it could be infectious ways
from hospitals there could be hazardous
waste a homeless garbage barge that's
when the story exploded dripping Brown
news of possibly infectious material the
governor of Louisiana threatened to send
out the National Guard if the barge tied
up there the Vagabond barge has become
an international issue the most watched
load of garbage in the memory of man six
sports have already refused the refuse
the barge has been chased away by the
warplanes of two nations and now it's
anchored here five miles off the coast
of Key West Florida still loaded with
tons of garbage still unwanted it was
like a brush fire you know that was fun
to belittle this barge full of garbage
take your barge up into the Gulf of
Persia and there is Iran dump it
then in early May a team from the EPA
inspected the barge in Florida and
reported finding trash from hospitals
but nothing that was truly hazardous so
the mo bro headed back to what seemed
like its last best chance New York from
here to there and back again but when it
reached New York Harbor two court orders
blocked it from unloading nobody in an
elected position could afford to take
this tainted mythologically frightening
load of who knew what into their
community we don't know what kind of
tropical vermin is in that garbage we
don't know it's been sitting in the Sun
for six weeks beyond the health worries
the media and experts often portrayed
the mo bro as a symbol of a growing
national problem that landfill space was
becoming scarce and we were fast
approaching a point of crisis we've
about run out of places to throw away
our throw aways
by 1990 according to one federal survey
at least 27 states will be critically
short of space to dump garbage when the
county board in Sussex last month
proposed opening a new garbage
collection site the residents were
outraged and showed it we are running
out of places to dump but then a place
to dump the Mo Bros load appeared in of
all places Islip the same Long Island
town that had originally banished the
trash we think for a one-time situation
we should do it and get it behind us
but before Islip could take the Mo Bros
load a judge ordered that it all be
burned in a Brooklyn incinerator and
that's what happened over five months
after the barge left port Harrelson has
become the butt of jokes and ridicule
and today in frustration he gave up the
only thing I could do is get out of the
way and let it go back to Brooklyn New
York to the incinerator and die it's
death be done with in the end when we
unloaded the barge it was essentially
scrap paper newspaper cardboard I found
this pink plastic yo-yo and that wound
up in the newspaper it made clear how
overblown everybody's fear had gone
it also became clear over time that the
fears about declining landfill space
were overblown too what really set off
all the panic were new regulations that
had forced thousands of small polluting
garbage dumps to close we were saying oh
my god
we went from ten thousand to five
thousand from five thousand to twenty
five hundred landfills they're
disappearing so it really did seem like
a crisis but it wasn't because as these
smaller open dumps were appropriately
closing for environmental reasons larger
regional landfills existed and were
being built but the attention given to
garbage paid off on another front a
month before the trash was burned
Greenpeace activists hung a banner
next time try recycling until the mid
80s the amount Americans had recycled
had climbed slowly then with rising
public awareness in part because of the
mo bro it shot upward more than tripling
in the year since I think that the whole
experience was extremely useful and
getting people say oh I actually have to
worry about what happens that to the
trash after I put it out the back door
and on somebody's gonna do something
with it or fail to do something with it
over time as Americans recycled more of
their waste about 68 million tons today
much of that recycling was exported to
China for processing but that changed in
2018 China the world's largest buyer of
these goods is making drastic changes to
what it will accept with the decision
that's creating new problems here at
home
when material like this like all this
paper can't get recycled fast enough it
can end up going to a landfill instead
facing a volatile global market
communities are grappling with how to
handle the new realities of recycling
say goodbye to recycling if you live in
a city of deltona with rising cost of
recycling the city decided to suspend
its recycling program some experts say
they hope this shake-up in the recycling
business serves as a wake-up call
about America's consumption habits just
like the mo bro did our waste is gonna
wind up someplace look at what you use
there's a lot of opportunity to reduce
the amount of waste that we produce at
the beginning a growing movement aims to
do just that spend the day with
Catherine Kellogg and you'll see a
shopping spree free of waste setting its
sights beyond recycling it hopes to
fundamentally change how Americans think
about waste the move toward zero waste
is catching on the movement is not new
but has gained momentum through social
media and images like this it's two
years worth of trash cities like San
Francisco are trying to send as little
waste to landfills as possible other
cities have taken aim at plastic straws
or banned styrofoam we definitely say no
to styrofoam as for Lowell Harrelson the
Mobe Road debacle nearly ruined him and
in 2001 his reputation took another hit
when he was sentenced to five months in
prison for evading taxes and lying to a
grand jury but in hindsight Harrelson's
planned to make electricity from garbage
looks downright visionary I think that
he was actually trying to develop a
model that could be replicated a
commercial model that was frankly I
think ahead of its time today
over 600 landfill gas projects generate
energy nationwide in 2018
more than 16 billion kilowatt hours of
electricity were produced oh I do
sometimes read about the scale of
methane usage today and my first
reaction is not one of remorse I wish I
could have been in it obviously but in
my reaction is more like wow I really
underestimated that opportunity it was
far greater than I had pictured it to be
at the time
at age 85 Harrelson's ambition shows and
no signs of fading he plans to move to
Bolivia where he hopes to mine and ship
iron ore on barges like this one 15
times larger than the one he made famous
in 1987 hopefully I won't have another
mobile experience
[Music]
you