Recyclist Podcast: SWANA's New President w Lynsey Baer

Uh, I do wanna touch on, uh, one thing.

I just mentioned that we're recording this here in mid-September, a couple weeks away from RCON 2026 up in St. Louis.

We're actually recording this on September 11th, 2026, the 25th anniversary of the attacks on New York City.

And, uh, of course, many of the first responders, all the first responders are rightly lauded as heroes, uh, given their immediate, uh, response in the, the aftermath, in the days and weeks, uh, after the attacks.

Uh, but I, uh, I, I do think that the, the, the story of, you know, the waste industry, waste professionals in terms of the relief efforts and the cleanup efforts in New York is itself a very, uh, interesting and possibly even underappreciated story.

What do you think about that, Lindsey?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think, um, it definitely was quick thinking, um, on the part of the state to recognize that there was going to be a fair amount of debris from this, and what was gonna need to be done to handle it.

Um, so the Fresh Kills Landfill w- um, located in Staten Island was the largest landfill at the time, and it had previously closed just earlier in the year.

Knowing that there was gonna be so much trash that was going to be developed from this cleanup effort, there was a crisis of, "What are we gonna do? There's no place we can take it." So they had to kind of do some quick thinking, quick acting, and they quickly opened up the Fresh Kills Landfill after it had already been closed for several months.

They opened it back up in September of, of '11.

Um, so not only was it, you know, a place to bring all the trash and debris, but it also became very important for all the sorting and forensic operations, um, was all done at that location as well.

So it kinda served as a dual-purpose role, so it was very important to have that infrastructure that was there and available.

Yeah.

Yeah, really, really interesting.

I continue year in, year out, um, we hear new and incredible stories from, from ground zero, but the, like, just the, the, the, the mobilization that it took to do something on that scale within this industry just never ceases to, uh, never ceases to impress me, especially when we've proven time and time again that when we come together as a country, we can accomplish amazing things like this.

Um-

Yeah.

There was, like, a h- uh, 1.5 million tons, if I remember, of trash that needed to be dealt with and, and immediately, um, and crews were definitely working 24/7 in order to help handle that operation, 'cause obviously everything needed to be not only collected at the site, then trucked over to the facility, and then ultimately, you know, after it had been sorted appropriately, then, you know, either sent out for recycling or then the rest was ultimately landfilled in a, um, a 40-acre cell there.

Yeah.

Well, heaven forbid anything like that ever happen again and we require that type of mobilization again, but it is at least somewhat comforting to know that that is possible, that we know that we are capable of that.