If Don Delillo and Jules Verne had ever collaborated on a novel, they might have written the story that’s currently reaching its denouement in Pennsylvania: “Around the World with 14,855 Tons of Trash.” That’s how much garbage left Pennsylvania 16 years ago, destined to earn a reputation as the best-traveled and least-wanted waste in the world. The trash, in the form of ash generated by incinerating waste from curbside pickup, would have overflowed a landfill near Philadelphia, so it was shipped to an island in the Bahamas instead. In an eleventh-hour change of heart, the Bahamian government denied the ship permission to dock, leaving it to sail the seas for two years, during which time its cargo was spurned by at least 11 countries on four continents. Eventually, 4,000 tons of the ash were unloaded in Haiti; the rest was ultimately, and illegally, dumped into the ocean. The ash in Haiti languished on a beach for over a decade, until the U.S. State Department, the city of Philadelphia, and the New York City Trade Waste Commission agreed to bring it back to the U.S. — and, eventually, to the Mountain View Reclamation landfill, about 120 miles outside of Philadelphia.
