Humans produce, consume, and get rid of massive amounts of waste. Dealing with all this garbage isn’t easy. Used to be, we just dumped our garbage anywhere we pleased, or burned it, or both, and that was that.

Those days are over. Now, collecting, transferring, hauling, and transporting waste out of New York City to far-off landfills is a complicated task wrought with all kinds of logistical, financial, and environmental challenges. (The most important of which is the fact that individuals around the world, and especially in wealthy countries like the U.S. are consuming and discarding waste at unsustainable levels.)

The strong community opposition to Waste Management’s plans for a new waste transfer station in Maspeth illustrates this plainly. The plan, which appears solid (despite some lingering questions), complies with a city-led drive to bring waste transfer practices up to stronger environmental standards, as well as make each borough self-sufficient and capable of processing the waste it creates.

Nevertheless, residents don’t want a new transfer station, and the increase in trucks that go with it, anyway. Clearly, getting rid of waste is easier said than done.