We have a major problem with needlessly filling up landfills with trash. The type of reform needed would require the powers of a king. Someone who can simply make change by decree.
What steps would you make to eliminate trash that needlessly chokes our landfills?
heres my top three.
shrink wrap and those clear plastic anti theft shells. GONE. Theres no excuse for encasing a cardboard box in plastic. EVER.
Cut grocery cardboard packaging by 60%. Sell cereal, coffee, sugar, pasta, and dozens of other items in bulk. Issue each household a set of heavy duty standardized plastic canisters (think 1950’s tupperware. That stuff lasted 30 to 40 years). A store employee would fill the canisters from the bulk barrels. Those barrels could be tightly sealed to ensure freshness. Its up to the consumer to bring in their clean canisters when they want to purchase bulk items.
Why buy cereal in a cardboard box? The stupidity of that going into a landfill. Priceless. The early mercantile stores in the 1800’s sold most items in bulk. We need to return to that practice.
All battery operated electronic devices will have easily **replaceable **batteries. Selling a kindle or mp3 player that has a sealed battery is inexcusable. They know that battery will eventually fail long before the device’s electronics fail.
Go ahead, and list your edicts. Lets cut the trash generated by any household in half.
Single source recycling, and after that single source disposal of everything with separation into recycling, trash, compostables, and even valuable items thrown out. Make it as easy as throwing it all away and we have pretty close to 100% compliance. The solution is technological not monarchical.
I kind of doubt that sort of consumer trash is a big part of landfill space issues. What you recommend would be massively onerous and would likely reduce consumer choice and play hell with all sorts of supply chain issues and inventory for stores and manufacturers.
First, what I’d do is require mulching mowers, and require all tree / bush trimmings to be chipped and either used for mulch or compost, and provide facilities to do that.
Second, I’d give substantial tax incentives for using reclaimed/recycled building materials like toilets, doors, etc… in the hopes of fostering a larger reclaimed/recycled stuff market.
Third, I think I’d invest serious money in researching and subsidizing the use of automated recycling systems for everyday trash, so that people wouldn’t really have to separate their recyclables from their regular trash. Ideally this would take the form of various robotic systems separating food, glass paper, metal and plastic out, and ideally composting the food waste, and recycling the rest, with only a small amount of non-recyclable, non compostable stuff making it into the landfill (stuff like diapers, etc…) (edit -Kanicbird ninjaed me while I was composing the post- we’re saying the same thing here.)
From what I understand, the recycling industry isn’t as economical as you might think, and a lot of recycle-bin stuff ends up in the landfill if it’s not economical to recycle. My thought would be to reduce that, expand the percentage of recycled materials from the waste stream, and also drive the recycling costs down as well. It would take money up front to get that started though, but it would take care of most packaging issues as well.
Finally, for the existing landfills, I’d invite companies to “mine” the landfills; ISTR reading somewhere that the density of aluminum in your average landfill is similar to the density of aluminum in typical aluminum ore (bauxite).
Doesn’t sound likely, bauxite is about 45% aluminum oxide, though maybe only after some preprocessing. Still, landfills aren’t going to have that much aluminum, especially after aluminum recycling started, which wasn’t long after it’s abundant use in cans. But the aluminum in landfills is already aluminum, not just oxide and that reduces the processing costs considerably, so it could be worth the effort anyway.
1.Have you ever gotten anything in the mail that’s broken? No? Probably because of plastic shells, where are an inexpensive, durable, and attractive way to package goods. And I really doubt they’re an appreciable portion of landfills anyway. Shrink wrap, on the other hand, is a way to verify that a product has not been tampered with.
Nothing better than lugging my giant, decades-old tubs of tupperware down to the local food supply store so I can take home a year’s worth of basic grains like I’m living in some communist dystopia, right? In case it’s not obvious, most people don’t like stale food, or eating the exact same thing for months. Smaller sized packages give consumers greater choice (by reducing the cost of switching brands or flavours) and ensure fresher food. They’re also convenient for people with limited space or who are traveling. If you want huge quantities of everything, shop at Costco.
User replaceable batteries add bulk, have a battery door that can get broken or lost, are aesthetically unsightly, and may be harder to make water resistant. Besides, most consumers don’t care for repairing stuff and just throw it out when it breaks. And as for the shot at “planned obsolescence?” Usually by the time the battery breaks down, newer products have rolled out and are worth the price of upgrades. The cost of replacing a battery officially, by the way, is just a fraction of the cost of a new device. It’s that people don’t want to do it, not that they can’t.
I know my city has opened up and filled several landfill sites. They require liners to prevent any seepage into the water table.
Land is plentiful if garbage is shipped out of state. For example the Western states have vast areas of unused land. Environmentalists would prefer it remain unspoiled. But it could be used if needed.
The containers I suggested hold a standard box of cereal. I own three because I buy three brands of cereal. I buy for example Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds. I open the box and dump it into the container. Stays fresh and bug free for the few weeks it takes for me to eat it. We use them at home and camping. The useless cardboard box goes in the trash and yes I feel guilty. It’s a shame that I have to lug home a box and create trash just for cereal.
Mercantile Stores sold from bulk barrels for several centuries. They’ve even found these serving barrels at the food stalls in Pompeii. Wasteful cardboard boxes are a modern day curse.
I have found a place that sells the kindle battery. They include a plastic tool to pry open the case. Theres a 50-50 chance of the case breaking so it won’t ever snap back together. kindles are sealed and aren’t intended to be opened. But, soon I’ll have no choice but to try. My kindle isn’t holding a charge for very long anymore.
So for your guilt you feel the need to control others, just as those who caused the situation of your guilt has passed down guilt they should have for you to experience. No wonder we need Jesus who said, paraphrasing, enough is enough, instead of trying to be king, I will take on that guilt and take it to the grave and be done with it.
Enough Already, cardboard boxes is not your fault, go in peace and sin no more.
You’ll have to ask someone who understands those atom-y things
I’d be surprised if landfills had even 1% aluminum in them though. As I said before, the value in mining landfills for aluminum is saving on the cost of processing ore, which is quite expensive. Aluminum isn’t that difficult to separate from trash, but it won’t be free either. Machines could chop up landfill material and then using metal detectors concentrate the metals. Magnets can remove ferrous metals, so after that you’ll end up with material that has a high concentration of aluminum, and probably other metals too. So the mining concept could still be feasible, but it’s big advantage will be in the savings from processing ore, not from a high concentration.
Abolish Free-enterprise Private-sector Capitalism. As long as there is a profit motive involved in the production of waste, there will be people with an incentive to get rich creating waste.
I saw something last weekend that stated that all of the garbage produced by the US for the next thousand years could fit in a landfill 35 X 35 miles.
The best solution for me is incineration and energy production. Recycling, according to the same video, is a waste of time and money. It costs more to recycle than it does to produce new items.
Garbage disposal as an environmental problem has been pretty much solved by the proper placement and lining of landfills. What’s left is a political problem: nobody wants a landfill to open near where they live.
The only “protect our planet” issue is making sure that stuff that would be destructive out there in the world actually gets into the landfills, rather than winding up floating on the oceans and whatnot.
And that’s pretty small change compared to things like climate change, habitat loss, and overfishing.
So if they made me king, it would probably be awhile before I got around to worrying about trash.
Lets cut the trash generated by any household in half.
