I’m worried about something…does anybody in these fifty wonderful states know what we’re doing about garbage? I don’t know what brought this on, but I’ve been concerned about this (acutely) for a number of weeks now and I’d like to know. I can’t imagine the amount of biodegradable (not to mention UNBIODEGRADABLE) waste that’s being put out daily by the country (and the whole world, for that matter). What’s being done with it? Couldn’t the nations band together and maybe make a number of incinerators that get hot enough (hopefully to a degree of heat that could only be measured meaningfully and practically in degrees Kelvin) to disintegrate all of the hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage that I’m sure by now are absolutely making dumps and landfills burst at the seams? I’m for recycling and double using! But this problem has got to be dealt with or we’re in for a really ugly realization-style surprise as just one of the outcomes.
Hotmail assures me that “Trash is emptied several times a week.” wonder where they put it all, wot with the junk mail that piles up an all. 
You think you’ve got it bad? Try living in Michigan. We actually let Canada dump their trash in our state!!! What like there’s not any room in Canada??? I guess they pay us to take it, but all I know, is in the governor’s race, I’m voting for the guy who wants to stop it. We have enough trash of our own.
You think you’ve got it bad? Try living in Michigan. We actually let Canada dump their trash in our state!!! What like there’s not any room in Canada??? I guess they pay us to take it, but all I know, is in the governor’s race, I’m voting for the guy who wants to stop it. We have enough trash of our own.
First for the part you are not going to like to hear: much of the US has plenty of landfill space left, and plenty of open space to build new ones. Is a landfill the best use of open space? I don’t happen to think so, but that’s why there’s no big push in much of the US (including here in the great Hoosier state) to do a whole lot about garbage.
One of the big road blocks in determining what to do about trash is determining whose responsibility it is to deal with it. Is the the responsibility of individual citizens to examine their buying and disposal habits? Is it the responsibility of manufacturers to make more durable products, decrease their packaging and the toxicity of their products? Is it the government’s resonsibility to find new disposal solutions, or to set policy to reduce the amount of trash we send to final disposal? And when it comes to final disposal, where will that facility (be it landfill, incinerator, transmogrifier, or whetever) be located?
I personally favor public policy that encourages manufacturers to reduce the packaging and the toxicity of their products, as well as policy in support of recycling programs. Local and national governments need to be looking for new ways to deal with our leftovers. And I think it is incumbent upon us, as residents of this planet, to buy less, reuse more, recycle what we can, and buy products made with recycled materials.
Zero Waste is an idea that is catching on in different places – Zero Waste Alliance has some interesting information.
The oceans a mighty big place. Lets dump all the crap there!
i find throwing it over the neighbours fence works best
egg
:eek:
I saw we blast it to the moon. I mean, there’s plenty of empty space, and no one’s ever going to live there.
What we’re currently doing is like putting our trash under the couch and bed, when we’ve got a nice little trash can sitting right next to us.
Happy
When I saw this thread title, all I could think of was what my mom told my sister just now over lunch: “You should take your sister to Mississauga with you as garbage.” (she claimed she meant “baggage”… yeah right! Can’t wait to get out of here soon enough) 
Don’t know anything about the OP; sorry.
F_X
On a more serious note, I lived in Germany for a few years when I was younger and the recycling program was taken really seriously over there, exactly because unlike the US and Canada, they DON’T have plenty of space to dump their trash. We had to separate food from plastic and other recyclables, separate paper and cardboard, and even sparate glass, not only just on its own, but coloured glass in one bin and clear in another. It was very thorough and fines were HUGE. I remember the landlord showing up once when my parents werent home and threatening me (I was 10 years old) with a 300+ DM fine because someone had found a bit of jam on a piece of paper that had out address on it in the paper dumpster. Needless to say, my parents berated him quite strongly for scaring a 10 year old kid, but the laws ARE that severe.
And now the building I live in in Hamilton doesn’t even HAVE recycling, and those blue boxes are a joke. The closest thing I’ve seen to a decent recycling program is Guelph’s Wet/Dry system, which even that has onlty reduced garbage in landfills by a little bit (although enough to maintain the system, AFAIK).
I think governments need to get more involved in the issue and start doing something NOW to ensure that we aren’t stuck with a problem too big to handle later on. Germany’s program wasn’t that difficult to do within a home or business, and they did send out flyers once in a while with reminders of what could and couldn’t go into each bin. I think we need something like that here.