SciFri
 FEEDBACK

The topic: solid waste.
Here's what some of you had to say...

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Millions of tons of excess landfill capacity exists in rural western New York, but there are a dozen communities fighting new or expanded proposals for more landfill capacity. Why? Because the market is wildly speculating that New York City will be unable to put it elsewhere. Is the regional concentration of trash fair or sensible? Will targeting one region as a dumping ground reduce the production of trash?

Gary Abraham

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Waste is tied to population, so the waste problem is growing exponentially.

Household trash represents only 2 percent of trash nationwide.

The solution to waste recycling must come from business. Businesses must come to see that all materials, all products, all customers, all profit and the market itself exist within the environment.When business, agriculture and industry can no longer "externalize the environmental costs" of business, recycling will be, to quote Hawken "as easy as falling of a log."

Mark Gardiner

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Opposition to landfills and incincertators is not a simple-minded approach: all landfills leak; that's why Virginia has opposed further importation of NYC trash: two of their seven modern, "state-of-the-art landfills started to leak heavy metal and carcinogens into groundwater last year!

Gary Abraham

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In my high school science classes, I have found that with the proper information, students will develop a keen interest in recycling. Often, their stumbling block is parental cooperation. Our hope may be in educating our youth and looking to them to help with the problem of waste production and disposal.

As an added comment, I agree, that far too often there is little incentive to buy "waste wise" products. Pricing tends to be more for many items that have " less product and more container" packaging. Examples include laundry detergent and toilet paper.

Susan Anderson

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Build a series of cheap space barges--thousands of them--to be operated from the International Space Station. Equip them with a destination ion-propulsion system and a small number of pre-programmed, release-and-return retros. Use the Shuttle as our new garbage truck.

Load 'em up, and send those puppies on a beeline towards the Sun. For a few hundred years, we could benefit from the carefree lifestyle of ultra-consumption and in the meanwhile forget the meaning of the word 'dump'. In addition, another less immediate benefit would be enjoyed from our innovation; technology would be forced to grow at a much more rapid pace. Once we realized that the natural cycle of replenishment had been done irreparable damage, we would be forced to terraform Mars. After all, it's there, isn't it?

Perhaps another solution--though admittedly less stimulating than the Mars scenario--would be to begin with packaging our products in less plastic.

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Your guests spoke about biodegradable plastics, but no one mentioned that their existance is irrelevant if the waste is going to a modern landfill. Waste is emtombed not degraded, the goal is to keep it inert.

And methane capture systems (according to the local landfill manangers) can only be installed after the landfill, or significant portion, are permanently closed and capped- until then the methane is usually flamed off.

there is never one simple answer to waste stream reduction- other than population reduction, A big contribution would be for industry to make longer lasting, repairable products, (I complained about new refrigerators before)-or eliminating the production of junky tires that last less than 75,000 miles

Deborah Wolf

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