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I sometimes wonder how feasible or expensive it'd be to: 1) institute trash separation for all waste before it enters landfills, so that recyclables are separat
by Grishnakh 11y ago
I sometimes wonder how feasible or expensive it'd be to:
1) institute trash separation for all waste before it enters landfills, so that recyclables are separated out and processed, since obviously people are not very good at disposing of recyclables separately themselves, and
2) dig up old landfills and process the trash as in #1.
Of course, there's also the problem of things like the garbage gyres in the oceans, and of course litter on the land. The latter is solvable I think through cultural changes. In first-world countries litter isn't that much of a problem any more; it became socially unacceptable to litter, just like it became socially unacceptable to smoke indoors.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- athenot 11y agoReprocessing trash for recyclables is not always possible due to contamination. For example, my trash company won't take pizza boxes in the recycling stream because they are often greazy. The grease in the cardboard not only affects the cardboard it's on, it affects the surrounding cardboard that might be in that recycling stream. I would imagine that mining trash for aluminium might be more feasible but the quantities would have to justify the operation.
- Grishnakh 11y agoI imagine there's a lot of somewhat valuable metals in trash: steel and copper come to mind immediately. Electronics are full of copper (though usually not in huge quantities, but if anyone throws away wire that's actually fairly valuable on the scrap market; PCBs can be processed to reclaim the copper and tin and lead), and there's all kinds of other stuff people throw away that's made of steel (including cans).