7 ms·

I can't help but think that filling the earth with trash is not the correct solution to the problem, however convenient it may be.

ethbro 7y ago
Is it the correct solution, if it allows us to spend effort and money migrating our energy mix away from fossil fuels? Is it the correct solution, if we have already shifted our economies to carbon-neutral or -negative modes? These are very different situations, and we only have time and money to focus on so many things at once.
Retric 7y ago
Landfills replacement a tiny volume and can be mined long term. It’s mostly organic matter that’s going to turn into coal and oil eventually but there plenty of more useful elements like copper in the mix.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  I'm continually amazed at how popular the concept of mining landfills for resources is in this forum, while at the same time recycling is regularly dismissed as wishful thinking. Perhaps it just needs rebranded as pre-emptive landfill mining?
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    It's super duper shitty ore, basically useless.
    - Aperocky 7y ago
      On a literal sense no less
    - sjwright 7y ago
      Until someone creates a machine that can pulverise anything into a fine powder and progressively sort each granule into their constituent metal, plastic, silica and organic type.
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        You use that machine on better ore.
        tclancy 7y ago
        Or recyclables.
        maxerickson 7y ago
        There are places that run their entire waste stream through a recovery plant: http://waste-technology.co.uk/what-is-a-dirty-mrf-and-why-they-are-being-phased-out-throughout-the-eu.html http://waste-technology.co.uk/what-is-a-dirty-mrf-and-why-th... A substantial portion of the waste stream is just organic material (which is worth very little).
        sjwright 7y ago
        Use it on landfill and you get to mine many desirable materials in one place.
        garmaine 7y ago
        That doesn’t make chemical sense. There is a huge energetic cost to smelting ore to remove the oxides, vs. landfill material that is exactly what you need but just needs to be sorted and cleaned.
        maxerickson 7y ago
        The concentrations of valuable materials in the landfill are minuscule. It doesn't make energy sense to sort it even though the fractions are relatively ready to use.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Many forms of post consumer recycling are not worth it today with both streams often ending in the same landfills. That’s the only objection I have to recycling. But, in a thousand or even a million years the atoms will still be around. Basically we may find this stuff useless, but that does not mean it’s permanently devoid of value. If nothing else archeology often involves going through trash heaps from ages past.
  - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
    "When people in the future are so screwed that they'll take whatever they can get, they can..." Not unlike how people recycle ships and electronics right now
mrfusion 7y ago
Remember all that same stuff was taken out of the earth at one point.
- barunio 7y ago
  Actually, no. You might say this about metals, for example, but nature does not produce the sort of high-energy low-information hydrocarbon chains that comprise nearly all plastics. Inserting massive quantities of manmade endocrine disruptors into the earth is massively disruptive.
thirstywhimbrel 7y ago
Landfills are tiny relative to usable land and are eventually just capped and turned into parks. Most of the popular fear about running out of landfill space can be traced back to a misused statistic about small rural landfills being decommissioned. RCRA Subtitle D regs basically have driven the shutdown of old town dumps. Modern landfills are much more efficient, with better safety controls for leaching and gas capture, better compression and sorting, and even processes that speed decomposition. The headlines will scream that the number of available landfills are dropping rapidly and neglect to mention that total capacity is actually up and total disposed volume has been trending down since 2000, even despite population increases. Highly recommend touring a landfill and learning about waste management at scale. There are really interesting engineering dilemmas that are always a step more nuanced than "we must use x solution or fill the world with trash."
- randycupertino 7y ago
  Don't landfills leech lots of pollutants into the groundwater and nearby environment?
  - thirstywhimbrel 7y ago
    Efficient leachate control is an interesting area, but there are various families of techniques to do it and methods for monitoring effectiveness that have emerged from the last several decades of focused study. Current facilities are way better equipped than the old solution of uncontrolled municipal dumps.
    - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
      Still, leachate control is nothing but a cost center to the people running a landfill. It's likely that plenty of landfills are not as compliant as they report, through intention or ignorance; and when the landfill operator goes bankrupt nobody takes over the maintenance. In a sense, leachate control is the low-tar cigarette of waste disposal
      - 7y ago

ethbro 7y ago

Is it the correct solution, if it allows us to spend effort and money migrating our energy mix away from fossil fuels? Is it the correct solution, if we have already shifted our economies to carbon-neutral or -negative modes? These are very different situations, and we only have time and money to focus on so many things at once.

Retric 7y ago

Landfills replacement a tiny volume and can be mined long term. It’s mostly organic matter that’s going to turn into coal and oil eventually but there plenty of more useful elements like copper in the mix.

ZeroGravitas 7y ago
I'm continually amazed at how popular the concept of mining landfills for resources is in this forum, while at the same time recycling is regularly dismissed as wishful thinking. Perhaps it just needs rebranded as pre-emptive landfill mining?
- maxerickson 7y ago
  It's super duper shitty ore, basically useless.
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    On a literal sense no less
  - sjwright 7y ago
    Until someone creates a machine that can pulverise anything into a fine powder and progressively sort each granule into their constituent metal, plastic, silica and organic type.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      You use that machine on better ore.
      - tclancy 7y ago
        Or recyclables.
        maxerickson 7y ago
        There are places that run their entire waste stream through a recovery plant: http://waste-technology.co.uk/what-is-a-dirty-mrf-and-why-they-are-being-phased-out-throughout-the-eu.html http://waste-technology.co.uk/what-is-a-dirty-mrf-and-why-th... A substantial portion of the waste stream is just organic material (which is worth very little).
      - sjwright 7y ago
        Use it on landfill and you get to mine many desirable materials in one place.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        That doesn’t make chemical sense. There is a huge energetic cost to smelting ore to remove the oxides, vs. landfill material that is exactly what you need but just needs to be sorted and cleaned.
        maxerickson 7y ago
        The concentrations of valuable materials in the landfill are minuscule. It doesn't make energy sense to sort it even though the fractions are relatively ready to use.
- Retric 7y ago
  Many forms of post consumer recycling are not worth it today with both streams often ending in the same landfills. That’s the only objection I have to recycling. But, in a thousand or even a million years the atoms will still be around. Basically we may find this stuff useless, but that does not mean it’s permanently devoid of value. If nothing else archeology often involves going through trash heaps from ages past.
- xkcd-sucks 7y ago
  "When people in the future are so screwed that they'll take whatever they can get, they can..." Not unlike how people recycle ships and electronics right now

mrfusion 7y ago

Remember all that same stuff was taken out of the earth at one point.

barunio 7y ago
Actually, no. You might say this about metals, for example, but nature does not produce the sort of high-energy low-information hydrocarbon chains that comprise nearly all plastics. Inserting massive quantities of manmade endocrine disruptors into the earth is massively disruptive.

thirstywhimbrel 7y ago

Landfills are tiny relative to usable land and are eventually just capped and turned into parks. Most of the popular fear about running out of landfill space can be traced back to a misused statistic about small rural landfills being decommissioned. RCRA Subtitle D regs basically have driven the shutdown of old town dumps. Modern landfills are much more efficient, with better safety controls for leaching and gas capture, better compression and sorting, and even processes that speed decomposition. The headlines will scream that the number of available landfills are dropping rapidly and neglect to mention that total capacity is actually up and total disposed volume has been trending down since 2000, even despite population increases. Highly recommend touring a landfill and learning about waste management at scale. There are really interesting engineering dilemmas that are always a step more nuanced than "we must use x solution or fill the world with trash."

randycupertino 7y ago
Don't landfills leech lots of pollutants into the groundwater and nearby environment?
- thirstywhimbrel 7y ago
  Efficient leachate control is an interesting area, but there are various families of techniques to do it and methods for monitoring effectiveness that have emerged from the last several decades of focused study. Current facilities are way better equipped than the old solution of uncontrolled municipal dumps.
  - xkcd-sucks 7y ago
    Still, leachate control is nothing but a cost center to the people running a landfill. It's likely that plenty of landfills are not as compliant as they report, through intention or ignorance; and when the landfill operator goes bankrupt nobody takes over the maintenance. In a sense, leachate control is the low-tar cigarette of waste disposal
    - 7y ago