4 ms·

Plastic is a magically useful and durable material with many orders of magnitude more uses than CFC. I hope you’re right but looking around the world, there are

Plastic is a magically useful and durable material with many orders of magnitude more uses than CFC. I hope you’re right but looking around the world, there are very few objects that aren’t at least partially made out of some polymer. Another question is what to do with all the existing plastic. From what I understand there’s not really anything other than high temperature burning that will safely get rid of it without turning it to micro plastic eventually

atom_arranger 5y ago
We could bury it in a giant pit somewhere without a lot of water running through it (prevent leeching). The actual amount of waste there is isn’t actually that high if you were to store it in a giant cube somewhere, the problem is the logistics of that, and the fact that right now it’s everywhere. I can’t find a source right now but I remember something like, if you were to take all the garbage produced by the world and put it in one place it would be a kilometer cubed, or something like that.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  That does not sound right. Just based on pictures like these: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/world/asia/indias-plague-trash-drowns-bangalore-its-garden-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/world/asia/indias-plague-... The US alone produces near 300 million tons per year, and a kilometer cube of water weights 1,000 million tons. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
  - atom_arranger 5y ago
    It may have been per year, I don’t recall. The waste in that photo does not seem very deep, so it’s possibly taking up a lot more area than needed. So if we go by that stat (300 million tons per year) we need 0.3km^3 per year for the United States to store all of its waste. So let’s say we have a hundred years worth, that’s 30km^3. Could we dig a hole 30km^3 somewhere? Not really, we can’t dig that deep generally. If we made this hole (or structure, it could have walls and a net over possibly) 100km by 100km it would need to be 2.7km deep/high to store 100 years of garbage. It would be difficult to do this, and would probably need more area to be feasible, but I would think it would be less of a mess environmentally to try to contain the problem to a few sites like this rather than having smaller poorly contained dumps all over the world.
- citiguy 5y ago
  The NYTimes magazine [1] ran a piece in 1996 says a 35 square mile landfill, 100 yards deep, will store all US trash until the year 3000. To put that in perspective, that's about 1 tenth of 1 percent of the range land currently available for grazing. I'm sure someone could find a corner in a desert somewhere for such a need if required. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-gar...
zdiscov 5y ago
fungal food, perhaps - https://leaps.org/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-your-trash-and-eat-it-too/particle-4 https://leaps.org/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-your...

atom_arranger 5y ago

We could bury it in a giant pit somewhere without a lot of water running through it (prevent leeching). The actual amount of waste there is isn’t actually that high if you were to store it in a giant cube somewhere, the problem is the logistics of that, and the fact that right now it’s everywhere. I can’t find a source right now but I remember something like, if you were to take all the garbage produced by the world and put it in one place it would be a kilometer cubed, or something like that.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
That does not sound right. Just based on pictures like these: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/world/asia/indias-plague-trash-drowns-bangalore-its-garden-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/world/asia/indias-plague-... The US alone produces near 300 million tons per year, and a kilometer cube of water weights 1,000 million tons. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
- atom_arranger 5y ago
  It may have been per year, I don’t recall. The waste in that photo does not seem very deep, so it’s possibly taking up a lot more area than needed. So if we go by that stat (300 million tons per year) we need 0.3km^3 per year for the United States to store all of its waste. So let’s say we have a hundred years worth, that’s 30km^3. Could we dig a hole 30km^3 somewhere? Not really, we can’t dig that deep generally. If we made this hole (or structure, it could have walls and a net over possibly) 100km by 100km it would need to be 2.7km deep/high to store 100 years of garbage. It would be difficult to do this, and would probably need more area to be feasible, but I would think it would be less of a mess environmentally to try to contain the problem to a few sites like this rather than having smaller poorly contained dumps all over the world.
citiguy 5y ago
The NYTimes magazine [1] ran a piece in 1996 says a 35 square mile landfill, 100 yards deep, will store all US trash until the year 3000. To put that in perspective, that's about 1 tenth of 1 percent of the range land currently available for grazing. I'm sure someone could find a corner in a desert somewhere for such a need if required. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-garbage.html https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/magazine/recycling-is-gar...

zdiscov 5y ago

fungal food, perhaps - https://leaps.org/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-your-trash-and-eat-it-too/particle-4 https://leaps.org/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-your...