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Friendly reminder that modern, well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is plenty of space for them. Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a s

Friendly reminder that modern, well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is plenty of space for them. Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. While we should try to reduce waste as much as possible. This is far more effective at the front end of the process when they're designed and produced, the vast amount of carbon is from direct carbon from production and follow on carbon from the carbon intensity of the products under use. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Since you mention it, there's a surprising effort to remove plastic from the ocean too: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-from-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/ https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-... It's definitely a drop in the bucket, but a nice improvement over the we-can't-do-anything attitude previously on the pacific garbage patch
acchow 4y ago
> well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is plenty of space for them. On the other hand, a quick Google search turns up quotes like "the US is on pace to run out of room in landfills within 18 years" https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/us-landfills-are-filling-up/ https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/us-landfills-are-fi... So which is it?
- Baader-Meinhof 4y ago
  I think that is just referring to the existing landfills. We can/do build new landfills all the time. And there is no shortage of unused space for new landfills.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Exactly. We can build the next one next to your home.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  It's always a willpower issue. If the US needed a fighter bomber range it could find the land etc etc. Whilst the US has a lot of people. its also really big. It's got space to solve this problem.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    Unless you build the landfill in the remote western deserts, it's going to be in someone's backyard, which means condemning them and their kids to all kinds of health problems. And shipping solid waste halfway across the country simply isn't economically feasible. How many Americans are willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for their trash service?
    - eloff 4y ago
      The US is huge and most of it is sparsely populated. There is no shortage of space. People from actual, tiny, crowded countries must find you guys hilarious.
      - midoridensha 4y ago
        There's no shortage of space very far from where people live, sure. Do you really think that shipping vast amounts of trash across the country can be done that cheaply? Building new landfills in the eastern states will necessarily mean building them in someone's backyard. There's no place in the eastern states that is truly unpopulated.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        There's plenty of places where a landfill is only going to bother 20 households, and it would be easy to give them a million dollars to compensate if that was necessary.
        eloff 4y ago
        Better yet, buy their land and you have your buffer zone.
- Tycho 4y ago
  That’s so obviously not true. Come on.
- golemotron 4y ago
  > a quick Google search turns up quotes like "the US is on pace to run out of room in landfills within 18 years" People talk about fake news, but this sort of stuff (which is fake news also) damages credibility immensely.
  - nickpinkston 4y ago
    There's a sizeable part of the environmental movement (collapsik / degrowthers) that like to create and spread this kind of FUD and propaganda, which is a shame because environmental issues are very real / important, and we don't need idiots making up anything to support the cause. There's plenty of evidence everywhere, though not all of it supports their Neo-Malthusian impulse, which is their true pain and cause.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    The reason why “fake news” caught on so well is that so much of the news is indeed actually bullshit. Usually shocking sounding things which are half true at best. I bet you could come up with a statistic that says the landfills will be full. I also bet that this is a problem which will be solved in it’s time. Local man has no idea what he’s going to have for lunch next Saturday! …so?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      We’ve had 10-20 years of landfill space ever since I can remember- certainly more than 20 years ago. Guess what! Nobody builds a landfill for the fun of it, so they wait until they need one.
- strken 4y ago
  When you run out of space in a landfill you send some engineers and excavator operators out and dig a new one. The three reasons not to do that, as given by your article, are (paraphrasing) "permits and environmental regulations take a long time," "communities don't like it," and "it's bad for the environment." If the rubbish starts piling up, in the US or elsewhere, then all three of those issues are going to be quickly ignored in favour of digging another hole and adding the bare minimum of leachate collection.
- whywhywhydude 4y ago
  Your comment makes me wonder if people just haven’t had a chance to travel within the US. Except for the coastal cities, for the most part, US is empty.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    There’s a difference in west empty and east empty. Out west you get miles and miles of literally empty desert - back east you get miles and miles of sparsely populated areas, but still houses every mile or so.
- gruez 4y ago
  Probably the former, given the hysteria about running out of landfill space was partially the reason why there was a push to recycle in the 80s. >GONZALEZ: There were all these stats coming out at the time that showed that the number of landfills in America was plummeting. Landfills were closing, and people kept citing these stats in stories about the garbage barge. >KINNAMAN: And so people put it all together, and in their minds, the conclusion was that the United States is running out of landfill space. The United States was full - that we couldn't store any more. >[...] >GONZALEZ: OK. Here's what else was happening at the time. Yes, landfills were closing, but that was because there were new rules for landfills - stricter rules to protect the environment. The EPA said you now have to do things like line the bottom of landfills with plastic so they don't contaminate the groundwater. >KINNAMAN: And so the old town dump - every little town had one - was out of compliance. You can't accept garbage in here anymore. It's illegal. And so these town dumps were closing by the dozens. >GONZALEZ: But in their place, regional landfills were becoming a thing - bigger landfills that could accept trash while still following all of these new rules. The Natural Resources Defense Council says there used to be about 10,000 dumps in the mid-'80s and that now we have less than 3,000. But we were not running out of space then, and we still aren't running out of space. Thomas says we probably have thousands of years of landfill space left in the U.S. And even hardcore environmentalists reluctantly agree that, yeah, we have a lot of space left. But people thought we were running out of space, and that was what mattered. >KINNAMAN: And so the recycling era was born. This is when state government said, we're going to require cycling to - recycling to occur.
  - metadat 4y ago
    Excavated the reference: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/739893511 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/739893511
olyjohn 4y ago
I was just in Thailand... where you can't drink the water. So you buy plastic water bottles constantly. All the rivers and waterways are just full of plastic bottles floating everywhere.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Are reusable bottles and home water filters a bridge too far?
  - dugite-code 4y ago
    You would need a very expensive filtering system for most South East asian water supplies to reach western safety standards. Boiling, bathing and washing is what that water is used for.
- blackoil 4y ago
  Normally, homes have water purifiers or get large reused bottles. Small bottles are used by tourist/travellers. Though, yeah waste segregation and disposal is a problem.
thwayunion 4y ago
> Friendly reminder that modern, well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is plenty of space for them. I guess this depends on your tax bracket and political bargaining power. I grew up smelling (and smelling like) solid waste trucked in from the waste treatment facility for the richer suburbs in a racially segregated metro area. The less PC way of sating that is "concentrated rich 95% white person shit". And let me tell you: despite what they think, MD/JD/MBA shit does not smell like roses. The smell permeated the entire community for days at a time, every month. I also now have a whole set of recommended annual cancer screenings. All from a modern and well regulated landfill that is still in operation. I shit you not: we had movie days in high school that corresponded with the worse smelling days. Just whole days/weeks of lost learning, regularly, because the whole place smelled like literal human shit. Now I live in a snow white upper middle class suburb and those problems are behind me, but I'm still very conscious about where my waste really ends up and have gone to war in more than city council meeting about where our literal shit ends up. But, again, if you have a FAANG salary then your shit and trash will be shipped to someone else's community and it's not your problem. Waste away! /s
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Ironically, I think the G in FAANG is built on the landfill of San Francisco from a far more toxic era, which is, to your point, sad.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Yeah I lived in Mountain View and it smelled like garbage. Apparently the shoreview outdoor event venue had to mitigate some of the outgassing at one point because you could light the methane coming out of the ground on fire.
- nickpinkston 4y ago
  I lived near waste center myself (sewage treatment plant in Bayview SF) with all the smells it emitted, but I'm still really glad it exists! It definitely should be regulated to not offgas like that, but we can/should solve those problems. It wouldn't even be that hard - probably like $10-50M or so. We need to address the lack of true democratic representation in those communities allows those problems to persist. It's not because of lack of tech or finance.
sparrc 4y ago
> Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. That reference isn't exactly justifying your statement. AFAICT that research is just comparing the relative amounts of plastic going to the ocean _from rivers_. Rivers are not the only way that plastic gets into the ocean. Most of the ocean plastic is actually from fishing gear...so if you want to reduce ocean plastics your best bet is probably to stop eating so much fish: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/great-pac...
- lm28469 4y ago
  > Rich countries aren't really the problem. Eh, we ship a lot of waste overseas and we delocalised a lot of industries there too. Rich countries are definitely part of the problem, it's too easy to say we don't have a role in this and point our fingers to Asia and Africa... it's time to start taking responsabilities
- bluquark 4y ago
  The illegally dumped plastic fishing gear also comes from countries with poorly-monitored fishing industries, so the same basic dynamic applies.
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    If you are gonna talk about dynamics what's the reason people are poor? I am sure nobody wanna be poor?
    - imtringued 4y ago
      In a conventional money based economy demand is always below supply because of structural reasons that have to do with how our money works. Since there must be losers, people don't want to be a 80% winner and 20% loser, they want to be a 100% winner and let a whole person be a 100% loser instead. Any policy that aims at eliminating poverty has to ensure that supply and demand are in balance.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
The 2018 Scientific American article states that "more than a quarter" comes from ten rivers in Asia. That means more than half, at least 2/3, comes from somewhere else. The following year, in 2019, The Guardian stated that Greenpeace said most ocean pollution comes from "ghost gear", dumped fishing gear, not rivers in Asia. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
OrangeMonkey 4y ago
Our straws were stolen by fools crying over turtles who shipped our "recycling" to third world countries, who threw it in the gd rivers. Its all so tiring.
garren 4y ago
> Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. I don't have a source for this, so take it for what it's worth, but as I recall rich countries remain a significant part of the problem. TFA mentions it, but, iirc, the US used to ship its plastic waste to China for recycling, but the "single stream" approach to recycling resulted in a contaminated waste stream that was more expensive to handle. So China stopped accepting our recyclable waste. In turn, we started shipping our recyclables to Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries instead. They're happy for the business, but they don't have the infra to handle the amount of waste we're sending, and general mismanagement is widely recognized [0]. As a result US plastic waste intended for "recycling" ends up in dump sites, landfills, etc. in SEA countries and eventially accumulates in rivers, sewers, and eventually the ocean. I don't disagree with you regarding landfills. There was a post here recently that seemed to lean more towards just throwing plastic away, that way it ends up in a landfill, rather than "recycling" it and having it end up in the ocean by way of the Philippines [0] https://www.pemsea.org/publications/reports/reducing-plastic-waste-philippines-assessment-policies-and-regulations-guide https://www.pemsea.org/publications/reports/reducing-plastic...
edgefield 4y ago
I don’t think you know what your talking about. For instance, Victoria BC, the capital of British Columbia, Canada, didn’t have a waste sewage plant for the city until 2021. I’m quite sure many rich countries are still significantly polluting the land, sea, and air.
Ptchd 4y ago
> Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. A lot of the problematic plastic comes from fishing.

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

Since you mention it, there's a surprising effort to remove plastic from the ocean too: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-from-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/ https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-... It's definitely a drop in the bucket, but a nice improvement over the we-can't-do-anything attitude previously on the pacific garbage patch

acchow 4y ago

> well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is plenty of space for them. On the other hand, a quick Google search turns up quotes like "the US is on pace to run out of room in landfills within 18 years" https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/us-landfills-are-filling-up/ https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/us-landfills-are-fi... So which is it?

Baader-Meinhof 4y ago
I think that is just referring to the existing landfills. We can/do build new landfills all the time. And there is no shortage of unused space for new landfills.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Exactly. We can build the next one next to your home.
gonzo41 4y ago
It's always a willpower issue. If the US needed a fighter bomber range it could find the land etc etc. Whilst the US has a lot of people. its also really big. It's got space to solve this problem.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  Unless you build the landfill in the remote western deserts, it's going to be in someone's backyard, which means condemning them and their kids to all kinds of health problems. And shipping solid waste halfway across the country simply isn't economically feasible. How many Americans are willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for their trash service?
  - eloff 4y ago
    The US is huge and most of it is sparsely populated. There is no shortage of space. People from actual, tiny, crowded countries must find you guys hilarious.
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      There's no shortage of space very far from where people live, sure. Do you really think that shipping vast amounts of trash across the country can be done that cheaply? Building new landfills in the eastern states will necessarily mean building them in someone's backyard. There's no place in the eastern states that is truly unpopulated.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        There's plenty of places where a landfill is only going to bother 20 households, and it would be easy to give them a million dollars to compensate if that was necessary.
        eloff 4y ago
        Better yet, buy their land and you have your buffer zone.
Tycho 4y ago
That’s so obviously not true. Come on.
golemotron 4y ago
> a quick Google search turns up quotes like "the US is on pace to run out of room in landfills within 18 years" People talk about fake news, but this sort of stuff (which is fake news also) damages credibility immensely.
- nickpinkston 4y ago
  There's a sizeable part of the environmental movement (collapsik / degrowthers) that like to create and spread this kind of FUD and propaganda, which is a shame because environmental issues are very real / important, and we don't need idiots making up anything to support the cause. There's plenty of evidence everywhere, though not all of it supports their Neo-Malthusian impulse, which is their true pain and cause.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  The reason why “fake news” caught on so well is that so much of the news is indeed actually bullshit. Usually shocking sounding things which are half true at best. I bet you could come up with a statistic that says the landfills will be full. I also bet that this is a problem which will be solved in it’s time. Local man has no idea what he’s going to have for lunch next Saturday! …so?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    We’ve had 10-20 years of landfill space ever since I can remember- certainly more than 20 years ago. Guess what! Nobody builds a landfill for the fun of it, so they wait until they need one.
strken 4y ago
When you run out of space in a landfill you send some engineers and excavator operators out and dig a new one. The three reasons not to do that, as given by your article, are (paraphrasing) "permits and environmental regulations take a long time," "communities don't like it," and "it's bad for the environment." If the rubbish starts piling up, in the US or elsewhere, then all three of those issues are going to be quickly ignored in favour of digging another hole and adding the bare minimum of leachate collection.
whywhywhydude 4y ago
Your comment makes me wonder if people just haven’t had a chance to travel within the US. Except for the coastal cities, for the most part, US is empty.
- bombcar 4y ago
  There’s a difference in west empty and east empty. Out west you get miles and miles of literally empty desert - back east you get miles and miles of sparsely populated areas, but still houses every mile or so.
gruez 4y ago
Probably the former, given the hysteria about running out of landfill space was partially the reason why there was a push to recycle in the 80s. >GONZALEZ: There were all these stats coming out at the time that showed that the number of landfills in America was plummeting. Landfills were closing, and people kept citing these stats in stories about the garbage barge. >KINNAMAN: And so people put it all together, and in their minds, the conclusion was that the United States is running out of landfill space. The United States was full - that we couldn't store any more. >[...] >GONZALEZ: OK. Here's what else was happening at the time. Yes, landfills were closing, but that was because there were new rules for landfills - stricter rules to protect the environment. The EPA said you now have to do things like line the bottom of landfills with plastic so they don't contaminate the groundwater. >KINNAMAN: And so the old town dump - every little town had one - was out of compliance. You can't accept garbage in here anymore. It's illegal. And so these town dumps were closing by the dozens. >GONZALEZ: But in their place, regional landfills were becoming a thing - bigger landfills that could accept trash while still following all of these new rules. The Natural Resources Defense Council says there used to be about 10,000 dumps in the mid-'80s and that now we have less than 3,000. But we were not running out of space then, and we still aren't running out of space. Thomas says we probably have thousands of years of landfill space left in the U.S. And even hardcore environmentalists reluctantly agree that, yeah, we have a lot of space left. But people thought we were running out of space, and that was what mattered. >KINNAMAN: And so the recycling era was born. This is when state government said, we're going to require cycling to - recycling to occur.
- metadat 4y ago
  Excavated the reference: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/739893511 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/739893511

olyjohn 4y ago

I was just in Thailand... where you can't drink the water. So you buy plastic water bottles constantly. All the rivers and waterways are just full of plastic bottles floating everywhere.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Are reusable bottles and home water filters a bridge too far?
- dugite-code 4y ago
  You would need a very expensive filtering system for most South East asian water supplies to reach western safety standards. Boiling, bathing and washing is what that water is used for.
blackoil 4y ago
Normally, homes have water purifiers or get large reused bottles. Small bottles are used by tourist/travellers. Though, yeah waste segregation and disposal is a problem.

thwayunion 4y ago

> Friendly reminder that modern, well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is plenty of space for them. I guess this depends on your tax bracket and political bargaining power. I grew up smelling (and smelling like) solid waste trucked in from the waste treatment facility for the richer suburbs in a racially segregated metro area. The less PC way of sating that is "concentrated rich 95% white person shit". And let me tell you: despite what they think, MD/JD/MBA shit does not smell like roses. The smell permeated the entire community for days at a time, every month. I also now have a whole set of recommended annual cancer screenings. All from a modern and well regulated landfill that is still in operation. I shit you not: we had movie days in high school that corresponded with the worse smelling days. Just whole days/weeks of lost learning, regularly, because the whole place smelled like literal human shit. Now I live in a snow white upper middle class suburb and those problems are behind me, but I'm still very conscious about where my waste really ends up and have gone to war in more than city council meeting about where our literal shit ends up. But, again, if you have a FAANG salary then your shit and trash will be shipped to someone else's community and it's not your problem. Waste away! /s

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jjtheblunt 4y ago
Ironically, I think the G in FAANG is built on the landfill of San Francisco from a far more toxic era, which is, to your point, sad.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Yeah I lived in Mountain View and it smelled like garbage. Apparently the shoreview outdoor event venue had to mitigate some of the outgassing at one point because you could light the methane coming out of the ground on fire.
nickpinkston 4y ago
I lived near waste center myself (sewage treatment plant in Bayview SF) with all the smells it emitted, but I'm still really glad it exists! It definitely should be regulated to not offgas like that, but we can/should solve those problems. It wouldn't even be that hard - probably like $10-50M or so. We need to address the lack of true democratic representation in those communities allows those problems to persist. It's not because of lack of tech or finance.

sparrc 4y ago

> Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. That reference isn't exactly justifying your statement. AFAICT that research is just comparing the relative amounts of plastic going to the ocean _from rivers_. Rivers are not the only way that plastic gets into the ocean. Most of the ocean plastic is actually from fishing gear...so if you want to reduce ocean plastics your best bet is probably to stop eating so much fish: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/great-pac...

lm28469 4y ago
> Rich countries aren't really the problem. Eh, we ship a lot of waste overseas and we delocalised a lot of industries there too. Rich countries are definitely part of the problem, it's too easy to say we don't have a role in this and point our fingers to Asia and Africa... it's time to start taking responsabilities
bluquark 4y ago
The illegally dumped plastic fishing gear also comes from countries with poorly-monitored fishing industries, so the same basic dynamic applies.
- cute_boi 4y ago
  If you are gonna talk about dynamics what's the reason people are poor? I am sure nobody wanna be poor?
  - imtringued 4y ago
    In a conventional money based economy demand is always below supply because of structural reasons that have to do with how our money works. Since there must be losers, people don't want to be a 80% winner and 20% loser, they want to be a 100% winner and let a whole person be a 100% loser instead. Any policy that aims at eliminating poverty has to ensure that supply and demand are in balance.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago

The 2018 Scientific American article states that "more than a quarter" comes from ten rivers in Asia. That means more than half, at least 2/3, comes from somewhere else. The following year, in 2019, The Guardian stated that Greenpeace said most ocean pollution comes from "ghost gear", dumped fishing gear, not rivers in Asia. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...

OrangeMonkey 4y ago

Our straws were stolen by fools crying over turtles who shipped our "recycling" to third world countries, who threw it in the gd rivers. Its all so tiring.

garren 4y ago

> Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. I don't have a source for this, so take it for what it's worth, but as I recall rich countries remain a significant part of the problem. TFA mentions it, but, iirc, the US used to ship its plastic waste to China for recycling, but the "single stream" approach to recycling resulted in a contaminated waste stream that was more expensive to handle. So China stopped accepting our recyclable waste. In turn, we started shipping our recyclables to Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries instead. They're happy for the business, but they don't have the infra to handle the amount of waste we're sending, and general mismanagement is widely recognized [0]. As a result US plastic waste intended for "recycling" ends up in dump sites, landfills, etc. in SEA countries and eventially accumulates in rivers, sewers, and eventually the ocean. I don't disagree with you regarding landfills. There was a post here recently that seemed to lean more towards just throwing plastic away, that way it ends up in a landfill, rather than "recycling" it and having it end up in the ocean by way of the Philippines [0] https://www.pemsea.org/publications/reports/reducing-plastic-waste-philippines-assessment-policies-and-regulations-guide https://www.pemsea.org/publications/reports/reducing-plastic...

edgefield 4y ago

I don’t think you know what your talking about. For instance, Victoria BC, the capital of British Columbia, Canada, didn’t have a waste sewage plant for the city until 2021. I’m quite sure many rich countries are still significantly polluting the land, sea, and air.

Ptchd 4y ago

> Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't really the problem. A lot of the problematic plastic comes from fishing.