4 ms·

> 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 an

> 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.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  I guess another way of saying that is that the US does not have "modern, well regulated landfills".
  - sparky_z 4y ago
    You seem to be conflating landfills (where trash that's trucked away from your curb goes to be buried) and sewage treatment plants (where the stuff you put down your pipes goes to be processed into clean water, fertilizer, and "other"). They are completely different things.
    - mordechai9000 4y ago
      In my city, the solids from the sewage treatment plant are trucked to the landfill.
      - thwayunion 4y ago
        Most places. the solids are either burned or dumped.
- google234123 4y ago
  How many toilets would this facility have for workers there? 10 million would only allow for 5 at the current price of 1.7 million per toilet.
- throwing_away 4y ago
kotlin2 4y ago
That’s a solvable problem though. Regulations could be changed to require more buffer areas for the landfill. Also, another thing to think about it is that your parents likely picked the best place available for their means. Not many people choose to live next to landfills if they can afford something better. Had the landfill not existed, your parents would have likely needed to live next to some other type of hazard. It’s unfortunate, but a reality of our economic system.
- titzer 4y ago
  That's a heck of a dystopian view, TBH. Be glad it was just the landfill, otherwise it might have been a nuclear dump? Welp, guess that's just economics, nothing we can do about that, poor unlucky rubes! I know you didn't mean it that way, but it can sound extraordinarily tone-deaf to talk down to people like this.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    A lot of people on the Internet would rather be right than liked. The medium lends itself to this: there's little point in having random people you will never meet like you. I thought OP was making an interesting point about economics, personally - that there's sort of a law of "conservation of unpleasantness" in a market economy, and if it wasn't the landfill, there would be some other thing objectionable about your property. You approach your career very differently (and by capitalist standards, usually more successfully) if you figure that you're going to dislike some things anyway, but might as well be deliberate in choosing what you dislike.
    - lukas099 4y ago
      This was a really good comment, thanks.
    - titzer 4y ago
      It's not necessarily about being liked; that's part of our current culture's narcissism problem. It's about what kind of society do you want to live in. Do you want to live in a society where the prevailing attitude ranges from the personal "welp, sucks to be you! be grateful you have anything at all you gutter trash" to the non-personal "it's unfortunate this machine runs on frickaseed baby faces, well I guess there's nothing we can do". To be clear, I'm exaggerating for comedic effect here, not accusing. It'd be great if our society could move past those two sides of the same coin to a more "oh, look, here's an area where people are getting screwed, maybe we can fix that". That's a kind of problem-solving attitude focused on people, not a popularity contest.
civilized 4y ago
If the MBAs send all the stinky stuff to the compost rather than the landfill, it's still going to offend someone.
unnamed76ri 4y ago
And I’d be willing to bet that the cities that exist like this are controlled by one political party and the population happily keeps voting to keep them in power.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  It's not specific cities. It's huge metro areas.

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.

thwayunion 4y ago
I guess another way of saying that is that the US does not have "modern, well regulated landfills".
- sparky_z 4y ago
  You seem to be conflating landfills (where trash that's trucked away from your curb goes to be buried) and sewage treatment plants (where the stuff you put down your pipes goes to be processed into clean water, fertilizer, and "other"). They are completely different things.
  - mordechai9000 4y ago
    In my city, the solids from the sewage treatment plant are trucked to the landfill.
    - thwayunion 4y ago
      Most places. the solids are either burned or dumped.
google234123 4y ago
How many toilets would this facility have for workers there? 10 million would only allow for 5 at the current price of 1.7 million per toilet.
throwing_away 4y ago

kotlin2 4y ago

That’s a solvable problem though. Regulations could be changed to require more buffer areas for the landfill. Also, another thing to think about it is that your parents likely picked the best place available for their means. Not many people choose to live next to landfills if they can afford something better. Had the landfill not existed, your parents would have likely needed to live next to some other type of hazard. It’s unfortunate, but a reality of our economic system.

titzer 4y ago
That's a heck of a dystopian view, TBH. Be glad it was just the landfill, otherwise it might have been a nuclear dump? Welp, guess that's just economics, nothing we can do about that, poor unlucky rubes! I know you didn't mean it that way, but it can sound extraordinarily tone-deaf to talk down to people like this.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  A lot of people on the Internet would rather be right than liked. The medium lends itself to this: there's little point in having random people you will never meet like you. I thought OP was making an interesting point about economics, personally - that there's sort of a law of "conservation of unpleasantness" in a market economy, and if it wasn't the landfill, there would be some other thing objectionable about your property. You approach your career very differently (and by capitalist standards, usually more successfully) if you figure that you're going to dislike some things anyway, but might as well be deliberate in choosing what you dislike.
  - lukas099 4y ago
    This was a really good comment, thanks.
  - titzer 4y ago
    It's not necessarily about being liked; that's part of our current culture's narcissism problem. It's about what kind of society do you want to live in. Do you want to live in a society where the prevailing attitude ranges from the personal "welp, sucks to be you! be grateful you have anything at all you gutter trash" to the non-personal "it's unfortunate this machine runs on frickaseed baby faces, well I guess there's nothing we can do". To be clear, I'm exaggerating for comedic effect here, not accusing. It'd be great if our society could move past those two sides of the same coin to a more "oh, look, here's an area where people are getting screwed, maybe we can fix that". That's a kind of problem-solving attitude focused on people, not a popularity contest.

civilized 4y ago

If the MBAs send all the stinky stuff to the compost rather than the landfill, it's still going to offend someone.

unnamed76ri 4y ago

And I’d be willing to bet that the cities that exist like this are controlled by one political party and the population happily keeps voting to keep them in power.

thwayunion 4y ago
It's not specific cities. It's huge metro areas.