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It would be best if exporting trash was banned and countries couldn't just pay others to dump their trash and toxic waste into ground or rivers.

by badpun 4y ago

spacebanana7 4y ago
We should be exporting trash from fragile environments to sturdy ones wherever possible, even when national boundaries need to be crossed. Australian landfill waste should go to the outback rather than rainforests, Chinese waste should go to their western deserts and tropical Africa should export waste to Saharan Africa to reduce the impact on wildlife.
- jaggederest 4y ago
  Broadly agree that we should be shipping waste to robust ecosystems, but I differ on where that is. Generally speaking deserts are more fragile than high moisture ecosystems, though. Cryptobiotic crusts can take hundreds of years to form, and even a small disruption can destroy them until they reform. More robust ecosystems reform readily, like hardwood and softwood secondary growth forests in the US, for example. They can quite happily grow back in a few decades on top of a clay capped landfill.
  - bilsbie 4y ago
    Tundra might be a good place. Far enough north almost nothing grows. Or perhaps abandoned quarries or mines? Or already damaged sites. On the other hand even giant landfills aren’t that big in the scheme of things. They’re pretty low on my list of environmental problems.
roenxi 4y ago
> It would be best if There is a bit of a pattern where society at large struggles to reason about waste (and end of life care, probably for similar reasons - triggers fear and disgust responses). Completely unavoidable part of sustaining a modern society. But it seems to be intolerable to handle in the harm-minimising way and essential to handle in the harm-most-difficult-to-see way. It can be very frustrating. We'd be better off if people just took a deep breath and put their emotions to one side when we know that emotional reasoning leads to bad outcomes.
more_corn 4y ago
Sweden burns trash for electricity. But they also recycle too well. They reached a point where they were scrambling to import enough trash to run their electric plants. I don’t disagree in principle, but this is a (very limited) counterpoint where trash exports are a positive thing. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/sweden-imports-trash-norway-heat-electricity-article-1.1192661 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/sweden-imports-trash-...

It would be best if exporting trash was banned and countries couldn't just pay others to dump their trash and toxic waste into ground or rivers.

by badpun 4y ago

It would be best if exporting trash was banned and countries couldn't just pay others to dump their trash and toxic waste into ground or rivers.

spacebanana7 4y ago

We should be exporting trash from fragile environments to sturdy ones wherever possible, even when national boundaries need to be crossed. Australian landfill waste should go to the outback rather than rainforests, Chinese waste should go to their western deserts and tropical Africa should export waste to Saharan Africa to reduce the impact on wildlife.

jaggederest 4y ago
Broadly agree that we should be shipping waste to robust ecosystems, but I differ on where that is. Generally speaking deserts are more fragile than high moisture ecosystems, though. Cryptobiotic crusts can take hundreds of years to form, and even a small disruption can destroy them until they reform. More robust ecosystems reform readily, like hardwood and softwood secondary growth forests in the US, for example. They can quite happily grow back in a few decades on top of a clay capped landfill.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  Tundra might be a good place. Far enough north almost nothing grows. Or perhaps abandoned quarries or mines? Or already damaged sites. On the other hand even giant landfills aren’t that big in the scheme of things. They’re pretty low on my list of environmental problems.

roenxi 4y ago

> It would be best if There is a bit of a pattern where society at large struggles to reason about waste (and end of life care, probably for similar reasons - triggers fear and disgust responses). Completely unavoidable part of sustaining a modern society. But it seems to be intolerable to handle in the harm-minimising way and essential to handle in the harm-most-difficult-to-see way. It can be very frustrating. We'd be better off if people just took a deep breath and put their emotions to one side when we know that emotional reasoning leads to bad outcomes.

more_corn 4y ago

Sweden burns trash for electricity. But they also recycle too well. They reached a point where they were scrambling to import enough trash to run their electric plants. I don’t disagree in principle, but this is a (very limited) counterpoint where trash exports are a positive thing. https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/sweden-imports-trash-norway-heat-electricity-article-1.1192661 https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/sweden-imports-trash-...