The Garbage Nightmare

Over 52 tons of solid waste is landfilled per second on planet earth. This translates into 2.6 billion tons of landfilled waste per year, and over 3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions per year from landfilled waste. So shall we put this in perspective, this number of 3 billion tons world wide? It is half of the total US emissions! Or the emissions of India and Japan combined!

We have got to do something--we have got to do a lot of things--about this waste problem. We have got to minimize, recycle, reuse, think of waste as food; that's what nature does. Every creature that produces waste is producing food for some other creature on this planet. We have got to close the loop. As my friends Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart say, we have to stop thinking about cradle to grave and start thinking about cradle to cradle.

And not just because of greenhouse gases either. One of the deepest questions we can ask when talking about the environment is this one: What is land for? There is a lot to debate about this, but I know one thing for sure. Land is not the place where we should be storing our garbage, to let it decay and release methane into the atmosphere. We all need to be asking deeper questions about packaging of those we are buying stuff from. Some of these are already becoming common questions in our society: Like when I buy four peaches this summer at the supermarket do they come in a package with a molded plastic base and a clear molded plastic top, or are they loose? And questions to ask ourselves as well, like when I take those 4 loose peaches, do I put them in a bag I have used before and can reuse again, or into a plastic bag that winds up in the middle of the pacific ocean a few years from now and get swallowed by a fish? Yes, many of us are already asking those questions.

But what about the box and packing material that a new television is packed in? Maybe it needs that box to get safely from the factory to the warehouse to the Best Buy store, maybe. But how do we get that box and Styrofoam back to where it started so it can make another journey. And yes, there will still be plenty of waste for our three companies to deal with. McDonough and Braungart give one of the great examples of this from history. When Henry Ford shipped you a model T in its wooden packing case, you took the wood and converted it into the floorboard of the car. How do we get back to this sort of thinking?

And we need to seriously question our own buying values. If a car that has been driven for 250,000 miles has some parts that are still as good as they were when the car was new, do those parts have to be melted down and reprocessed, at great energy cost, or worse, thrown away into landfill, or can they go into another car? Why wouldn't I buy a new car, with a new car guarantee, that had reused parts in it? The automakers don't do this because they think we won't accept it. Governments, who are big purchasers of all sorts of stuff, from cars to copying machines, often specify that it must all be new. This is waste, and waste is a form of stupidity that this society could never afford, and really can't afford now.

There are a lot of entrepreneurs working in this field. You can hear my conversation with some of them on Environment on the Edge, my radio program on Voice America. You can download this from itunes by clicking here.

Comments

[kasst110]

Excellent article. There's more on the magnitude and impact of landfill waste at:

http://ze-gen.com/rethink/ze-gen/between-a-milestone-and-a-hardplace

[arabianway]

Excellent post. It seems that many are complacent because they do recycle. But the larger question addressed here is much more important. The amount of waste material we are generating in the first place.

How much packaging was used for what you purchased? What is it composed of? Where does it go? If I throw it away, where is away?

As Mr. Bulkin makes clear, issues of minimizing consumption and reuse of packaging materials are at least as important as recycling, unless we plan to use the space program to outsource trash when there is no place left on Earth to put it.

[Perfgogreen]

If everyone just took pride & initiative in doing one thing at a time, they would realize how easy it is to recycle, refurbish and set a great example to your family, your children, your peers and neighbors. We are so excited about Perf Go Green, our mission from inception to create a GREEN company for the development and global marketing of 100% eco-friendly, non-toxic, food contact compliant 100% biodegradable plastic products as a practical and viable solution to eliminating plastic waste from the world environment. We also assist with battery recycling & The Go Green 21.0 Foundation. Stop by our website to learn more: http://bit.ly/gOYSE

Thanks,
Tony

[lilpeg]

We are successful with our recycling of packaging that can be done in our city. But, we still have the problem of what to do with materials that cannot be recycled, eg #5 plastics, bottle and jar covers, plastic bread bags. It would be nice if there were more compostible packing materials around appliances and such. Even if they end up in the landfill, they would readily degrade. EPA should take up this subject.

[Stefano]

My mother was preaching this in the 70's, god bless her. I remember as a child the ad with the American Indian and the tear slowly streaming down his face as he looked over a landfill, one of the most powerful ads I've ever seen. We cannot be a disposable society in the name of convienence. Things are getting better as I have plenty of places where I recycle plastic bags and recently, Dell teamed with Goodwill to recycle old computers. But I still (even in NYC) here attitudes about recycling that sicken me. Are people so shockingly selfish that the slightest inconvienece like separating trash is such a big deal? It adds about 1 minute to taking out trash, and it disgusts me when I hear people actually bragging about not recycling. Staten Island, which could be some of the nicest real estate in the NY area, still smells like a dump thanks to years of using it as a landfill. Its got so bad that we now outsource our trash to other states, it amazed me that people can't spend a minute of their time to try to reduce some of that.