This video might open some new opportunity for Asia(except china) and Africa.
This video might open some new opportunity for Asia(except china) and Africa.
best solution is to teach Americans to waste less...
I guess it's always been easier to ship it off to another country and let them deal with it or just bury it. I passed by a landfill earlier this week and was amazed at how huge it was. Just cover it up with some dirt, plant some grass on it and forget about it. Man made mountains.
Last edited by jimicrk; 09-28-2018 at 06:26 AM.
This is the direction the US may have to take to handle the waste problems.
Unless and until there is some toxic waste, anything can be re-used. Organic waste could converted as a agriculture manure, metal is recycled, paper waste re-used and the list goes on. There should be some system to solve the issue. Those developed countries like USA puts more effort on ways to re-use. They invest on new technologies. And country like us (India) finds ancient ways to solve the problem. I know one college professor who invented a way to build roads with waste polythene sheets. His effort never got recognised.
Up the road from me in Va beach they have Mount Trashmore.
I **** you not.
A hill, a very big hill..made out of trash. It's got grass and everything. They even hold a festival there once a year.
Place is like a park with all the people it attracts to it. It's also very hard to miss on your way into Va Beach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Trashmore_Park
Far as China goes.....consequences for actions apply go government choices also. Trade/tariff/whatever wars impact everyone in big ways and small.
Someone else will take it, or we'll find ways to deal with it. Hopefully without adding to air pollution. I like not breathing ****ty, toxic, smelly air.
Then again...it's one reason I moved to a sandbar 2 miles out in the ocean. Much cleaner air.
Sirscrapalot - Rawhide!
Big problem is mixing all the recycling together. If we were to keep it separate from the beginning it could be sold for more money, but we mix it all in the blue bins along with diapers and food waste and other trash. Least amount of effort to have someone recycle. At the scrap yard you get paid more if you have your metals separated than if you have them all mixed up.
Better than the dump!
I bet you it's going to end up in India, Pakistan or even Egypt .
It's too expensive in the US to separate mixed plastic .
I agree it's far to expensive for them to sort at this point.
Question is which costs more? Starting to sort now, or cleaning up whatever disaster is going to befall whatever country that takes it and lacks regulations to do in a safe manner to the environment and it's people? Nobody wants to go swim in water mixed with nasty fluids from whatever. Not to mention the things that leech into water supplies, basins, rivers, etc etc etc.
An answer will need to be found eventually. Let's hope they don't choose the Ocean, space, or some other silly idea. Space debrie damages things..google it. Polluting the ocean doesn't help the sea life nor the people who eat said sea life. Makes you wonder..
We can think up things like self-driving cars, spaceships, visiting other planets,atomic bombs, curing diseases, all kinds of nasty weapons from guns to nukes,crazy advances in health an technology...but we can't figure out what to do with all the trash mankind makes.
Things that make you go hmmm...
Sirscrapalot - If I had the answers....I'd charge people bacon for them.
Just watch the movie Wall-E
BUYING ALL COMPUTER SCRAP WORKING OR NOT
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people need to stop wish-cycling it basically turns their whole bin into trash
Currently looking for a job in or related to scrap/recycling. Relocation is possible for the right offer.
The big problem is plastic. Made from petroleum. Perhaps the oil industry should help fund the clean up. Of course responsible packaging practices would go a long way to help too.
Copper, brass, and Leather. 3 of my favorite things.
What would happen if they pumped the granulated waste plastic back down into the empty oil wells?
Pressure + heat would pyrolysis it, but into what under those conditions & what happens to the Bromine from bromated fire retardant plastics.
Though the Bromine probably came from the sea water anyway.
I was working in Seattle a few years ago and had some trash I needed to throw away. The "recycling bin" had 3 holes with symbols above each. I put each item in it's correct hole and it all fell into 1 big effing trash bag. What a joke!
Humm ... well ... ????? I'm not quite sure what to think.
I really don't think of Maine as being all that far forward but i'm starting to wonder. Recycling here is so common place that it's just taken for granted.
You know how it is ... you live in your own little world at the end of the earth and you're completely oblivious to what's going on in other parts of the country ? You just take it for granted that everyone else does the same ?
You guys raised a lot of good points. If it's okay i'll offer some some solutions that have been in place for quite some time.
For MSM: True enough ... we're a wealthy country and generate more than our fair share of waste. We have a consumer & service driven economy. We really should look into rebuilding our manufacturing base and taking all those American jobs that were exported to the East back where they belong. See ... you need raw materials for manufacturing. Recycled materials are perfect for that kind of thing. The Chinese needed our recycled materials to support the growth of their manufacturing sector. That's why we exported to them. It's all about the money.
For Jim, Sir S. , 520, & 406 R: There really isn't all that much need to landfill anymore. We've had a waste to energy plant in operation since 1988. It's well proven to work in the real world and has reduced the need to landfill by about 90%. There are no perfect solutions but it's a fairly good one. Here's the link: PERC | Penobscot Energy Recovery Company
HG: Fair point on packaging.
Again, no perfect solutions, but we introduced the Maine Bottle Bill here back in 1976. It's been in operation for over 40 years. Best figures suggest that we're recycling 85 - 90% of our beverage containers now. It's proven to work.
Nationwide we're landfilling somewhere around 20 billion containers a year. A nationwide bottle bill would create conformity and make a pretty significant dent in that number. It would create lots of scrapping jobs all up and down the chain.
Our company has also recently gone to bio-degradable packaging for our meats, produce, and coffee station. The packaging is made from plant based products so there's not much petroleum being used.
We also have a plastic store shopping bag recycling program in place. Some of the local gals knit them into women's handbags & other useful products. It's a nice little cottage industry that brings a bit of extra money into the household.
Good point on labor & sorting HF: A lot of the labor involved with sorting here is provided by the consumers themselves.
They feed the redeemable beverage containers into a Tomra reverse vending machine and get a slip that they can turn in for money. Quite a few poor folks bring back truckloads of bottles and then go to the store to buy their groceries. If not for the bottle returns ... they might not eat very well that night.
Our transfer station ( aka: town dump) has all kinds of truck sized roll away containers for cardboard,glass, metal, and the different grades of plastic. Recycling and sorting is strictly voluntary but a lot of people participate. It makes them feel like they're doing their part.
Anyway, it's said that "crisis" is also the same word for "opportunity" in one or more of the languages ?
Why not look for ways to exploit this opportunity, make a few dollars, and build a more sustainable future for ourselves ?
The heck with the Chinese !
Last edited by hills; 10-02-2018 at 08:57 AM.
Let's just tax the # out of everyone !
Plastic is used for everything from medical devices, to car parts, to building material . Trying to blame the oil industry for plastic trash is the equivalent of blaming the tobacco farmers for cigarette butts !
Most plastic manufacturers are outside of the US, so I would love to see how 'making them pay' works.
To answer your question, I worked on a project at the Kraton facility over in Ohio ... it's very dangerous work, and folks end up getting killed on maintenance all the time. I have never seen an oil refinery make plastic products.
Next time you use a plastic power tool, drive your plastic car around, or eat food that was stored in a plastic container, just remember that many folks DIE to keep the plastic processing plants running.
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