Part 10;
100% Recycling
No More Landfills
Why do we insist on dumping all our trash, into a big hole and then burying it, creating a big methane landmine, let’s make landfills illegal, become leaders in waste. Follow me here. This should be done in all states. Have waste disposal companies agree to build 100% recycling plants on or next to landfills. Using the gases from those landfills to power the new recycling plants, according to material type and sell to re-manufacturers for re purposing. What can’t be recycled, would be composted or shredded for use else where. There are new uses for these plastics. I’ve seen where some are using it in roads. (See youtube – B1M – Road to the future)
The lack of recycling threatens our future, we must learn, quickly to live with the planet, not against it. It is possible to re purposes these materials, in innovative ways. Did you know recycling a ton of waste paper can save 17 trees? We must rethink the way we live to make it through the next century. Note and see 4Oceans.com
From an article from AAAS-Science Advances – article Production, Use, and fate of all plastics ever made. – On July/2019. It’s estimated that 8300 Million Metric Tons of plastic have been produced since its inception, started in early 1950. As of 2015 approximately 6,300 million metric tons has been generated, around 9% has been recycled, 12% was incinerated and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. (Roadsides etc.) If current production and waste management trends continue, some 12,000 million metric tons of plastic waste will be in landfills, or the natural environment by 2050. 4-12 million metric tones are estimated to be in the marine environment today.
We all have seen where wildlife has ingested plastic in their dead carcasses in the environment. And recently a dead whale washing up on a beach, they cut it open to find out why it died and found 220 lbs. of plastic in its stomach. Plastic waste is now so ubiquitous in the environment that it has been suggested as a geological indicator of the proposed Anthropocene Era. And it is now stated that it is starting to accumulate in our food and in us. Hello, when the hell are we going to WAKE UP? I call this “Environmental Social Suicide”.
In an article from Earth Day on 8/7/2019 – Plastics take hundreds of years to break down, long after we are gone. These plastics are ingested by wildlife and some that we eat. It will be in us soon as it is in the wildlife, us and our children are next. When I was a kid, all our coke and such things came in glass bottles or aluminum cans, which we were required to pay a deposit on. To assure we returned them for reuse. Some states still do this when others don’t. We should drop these plastics from the product line all together, this would be a start. Then there, is the packaging of products with one use plastics. Why not biodegradable plastics? They do or can be produced and should be readily used, but aren’t?
It doesn’t help that we don’t really know how to recycle or have forgotten too. We often wish our recycling habits are working. This basis is of wishful recycling, when we optimistically put non-recycling objects in a recycling bin. Unfortunately, hope and optimism doesn’t sort our materials and when we contaminate our recycling bins with food waste and other non-recyclables, everything in the recycling bin is wasted and sent to the landfills. I clean out all my recyclables.
San Francisco has banned the sale of disposable plastic water bottles. To end the plastic pollution, we need to get to the source of the problem, its us, we need our leaders to pass plastic ban legislation. Hold plastic producers accountable. Tell them we are serious about ending plastic pollution. Those recycling plants can use robotics for the sorting process. This could create a multitude of benefits, using the unused gases that build up in landfills, saving the environment of possible leakage. Keeping trash from our waters and gasses from reaching the atmosphere, and the reuses of those materials, back into society, not our environment.
On April 22,2021 was the 51th anniversary of Earth Day. Now is the time to protect our planet, ourselves and children for future generation. We must be more responsible and considerate of this beautiful planet we live on. Or our trash will overtake us.
