Challenge: The Garbage Mess If we imagine ourselves aboard a spaceship, we realize immediately that one of the first problems we’d encounter would be how to dispose of trash. Garbage won’t simply go away. Any waste we create has to be either stowed somewhere or converted into a usable product. If we earth dwellers had been clever and had thought about the problem beforehand, we’d have seen to it that we created as little trash as possible and that most of what we did produce was capable of being reused, recycled, or recovered.
There was plenty of open space in which to dump it, and there wasn’t as much trash even a generation ago as there is today. Furthermore, most of it was biodegradable (it would decay naturally) and not nearly as hazardous as it is now. American communities are currently facing twin problems in disposing of their wastes: the sheer volume of the trash and the toxic nature of much of it. In the United States and Canada combined, the amount of trash has doubled in the last thirty years and currently stands at some 200 million tons per year, or about 3.5 pounds (1.6 kg) per person per day. You might find these figures hard to believe, arguing that you certainly don’t throw out that much. But you have to remember that municipal waste includes things like rusted cars and broken refrigerators as well as newspapers and beer cans. (Municipal waste does not include waste from manufacturing and industrial processes. That’s another problem societies have to deal with.) About four-fifths of the municipal waste is deposited in so-called sanitary landfills – dumps where each day’s waste is compacted and covered by a layer of clean earth. “Sanitary” is a deceptive word. Rain washes toxic chemicals from paint, pesticides, and other products into the soil, from which those chemicals eventually seep into groundwater supplies. Decomposing food wastes produce methane, a volatile gas that leaks into the air and soil. Municipal landfill capacity is shrinking dramatically. The number of landfills in the United States fell from 18,000 in the late 1970s to 6,000 in 1990. One-third of these will be closed within the next five years, either because they are full or because they are dangerous to the environment. Facing an acute shortage of landfill space, some northeastern states are paying other states and even other countries to accept their trash. As people become more aware of how landfills contaminate air, water, and soil, it becomes increasingly difficult for communities to site new landfills. Everyone wants them, but “NIMBY” (not in my backyard). One alternative to burying trash is to burn it. About 10% of America’s garbage is burned in incinerators that use extra-high temperatures to reduce trash to ash. Incinerators pose environmental problems of their own by generating toxic pollutants. Air emissions from incinerator stacks contain an alphabet soup of highly toxic elements, ranging from A (arsenic) to Z (zinc). The ashes left after burning, which are also toxic, are buried in landfills. |
copyright @ Illnesscuring.com
17,858 Expert Authors Sharing Their Best Health Articles
| Article Categories |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
