191–200 of 228 posts
There is this strange belief that landfills are taking up a ton of space and we need to reduce landfill usage because of it. This is simply not true. Landfills don't take up much space, we have plenty.
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Glass is essentially sand. Sure it may be sharp when it just broke, but it gets dull pretty fast in nature. Of all the things that got dumped onto this beach at Ft Bragg, glass was the least problematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_Calif...
> dull pretty fast in nature Especially when a critter chews on it accidentally, or it gets crushed under foot and some ends up in the foot. It's the dulling process that sucks.
Asia is not "taking a stand", that's quite the spin on reality. It was never economically profitable, and they tightened import controls as a pawn in the current trade war. Coincidently: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti... It's not to say that the move will undoubtedly benefit the environment, but we should call a spade a spade.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.my/malaysia-town-plastic-waste-c...
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Is there really much of a point in recycling anything but reasonably clean paper/cardboard (I know stuff like greasy pizza boxes won't get recycled), and clean metals (like aluminum cans). Like, aside for those, will much realistically get recycled? Aside for the insane amount of amazon boxes I toss in recycling, so very little of my trash fits the bill of things that will reasonably get recycled...
Glass is another (the other?) material which is worthwhile to recycle. Like plastic, glass never decomposes. Unlike plastic and unlike paper/cardboard, it can be endlessly remelted and remade into new products without a loss in quality. It's a huge savings in material and energy cost to use recycled glass in the manufacture of new glass. If you have a recycling bin labeled "glass", absolutely do throw (place) glass b…
Reusing glass is the way forward.
This might be a dumb question, but: why don't we do glass-style bottles? I live in America now, but when I used to live in Pakistan 20 years ago, I remember that I would buy pepsi or coki in a glass bottle... and if I wanted to buy a second one, I would go back to the store and give them the old empty bottle, and they would compensate me a few pennies for it -- and the bottle then is presumably washed and reused. It'…
The most legitimate challenge is branding. Each company wants their own style bottle, maybe with a certain color to protect it from light, or maybe just with a certain visual appeal. If you have a universal bottle, they can be collected & reused anywhere. Pretty simple. But if the ten thousand different drink companies each have to collect, sort, & ship their bottles back to their processing plants that suddenly beco…
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Glass is literally molten sand. It will break down just like the rock breaks down. It's not toxic or hazardous, except when it's freshly shattered, but these super sharp edges weather relatively quickly, after which they aren't any sharper than natural found rock. This not to say that we should just don't care and throw away glass anywhere we want, but it's really not a huge deal, unless you hate seeing glass pebbles…
> It's not toxic or hazardous, except when it's freshly shattered, but these super sharp edges weather relatively quickly, after which they aren't any sharper than natural found rock. Glass actually takes a long time to lose its sharp edge unless it's dumped in a river or the ocean, which is in fact a great way to dispose of glass. There really is no better way to dispose of garbage than dumping glass in the ocean...…
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Glass is essentially sand. Sure it may be sharp when it just broke, but it gets dull pretty fast in nature. Of all the things that got dumped onto this beach at Ft Bragg, glass was the least problematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_Calif...
additionally, isnt glass a semi natural occurring substance? Im pretty sure ive heard of lightning strikes in deserts/sand that created glass.
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Source? Landfills take up a lot of space. I saw a documentary about it (forgot the name of it). Humans waste so much and the trash keeps piling up. You can only dig so much.
Landfills are three dimensional and the Earth is astonishingly large. On millennia timescales, we will never run out of places to put them. At a depth of 400 feet, the entire US annual trash output is approximately 1,000 acre [1]. There are 37 billion acres on earth. And indeed, much of that is not very habitable land. And importantly, landfill space is not permanently lost. There are many beautiful parks around the…
Also, the waste can pollute underground waters, and if there are many rivers in the region, the water will be contaminated in a large area around.
There is this strange belief that landfills are taking up a ton of space and we need to reduce landfill usage because of it. This is simply not true. Landfills don't take up much space, we have plenty.
I think there are much more important issues like space: Improperly constructed and maintained landfills (i.e. most of them) leak pollutants into the ground (water) and offgas significant quantities of methane. (No sources handy right now...)
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This all hinges on what you mean by “relatively fast”. If glass is being shattered and ends up being a hazard for years, this is much worse than a goopy old discarded plastic bottle, regardless of the perceived ugliness of the latter.
> this is much worse than a goopy old discarded plastic bottle No, over time the plastic bottle will weather into cell-scale microplastic particles and play indefinite havoc with local wildlife. Glass will not.