Really curious as I know part of the problem may be pollution, but if certain parts of trash were burnable and safe, would that be a viable waste disposal option, somehow? Thanks in advance.
EDIT: Huge thank you to everyone that contributed & especially those with the World Class responses to my simple yet genuine question. This is why I consider this sub to be the Gem of the Internet. I know we all have a different frame of reference & I applaud you for taking the time to break down the answer in the unique form that you have provided. Much respect!
In: 4688
volcanos are busy shooting stuff out. if you put something in, it will come back out shortly, generally in a more nasty form
Garbage and trash isn’t really an issue. The issue is pollution and littering. If you make a landfill correctly you don’t have to worry about anything getting to the groundwater or trash getting out. A lot of landfills actually create energy from gases of decomposing matter.
Out of all the issues at this planet faces where to put our trash is not one of them. You could put the entire worlds of trash in area so small it would be considered a rounding error.
Where we put our trash is not an issue or concern.
Switzerland burns its waste that cannot be recycled. The heat that is produced by the incineration is used to feed the power grid. Waste is separated by the households and companies for recycling and only what cannot be recycled is being collected in the trash and burned. The system works by making recycling waste free while you pay for each bag of trash so there’s an incentive to recycle as much as possible.
To answer your question, you can throw waste into a volcano but it would be very bad for the environment to burn it in such an uncontrolled way and to waste the “fuel” that is created by burning it.
Related question, If we ever master space travel, what stops us from launching our Trash into the sun? WCGW Just completely obliterating it with the Sun’s energy?
What you want is the opposite of a volcano. It spews out. A subduction zone buries under. SF author David Brin wrote about this practice to help keep planetary ecosystems relatively untouched.
The idea is that there are certain areas of plate tectonics where one plate dives underneath another, and all the sediment and crust get sucked down and recycled in the athsenosphere. Any trash dumped there would be too.
Catch is, we already do it. Offshore dumping is (or was) pretty common. However it has many short term problems, and the subduction is long term, geologically long term, like longer than humans have been homo sapiens long term solution.
You don’t want to anger the volcano goddess.
The volcanos are extremely important to the local native population in Hawaii so for one thing it would be considered very insulting to use them as a giant trash burner.
I thought Karl Pilkington had already asked this question? 🤣
I remember asking the exact same question in 3rd grade when we were discussing greener earth or something like that. She just told me that trash would pollute the air adding up to the greenhouse effect.
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