Why can’t we just burn the garbage in landfills?

Question

I see these articles about landfills overflowing and waste being improperly dumped in our oceans. Why can’t we just burn all of the garbage and never have to deal with it again?

In: 2

Answer 1

This is fundamentally an economic and political problem, not an existential problem. This is combined with news fearmongering and misinformation.

Let me start by saying, garbage IS a problem. Overconsumption and waste IS real, and we should stop.

But popular depictions are wrong. For example, the great Pacific garbage patch isn’t a floating island of trash. It’s an area with more fingernail sized pieces of plastic float that usual. Note that this is actually WORSE because you’re more likely to eat this microplastic and have it cause disease than if it was a giant lump.

Overflowing landfills are a LOCAL problem, because local communities just don’t want to build landfills. They’d rather build more homes and shopping centers than landfills. They CHOOSE not to build landfills, not because they physically cant (at least in continental US). Modern landfills aren’t perfect, but they’re pretty good. But they are expensive, stinky, and no one wants one in their backyard.

Properly maintained, they’re perfectly safe and you can put kids playgrounds on on top of a full one just fine.

Notice the Properly, local politicians see that word to mean “$”. So they contract that out to the lowest bidder and are shocked Pikachu face when private companies cut corners.

Burning trash converts physical waste, into air pollution. This is CO2 and pollution you breathe in, instead of burying it.

Back to the ocean plastic waste, you might see the rivers in Brasil clogged with trash. This is because the local government doesn’t have the money to handle it properly, and locals dump it in the river because that’s the least bad solution.

Locals dump garbage into the river, it flows to the coast, and MrBeast picks it up for YouTube clicks.

The proper solution is to fund the local government to have garbage trucks to pick it up at the source and dump it in a LANDFILL before it goes into the river.