US waste problems

So with the not-so-recent import restrictions on foreign garbage and waste from China, the US is starting to experience problems as plants are unable to keep up with the amount of waste that piles up. With the US producing 12% of the world's waste, it's difficult to see an immediate solution to this problem unless more landfills are opened up. This could lead to further environmental problems as waste could pollute soil and ground water for many years.

“China’s import restrictions on recycled commodities have caused a fundamental disruption in global supply chains for scrap materials, directing them away from productive reuse and toward disposal,” a US spokesperson pointed out at the WTO session in Geneva, demanding that “China immediately halt implementation and revise these measures in a manner consistent with existing international standards for trade in scrap materials.”

“The dirty secret of recycling is that it depended on the willingness of Third World countries to greenwash our trash so that progressives could pretend that their moral garbage was saving the planet,” Daniel Greenfield wrote in Front Page magazine on Thursday.www.rt.com...

www.statista.com...

www.theworldcounts.com...-facts

I love it when unsustainable practices come to a grinding halt.
I suspect we'll see many more problems like this over the next ten years, as one practice after another reaches its breaking point!

Just look at the garbage problem in India.
They're just ignoring it... as if it'll get better.

To think, there are still people who believe the human race isn't over populated...

originally posted by: lordcomac
I love it when unsustainable practices come to a grinding halt.
I suspect we'll see many more problems like this over the next ten years, as one practice after another reaches its breaking point!

Just look at the garbage problem in India.
They're just ignoring it... as if it'll get better.

To think, there are still people who believe the human race isn't over populated...

We aren't over populated.... it is just there are too many people who all want to live in the same places. Seriously, go look at a map juxatopsed with populations and you will see how much open uninhabited space there is globally. Heck, in most of the US you can go 50 miles outside of a major city and it will be like no one is around.

originally posted by: lordcomac
I love it when unsustainable practices come to a grinding halt.
I suspect we'll see many more problems like this over the next ten years, as one practice after another reaches its breaking point!

Just look at the garbage problem in India.
They're just ignoring it... as if it'll get better.

To think, there are still people who believe the human race isn't over populated...

Well it might actually be for the better that all of the trash imports are being halted. Maybe we'll all start recycling more?
Oh and as for India - I read somewhere that the local government in Uttar Pradesh has put pressure on the federal government to restore and maintain Taj Mahal. It is getting brown and black which is believed to be mainly due to pollution. The supreme court is getting involved in this debate as well

a reply to: Edumakated

To be fair, overpopulation is not only about landmass. It is also about pollution, water usage, food consumption and so forth. Overpopulation can just as much be due to lack of ressources as lack of landmass.

We need a lot more than landmass to live- it takes a lot of clean water to keep a person alive for a year, and just in the US, the west coast is running out. China has a huge upcoming clean water problem, too.

Back on topic- recycling isn't as green as we like to think it is.
It takes a lot of heat to recycle metal, and a lot of crap gets released into the air or water processing most anything else. Third world countries have gotten paid to take a lot of free resources by recycling our garbage over the years, but in processing that garbage they've poisoned their land.
Because it's cheaper to poison their land than it is to poison our own, we've been burning fuel to transport our junk across the globe for decades.

The mind boggles.

You already solved your own fake problem. Open more landfills. We have plenty of uninhabited areas in the U.S. and much of it is desert and not otherwise useable for anything.

Some people like to make up problems because they can’t stand being happy. Be glad all you have are first world issue like this and not real problems.

originally posted by: Metallicus
You already solved your own fake problem. Open more landfills. We have plenty of uninhabited areas in the U.S. and much of it is desert and not otherwise useable for anything.

Some people like to make up problems because they can’t stand being happy. Be glad all you have are first world issue like this and not real problems.

The problem is the environmentalist will determine some newt or flea might be put at risk....

a reply to: Metallicus

I don't see how this is a made up problem. We produce goods and we must be responsible when dealing with the leftovers from those goods. The most sustainable way is to recycle it - not throw it away to rot and pollute.

Seriously, I had to drop the jeep into 4 low to get out of my garage today.

Damn that Trump.

The biggest problem is the process of metering water for rediculous profits.

...from our toilets to our tap, picking up every know toxin available, including the junk coming off the pipes, while clean water falls from the sky for free, in most areas.

a reply to: mikkelno

First off here's a direct link to the article used by RT.
www.frontpagemag.com...

Secondly the topic is much more complicated than we'd assume.
Here in the US (using this as example cause you did) you have to factor in things like education cause we as a society seem to have lost the ability to fix things. Then there's the artificially low cost for business's generating waste that now can't be shopped to the lowest bidder cause China's market just slammed shut. Plus genuine business closures of the participants who ultimately sold to China, or sold to bigger companies who did.
Shipping companies (freighters) and the trucking industry as well.

Only a couple of examples but here in the US there will be a large ripple effect in the economy, not just that individuals or municipalities will have to pay more.

Generally recycling was a totally oversold concept from the beginning.

Now I'm not saying that we don't need LESS packaging, or better designed appliances or to use sustainable resources but if you're going to get into this it gets complicated and messy which is why China taking our garbage was the "easy way out" of dealing with it to begin with.

We should stop making new plastics from scratch. All plastic products should be made from recycled plastics. It is everywhere. Up and down the streets, in the ocean, lakes, and streams, store parking lots, high school parking lots, etc...
It should be illegal to make new plastics. We must use recycled materials. Or make items from plant materials. Blaze pizza uses these plant straws, and some weed trimmer line is plant materials.. They are bio degradable.

The steel from everything used steel should be recycled. Dig it back up from previous land fills. Mine it, so that this too is reused. People should buy less, reuse, donate, recycle. It makes me sick to see people not recycle cardboard at the dump. The dump workers need to be monitored to do their jobs accurately. Most of them don't seem to care about the environment. All food scraps should be in a compost pile to make yard fertilizer in your yard, except meat scraps. Rubber tires should be recycled at car tire stores. Clothing should be donated or resold at consignment shops. The concept of life should not be more, more, more. It should be is this product necessary and reusable? South Carolina has excellent recycling stations to take your garbage to and sort. This action makes people buy less, it's work to go to the stations and sort. However, we do have an inordinate amount of road side litter.

Being disabled we have a lot of things delivered from Amazon. What shocks me is how much waste is used in packaging and shipping. Seems to me it wouldn't be that hard to make a machine that will create the box and padding using a bare minimum of materials. They could easily cut waste in half with such a machine. Some inventor want to make a fortune? Build it.

Forgive me for not having read the source material in the OP, but given the topic, I’d encourage everyone to read this summary from Carnegie Mellon University — Outsourcing Pollution and Trade Impacts

Everything has a value just its the cost of getting it sorted, its a bit like ebay where you have a £20 vase but by the time you pack it up and send it you are better off just dumping it at the local charity store.

With electronics its the dirt v's ore problem in that if it costs more to recover than the market price at the moment its dirt so will just get dumped or smelted down with no real care.

Pre 1990's electronics had gold quite often 100 times the thickness they have now and literally are worth their weight in certain conditions.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: lordcomac
I love it when unsustainable practices come to a grinding halt.
I suspect we'll see many more problems like this over the next ten years, as one practice after another reaches its breaking point!

Just look at the garbage problem in India.
They're just ignoring it... as if it'll get better.

To think, there are still people who believe the human race isn't over populated...

We aren't over populated.... it is just there are too many people

Had you stopped there you'd have been correct and would have made a run at Yogi Berra.

The world is bottom heavy. We need a world war or global pox, which we're long overdue for anyway.

a reply to: mikkelno

I've done a lot of reading on this topic because I couldn't understand why the hell all the fuss about plastic straws.

Turns out the whole problem is all about plastics. I don't live in one, but apparently in a lot of US cities, there's mandatory (?) recycling but people, generally speaking, being both fat, and stupid, get the plastics in the wrong bins which gums up the paper and bottles with the plastics. Worse, since China isn't taking the plastics anymore, the US companies like Waste Management, or BFI or Republic don't have anywhere near the capacity to recycle this huge pile of plastic trash that's accumulating around the country. They have no choice but to put it into the landfills, but its not biodegradable and apparently stays the same over a million years or more.

Being resourceful, I'm sure Americans will choose from a wide range of acceptable options.

The first and usually most popular American solution is...............WAR! Find a big country with meager defenses, do the all up rock-n-roll US Shock'n Awe, bomb the inhabitants into the stone age, then transfer the survivors under the Refugee program to Detroit! Then ship all the plastic waste to the newly conquered country!
(To profit from this scheme, buy stock in Boeing and Johnson&Johnson because there's always a Refugee baby boom in Detroit after they get there).

The second and most popular "Democrat" solution would be simply........BAN PLASTICS! No plastic bottles, no plastic utensils or plates...........nothing, so everything that had been plastic would have to be wood or glass.
(To profit from this scheme, buy stock in International Paper and Corning (glass makers).

There you go! Problem solved!

originally posted by: frugal
We should stop making new plastics from scratch. All plastic products should be made from recycled plastics.

The problem is, as far as I know, that only glass is 100% recyclable, all other materials have some part of it lost in the recycling process.

a reply to: ArMaP

I think Aluminum is 100% recyclable, too.

a reply to: mikkelno

It's not just a business issue. We as consumers have a lot of choices to make in our daily lives about the amount of garbage that we generate.

You can start with small things. I won't buy or use water in those single use disposable bottles. I have water bottles that I can fill myself and take with me.

I have a nice travel mug in my car for when I feel the need to purchase a cup of coffee. That keeps my coffee warm and also I don't have to dispose of another coffee cup.

Same thing for soda. I have a refillable cup that I use.

Our kitchen waste goes to my compost pile. My cardboard, mostly from amazon, is picked up and recycled by our local waste management company.

We actually generate very little waste anymore that isn't recycled.

Every person needs to do their part. Then that concept needs to be expanded to businesses