Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, trash,
Speaker 1: go pick it up, don't take your life away. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Local, and I'm Joe McCormick. Today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about waste disposal, the future of it,
Speaker 1: the current situation, and what happens to all that garbage
Speaker 1: that we generate. Uh. If you listen to our last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about recycling. Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about other stuff. We're talking talking about landfills for example.
Speaker 1: That's a good place to start because that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of our garbage is up, a whole bunch of it,
Speaker 1: lots and lots of it trash. It actually peaked in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, didn't it. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we've
Speaker 1: gotten better at reducing the amount of garbage that goes
Speaker 1: to landfills. Although you know, you could argue that the
Speaker 1: amount continues to increase, but it kind of increases with population.
Speaker 1: If you look at it as from a per person perspective,
Speaker 1: it's going down. Um, But according to the New York Times,
Speaker 1: New York City alone sends about ten thousand five tons
Speaker 1: of residential garbage to landfills every day per day. Now,
Speaker 1: let me think about that a little bit, because New
Speaker 1: York City, that's not a place where you can just easily,
Speaker 1: oh you know, about a mile away you can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those landfills aren't located in New York at all, not
Speaker 1: New York State, not the Northeast. No, they're located in
Speaker 1: Ohio and South Carolina. What yeah, they're shipping the garbage
Speaker 1: to Ohio and South Carolina. Become a resident of Ohio. Hey, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of don't believe you what it's
Speaker 1: high on the middle, and I know there's not like
Speaker 1: a landfill in the middle of Manhattan, but what yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing is that with landfills, there is a
Speaker 1: fee associated with throwing garbage into landfills. It's not like
Speaker 1: there's just a hole that we dun't garbage in two
Speaker 1: and then we just stroll a a merrely whistling a
Speaker 1: happy tune. Probably for most of us, some of you
Speaker 1: there may have a very different experience. But in general,
Speaker 1: landfills are operated by private companies and these private companies
Speaker 1: charge what is called a tipping fee. Yeah, so y'all,
Speaker 1: have you all ever been to a landfill? Yes? I
Speaker 1: had to in Florida for school field trips. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was helping somebody remodel a bathroom and we had all
Speaker 1: this just junk, you know, from a smashed up tub
Speaker 1: and stuff in the back of a truck and we're like, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta take it to the landfill. I had no
Speaker 1: idea how this worked, but yeah, you pull up and
Speaker 1: they weigh your truck, and you go in, you dump
Speaker 1: it out, and then you pay when you're leaving, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to make sure it's see how much the the trash
Speaker 1: weight that you dumped in there. In general, the the
Speaker 1: tipping fees tend to be per ton. So on an
Speaker 1: individual basis like that it would be pretty minor. But
Speaker 1: for industrial, industrial use, municipal use, like if it's a
Speaker 1: city that that's dumping tons and tons of New York
Speaker 1: City tons of garbage, that racks up pretty quickly. So
Speaker 1: on average in the United States, that tends to be
Speaker 1: between thirty and forty dollars per ton. In the Northeast
Speaker 1: that's closer to between seventy and eighty dollars per ton.
Speaker 1: It's just landfill space there is is at a premium.
Speaker 1: They're very few and they are very expensive, so uh,
Speaker 1: it sometimes makes more sense economically speaking, to pay to
Speaker 1: have your garbage the stuff you do not want to
Speaker 1: be carried a very long way away to be dumped
Speaker 1: in someone else's hole. So that's the case with New
Speaker 1: York City. They're paying, you know, the shipping charges and
Speaker 1: the tipping fees together are still less than it would
Speaker 1: cost them if they were dumping the garbage closer to
Speaker 1: home now. According to Popular Mechanics, they published a whole
Speaker 1: UH article about landfills and myths and misconceptions about landfill
Speaker 1: and recycling as well. They said that the United States
Speaker 1: has about twenty years of disposal capacity left in existing landfills.
Speaker 1: This was two thou eight, and so they said that
Speaker 1: there were some places where space was getting a little tight. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those spaces one of them Alaska, which considering that's a
Speaker 1: huge state, but there's very limited uh landfill space. Connecticut, Delaware,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island all have less
Speaker 1: than five years capacity, which obviously must have changed since
Speaker 1: then because now it's five years later. But the northeastern
Speaker 1: part of the country in general has the least available
Speaker 1: landfill space, which is why that stuff is getting shipped
Speaker 1: down to other landfills. I assume that, yeah, that means
Speaker 1: if they don't take their trash to Texas or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right well, And while the number of US landfills has
Speaker 1: steadily declined, the average size of the landfills in the
Speaker 1: United States has actually grown. So not just saying that
Speaker 1: the piles of trash are get taller Sarah's Satia Sylvia
Speaker 1: Stout style, just throwing my little shell silver state reference
Speaker 1: in there, but but that the the land that's granted
Speaker 1: to the landfill is is growing as well. Now in
Speaker 1: the United States, we have and a lot of this
Speaker 1: discussion is going to be about the the US, But
Speaker 1: the United States we have lots and lots of land.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a huge country. So it's not actually
Speaker 1: that we don't have land to dump trash, and it's
Speaker 1: that you don't have appropriate land close enough, right, and
Speaker 1: also that you have communities that resist having something like
Speaker 1: a landfill put in. Now, you know, landfills are a
Speaker 1: means of, uh creating some jobs, though not a whole
Speaker 1: lot of them and also pulling in some money though
Speaker 1: for mostly a private organization that's running the landfill. But
Speaker 1: most communities look down upon it. It's not something that
Speaker 1: adds value to a community generally speaking, so there's usually
Speaker 1: a resistance. They're not especially fragrant in a good way. No, no,
Speaker 1: and they have a they can have a like verminous
Speaker 1: animals too. Yes, they do tend to do that. So, UM,
Speaker 1: what ends up in a landfill. It's municipal solid waste,
Speaker 1: which is made up of the things we tend to
Speaker 1: use and then throw away. That includes everything from packaging,
Speaker 1: food waste, old furniture, electronic waste, tires, grass clippings, etcetera. UM.
Speaker 1: It does not, however, include industrial hazardous or construction waste
Speaker 1: that's outside of municipal solid waste. And according to the
Speaker 1: e p A, the United States generated about two or
Speaker 1: fifty million tons of solid waste. You may have heard
Speaker 1: that figure when we were talking about it back in
Speaker 1: our previous podcast and UH that was back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven. That was the most recent report we were
Speaker 1: able to get information from UH. And then on average,
Speaker 1: Americans recycled and composted a out one point five three
Speaker 1: pounds of individual waste generation per day. But we generate
Speaker 1: about four point four pounds of waste, So we're generating
Speaker 1: four point four we're reclaiming one point five three. The
Speaker 1: rest of that gets thrown away, which is more than
Speaker 1: half of it um And uh, that stuff either ends
Speaker 1: up going to a landfill or in a few places
Speaker 1: it may go to an incinerator. But we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the incinerator in a second. So about fifty three point
Speaker 1: six of all the garbage in the United States ends
Speaker 1: up in landfills. And uh, you know, some of that's problematic,
Speaker 1: like anything that's organic is going to give off certain
Speaker 1: gases that tend to be a little troublesome, like methane.
Speaker 1: If you have a lot of organic material all sitting
Speaker 1: together and it's just piling up, it'll give off methane,
Speaker 1: which is a green euse gas and can affect decomposition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a decomposers will give off methane. Obviously if you
Speaker 1: were burn it, that would cause other issues. Other toxins
Speaker 1: would be emitted as well as greenouse gases like carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide would would be a byproduct, as as some of
Speaker 1: the chemicals and plastics. Well, I know that's plastics breakdown.
Speaker 1: But as some of the chemicals start reacting with each other,
Speaker 1: you wind up with this toxic soup stuff called a leachate.
Speaker 1: You don't want to you don't want that to get
Speaker 1: into your water table for example, right right, it can
Speaker 1: wind up right penetrating down through the soil and getting
Speaker 1: into the water table and causing bad news for everyone around.
Speaker 1: And it's bad, bad stuff. So landfills in general are
Speaker 1: looked down upon. They're seen as you know, it's a
Speaker 1: temporary solution. Really, it's just getting stuff out of sight
Speaker 1: so that you don't have to think about them anymore. Though,
Speaker 1: let me stick up for landfills in a way for
Speaker 1: a second here. I mean, there's always going to be
Speaker 1: at least some small amount of garbage that you can't
Speaker 1: really do anything else good with and we can't reuse
Speaker 1: or recycle in any way. Yeah, yeah, No, there's going
Speaker 1: to be some stuff that we are going to end
Speaker 1: owner that we cannot reclaim and we cannot you know,
Speaker 1: put to some other use. And I mean that's just
Speaker 1: a fact of life. But the question is what percentage
Speaker 1: of the stuff we're throwing away is that? And it's
Speaker 1: it's a much smaller percentage than the amount of stuff
Speaker 1: that's actually ending up in landfills. Absolutely, I'm just pointing
Speaker 1: out that I think if we're talking down on landfills
Speaker 1: in a bit, that the goal should be reducing use
Speaker 1: of them, not saying like we should live in a
Speaker 1: world where there's no garbage. Yeah, that's that's unrealistic. Although
Speaker 1: although part of the problem I think right now is
Speaker 1: the manufacturing processes that are leading to uh TO to
Speaker 1: waste materials that we have a difficulty post processing. So
Speaker 1: so part of the change is going to need to
Speaker 1: be our manufacturing right for getting packaging materials that can
Speaker 1: actually be broken down in an easy way and and
Speaker 1: sorted in an easy way. If you listen to our
Speaker 1: recycling podcast, then you know that one of the challenges
Speaker 1: is really the sorting process and making sure that the
Speaker 1: the materials that are going into a recycling plant are
Speaker 1: actually recyclable. In other countries, um, some of this burden
Speaker 1: has been pushed onto the manufacturers already. In fact, in Germany, UM,
Speaker 1: they they set out a legal precedent that really made
Speaker 1: it the job of the manufacturers to figure out how
Speaker 1: to deal with all of that, and and and they
Speaker 1: created a coalition that has since created a national recycling program,
Speaker 1: which is pretty nifty. Would you guys like to know
Speaker 1: what what stuff makes up by percentage our municipal solid waste? Please?
Speaker 1: Just all right? So how much? How much of a
Speaker 1: percentage do you think paper and paperboard make out of
Speaker 1: all the municipal solid waste? A thousand thousand percent? Okay,
Speaker 1: how much? Jackass? How much food waste? How much food waste?
Speaker 1: So paper and paper boards about how much? About food waste? Five?
Speaker 1: So close, So it's exactly it's going to go down
Speaker 1: from here, so don't go over. Plastic would be about
Speaker 1: metals are about nine percent, and then you have a rubber, leather,
Speaker 1: and textiles which make up eight percent or a fun
Speaker 1: Saturday night wood is about six and glass is about
Speaker 1: five percent. So that's that's just the general makeup of
Speaker 1: the organic materials and other materials that you find the
Speaker 1: municipal solid waste. Now, we did talk a lot about
Speaker 1: recycling in that last podcast, and we covered pretty much
Speaker 1: everything except well, there's there's some really creative recycling going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some some dark recycling, some criminal recycling. Soprano, like these
Speaker 1: recycling bins fell out the back of a truck. I
Speaker 1: I don't think it's it's as organized as they talk
Speaker 1: about in in some some movies and television unorganized crime.
Speaker 1: Unorganized crime is much better, yes, um, but see see.
Speaker 1: The thing is is that the prices for for metals
Speaker 1: like copper are skyrocketing, partially due to the electronics industry,
Speaker 1: um and and just all of the other industrial uses
Speaker 1: that we are finding frost. I think I see where
Speaker 1: you're going here. So um, you know you've you wind
Speaker 1: up having people stealing things like the bleachers out of
Speaker 1: football fields, um and selling them for scrap, or breaking
Speaker 1: into an an unoccupied house in or to steal the
Speaker 1: copper wiring, stripping out the old copper white wiring, or
Speaker 1: pipes shore or um uh, getting the catalytic converter out
Speaker 1: of a car and selling that for You have to
Speaker 1: slow down. I'm ranging these down for things to help
Speaker 1: supplement my income, and you're going too fast. Um. And
Speaker 1: kind of the sad thing about this is that when
Speaker 1: you sell something for scrap, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: very much of it. You know, a set of bleachers,
Speaker 1: for example, is going to cost several thousand dollars. You're
Speaker 1: going to get about six hundred for it. Um, a
Speaker 1: catalytic converter is going to cost about two thousand bucks
Speaker 1: to put in your car. It'll get you about a
Speaker 1: hundred twenty at the scrap heat. Yeah, it turns out
Speaker 1: the the I mean, if you're stealing it, then you
Speaker 1: didn't spend any money into this this in the first place.
Speaker 1: But well no, I imagine a stealing enterprise. You got
Speaker 1: to invest in that like any other business marketing for blachers.
Speaker 1: I mean there's manpower and trucks involved in taking those away.
Speaker 1: There was an artist named Henry Moore, sculptor who was
Speaker 1: very prolific in the sixties through the eighties about and
Speaker 1: um made these gorgeous, giant, weird metal sculptures. UM one
Speaker 1: of them, one of his reclining figure series, was two
Speaker 1: tons in weight about about five thousand pounds in weight
Speaker 1: UM worth three million pounds in money British British fellow
Speaker 1: so um pound sterling right, and was stolen using a
Speaker 1: crane and a truck and melted down. They suspect for
Speaker 1: pounds sterling. That doesn't even seem worth it. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of crane they need. Its gotta cost a whole
Speaker 1: lot to rent a crane. So yeah, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't can't just assume that it's like those kids you
Speaker 1: know who like they would cheat on tests in school,
Speaker 1: but they were like working way harder on the cheating
Speaker 1: scheme than it would actually take to study. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the dark side. I guess let's let's talk about well,
Speaker 1: let's continue the dark side here. But there are there
Speaker 1: are things that people are doing about this. There's UM,
Speaker 1: the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries here in the United States,
Speaker 1: which is a large organization of companies that are working
Speaker 1: towards being more efficient with our resources. Have a theft
Speaker 1: alert system in which if someone, for example, steals you
Speaker 1: are UM five million dollar statue, you can call them
Speaker 1: and say, hey, be on the lookout for this. UM
Speaker 1: scrap programs would like that back. Yeah, I wonder, I
Speaker 1: mean should should There will be suspicion to begin with,
Speaker 1: if somebody shows up with a pickup truck full of
Speaker 1: pipes or do people often sell their own pipes? I
Speaker 1: think I think it happens in post construction projects, like
Speaker 1: if if you're if you're scrapping a house except for
Speaker 1: the foundation or something with a famous sculpture in the
Speaker 1: back of your truck. Yeah, if you show up with
Speaker 1: a truck full of pipes and maybe you know a
Speaker 1: lot of meth paraphernalia, someone should be watching out. But
Speaker 1: but they people do suspect that the drug addicts are
Speaker 1: the largest portion of people who are you. That makes
Speaker 1: sense because desperation would could drive you to that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. If you'll listen to our previous podcast, we
Speaker 1: don't spend the whole time painting recycling with the drug
Speaker 1: crime brush. So we're pro recycling, yeah right, pro recycling,
Speaker 1: but we're anti steal that thing that was meant for
Speaker 1: one purpose so that you can make as on the dollar. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about another way of dealing
Speaker 1: with trash, which is burning it. That's uh yeah here
Speaker 1: in the South, that used to happen in like a
Speaker 1: big metal oil drum. Like I remember people, uh in
Speaker 1: my my grandparents neighborhood who would occasionally burn parts of
Speaker 1: their garbage. Um, because I mean this meant this was
Speaker 1: a place where they didn't have any sort of curbside pickup.
Speaker 1: You had to haul your garbage out to a dump.
Speaker 1: So I mean that totally makes sense, right, because when
Speaker 1: you burn something, all of its mass disappears. You can
Speaker 1: tell already from the snark emanating from the other two
Speaker 1: microphones that this is not necessarily the best idea, depending
Speaker 1: upon your facility. Now that that being said, I need
Speaker 1: to get this out of the way first. There are
Speaker 1: incinerator facilities out there that use very sophisticated methods to
Speaker 1: scrub and capture all the toxic materials that are released
Speaker 1: from burning garbage, and then they're using the actual burning,
Speaker 1: the incinerating of the garbage as a means of generating energy. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just burning like you could imagine
Speaker 1: an incenterator that the only purpose for it was just
Speaker 1: to get rid of garbage. But that's not the case.
Speaker 1: Characters from toy Story right right, It's it's a plot
Speaker 1: device to make you more emotionally invested in some three
Speaker 1: D animated characters. Uh No, it's usually part of an
Speaker 1: energy plant of some sort that they're trying to reclaim energy.
Speaker 1: Especially you're reclaiming some of the energy that was used
Speaker 1: to make those products by converting it back into uh well,
Speaker 1: really you're just applying heat and then usually you're converting
Speaker 1: water into steam to turn steam turbines. But there are
Speaker 1: other methods as well, and we'll talk about one of
Speaker 1: them in a little bit. But because of the definition
Speaker 1: of what incenterating is, so a lot of incinerators use combustion.
Speaker 1: That's where you're burning trash. You're actually literally burning it
Speaker 1: in the uh in you're having oxygen inside the environment.
Speaker 1: You're setting fire to stuff. Uh And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in the old incenterators in the United States, and most
Speaker 1: the incentrators in the United States are old. There haven't
Speaker 1: been a lot of new ones made recently. There weren't
Speaker 1: a whole lot of filters systems that would capture a
Speaker 1: lot of the toxic materials that would be released, So
Speaker 1: stuff would get released into the environment, uh, whether it
Speaker 1: was through gases or through the fly ash, which is
Speaker 1: really dangerous stuff. Fly ash is the ash that's left
Speaker 1: over after you have burned your your trash, and it
Speaker 1: can contain concentrated amounts of toxic material in it. Nice
Speaker 1: deep breath of diaper and bleach, yeah, and and chlorine
Speaker 1: and mercury like all other stuff that's really really really
Speaker 1: bad for you, like deadly for you, and to the
Speaker 1: point where you know, the disposing of that is its
Speaker 1: own industry, where the the ash from these incenterators is
Speaker 1: so toxic that it has to be stored in special
Speaker 1: containers and dumped in toxic waste areas. Um nasty, nasty stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can talk about byproducts like hydrochloric acid,
Speaker 1: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, dioxins, and furins. These are deadly materials. Now,
Speaker 1: Like I said, in the United States, there weren't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of incinerators that can handle this in a
Speaker 1: safe way. In Europe, it's a totally different story. In Europe,
Speaker 1: they have incinerators that are designed to capture and scrub
Speaker 1: all of this stuff to make it either useful or inert.
Speaker 1: So they're generating energy from their garbage. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: the most efficient way of doing it, but it's a
Speaker 1: way of dealing with the garbage and reclaiming some of
Speaker 1: the energy that was used to produce the products in
Speaker 1: the first place. And they're trying their best to make
Speaker 1: sure that any kind of emissions are well below the
Speaker 1: safety standards of whatever particular nation they are, if they're
Speaker 1: in the European Union, etcetera. The United States, again, not
Speaker 1: that many incinerators here, um, but there are people who
Speaker 1: are trying to build more of them, and some of
Speaker 1: them don't fit into the definition of incinerator as far
Speaker 1: as combustion goes. Incinerator, as it turns out, in the definition,
Speaker 1: is applying thermal energy to garbage in order to treat
Speaker 1: it and reclaim energy in some form. So in that case,
Speaker 1: one of the things we're talking about in a second,
Speaker 1: which are plasma converters, are actually they fall in this
Speaker 1: realm of incinerator under that definition. Even they're very much
Speaker 1: more efficient and they're not burning so much as applying
Speaker 1: huge amounts of energy to break down molecular bonds. But
Speaker 1: we'll chat about that in a second. Before we get
Speaker 1: to that, let's talk about another way. We've talked about recycling.
Speaker 1: We've talked about stuff going to the landfill. One thing
Speaker 1: we haven't really touched on is something that another way
Speaker 1: of dealing with some garbage, especially organic material, specifically organic
Speaker 1: material UH that has a lot of attention in some
Speaker 1: parts of the world. In the United States, for example,
Speaker 1: UH in San Francisco, there are a lot of people.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think it's municipally mandated that you that
Speaker 1: you do this, but it's not here in Atlanta, we
Speaker 1: don't have this, but composting or for my friends in
Speaker 1: the UK composting. Yeah. This this is a This is
Speaker 1: a process that uses the natural organic decomposition of of
Speaker 1: of materials by microorganisms and UM, you know, basically, all
Speaker 1: all you're doing is is mixing some nitrogen heavy materials
Speaker 1: you know, UM, grass or food products, UM, with carbon
Speaker 1: heavy materials like dry leaves or wood chips or something
Speaker 1: like that. UM in the right balance. UM you wanna
Speaker 1: you want to process them, you know, to shred them
Speaker 1: in some ways so that the micro organisms are going
Speaker 1: to have a better surface area to to work off of. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, make sure you've got enough air in them
Speaker 1: so that they can so that the critters can breathe
Speaker 1: m aerobic not anaerobic. Aerobic not anaerobic correct, thank you, UM,
Speaker 1: enough water for them to survive and uh around at
Speaker 1: the right temperature for them to do their thing. And UM,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a layering process that that speeds
Speaker 1: decomposition at the right rate to create a multua hummus
Speaker 1: that you can then use to um to to fertilize
Speaker 1: other stuff for many other purposes. Right. So, so this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is a way of generating something that's
Speaker 1: useful while getting rid of you know, organic garbage. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh. And like I said, there are certain areas
Speaker 1: of the United States that are very much savvy about this,
Speaker 1: like that it's part of the daily existence of living
Speaker 1: in that place. Yeah, there are actually some places, um
Speaker 1: that are trying to become what's now being called zero
Speaker 1: waste cities. Now that's kind of a misnomerum because again,
Speaker 1: we don't really have the technology to scre waste right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So sort of what's going on here is these cities
Speaker 1: are saying, like, well, if we can divert not nine
Speaker 1: of waste from landfills, we'll just say it's zero, but
Speaker 1: mathematics zero, so it's yeah, it's zero ish. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly true, but it's still pretty cool. Um. So I
Speaker 1: read a Wall Street Journal blog about this from a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. I think it's from September two eleven,
Speaker 1: and it was talking about Uh, San Francisco was the
Speaker 1: big one at the time. They were they had made
Speaker 1: it able to divert seventy seven of all of their
Speaker 1: municipal solid waste from landfills, and they did this with
Speaker 1: a combination of recycling and composting. And when you think
Speaker 1: about it, if you put those together, that takes care
Speaker 1: of most of your garbage. Uh. So you know, if
Speaker 1: you can do plastic, aluminum, paper products, uh, steel, um,
Speaker 1: glass and then food, what have you got left? You know,
Speaker 1: just like nasty stuff basically. UM. So, Yeah, there is
Speaker 1: a waste management company called Recollogy in uh San Francisco,
Speaker 1: and that's not like Reek like Stinchology. It's like r
Speaker 1: E C so like so reclaiming, yeah, reclaiming um. And
Speaker 1: the way they've got it set up in San Francisco is, uh,
Speaker 1: You've you've got three bins basically, and so you've got
Speaker 1: a black bin that is just stuff that has to
Speaker 1: go to the landfill, you can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: You've got a green bin and that's for composting and
Speaker 1: so that would be like food scraps, plants, organic material
Speaker 1: kind of thing like napkins that are with soiled with
Speaker 1: food products, um. But those are biodegradable also. And then
Speaker 1: you've got a blue one that's for mixed recyclables. Um.
Speaker 1: And so by putting all this together and by like
Speaker 1: a they had like a strong public awareness campaign, and
Speaker 1: they make people pay for the trash they throw away,
Speaker 1: but not for the stuff they recycled. So it gives
Speaker 1: a monetary incentive to recycle and compost and and or
Speaker 1: if you prefer a disincentive to throw stuff away, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything you put in the black bin that you could
Speaker 1: have put in one of the other bin's, you're losing
Speaker 1: money on UM. So yeah, so that's a strong incentive.
Speaker 1: And so it'll either encourage recycling and composting or encourage hoarding.
Speaker 1: But if you put the wrong stuff in the wrong bin,
Speaker 1: apparently you can get an angry visit from the city,
Speaker 1: right Maybe maybe not so much angry as gently reminding
Speaker 1: you what each bin is surely reminding you in the kneecap,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah, And so I that was There's also
Speaker 1: there are other cities like Seattle that they're diverting more
Speaker 1: than half of all of their garbage from landfills UM.
Speaker 1: So some researchers are also figuring out really cool ways
Speaker 1: to use things like composting UM for for greater um
Speaker 1: ecological impact. There's a process called compost bioremediation UM and
Speaker 1: and this refers to a process of using composting in
Speaker 1: the microorganisms that it involves to um to clean out
Speaker 1: toxic soils or environments. UM these organisms will will consume
Speaker 1: these contaminants and and wind up turning them into into
Speaker 1: this this great earthy soil called hemus and uh in
Speaker 1: dirt byproducts like like carbon dioxide, water and salts. And
Speaker 1: they can process such things as chlorinated and non chlorinated hydrocarbons,
Speaker 1: would preserving chemicals, solvents, heavy metals, pesticides, petroleum products, and
Speaker 1: even explosives. So so grounds that have had this problem
Speaker 1: can be composted basically and reclaimed. Reclaimed composting guitar squeel
Speaker 1: not the kind of heavy metal, but but yeah, like so,
Speaker 1: compost collected in cities can be really useful for local agriculture.
Speaker 1: Think of in a normal when you send all your
Speaker 1: banana appeals to a landfill, I mean that that's kind
Speaker 1: of a slap in the face to the farmers nearby.
Speaker 1: Could be perfectly getting, could be slipping on banana peals
Speaker 1: till the cows come home, and the cows could start
Speaker 1: slipping on banana appeals. But farmers love slipping on banana peals.
Speaker 1: Good to know, all right, let's talk about plasma converters
Speaker 1: plasma waste converters. So we've talked about this before. The
Speaker 1: idea here it's and this falls into the incineration radar
Speaker 1: category even though it's not combustion. The idea is to
Speaker 1: apply a high voltage electric arc to garbage, which causes
Speaker 1: it to do one of two things. If it's if
Speaker 1: it's organic. If it's carbon based, it gasifies, turns into
Speaker 1: a gas which you then vent off and you cool
Speaker 1: through a very um extensive process because that that gas
Speaker 1: is super hot when it's escaping, so you have to
Speaker 1: cool it down. After you cool it down, and you
Speaker 1: can actually make it do work, you can have it
Speaker 1: convert water into steam and turn steam turbines, so you
Speaker 1: can reclaim some of the energy that way. Obviously you're
Speaker 1: not gonna reclaim everything that way. You're gonna that's an
Speaker 1: energy sink if that's all you do with it. But
Speaker 1: then you can also um scrub the gas. You have
Speaker 1: to do that because just like with the the combustion methods,
Speaker 1: it's nasty stuff and then go a lot of nasty
Speaker 1: stuff in it. You want to get rid of that
Speaker 1: nasty stuff, so you can use special chemicals to help
Speaker 1: capture all the stuff that is nasty and convert that
Speaker 1: into to something that you can then dispose of safely,
Speaker 1: although it's still you know, there's still some toxic material there,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of like the incinerators where you still
Speaker 1: have to find a way of getting rid of that
Speaker 1: stuff safely. Everything else, though, UH can be turned into
Speaker 1: a sin gas, a synthetic form of natural gas, and
Speaker 1: burns about the same as natural gas does, so it
Speaker 1: does give off some carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's perfectly clean fuel, but it does
Speaker 1: mean that you can use that sin gas to not
Speaker 1: only run the facility, but if you have enough organic
Speaker 1: material in the garbage you're processing, and organic material is
Speaker 1: what makes up most of the garbage that's being sent
Speaker 1: to landfills UH, you can actually then sell excess electricity
Speaker 1: back to a power grid. So in other words, you
Speaker 1: can help take some of the load off of other
Speaker 1: power generating facilities and use use garbage as a way
Speaker 1: of generating electricity. The other thing that happens is the
Speaker 1: stuff that's inorganic, the non carbon based stuff, turns into slag,
Speaker 1: which looks like volcanic rock. It looks like the stuff
Speaker 1: you would see on the side of volcanoes, this black, glassy,
Speaker 1: obsidian like substance. Uh. That's if it just cools naturally
Speaker 1: by air, Like if you just let it drain off
Speaker 1: and then cool, that's what looks like a like a
Speaker 1: building are. Yeah, you can use it as anything from
Speaker 1: aggregate so essentially like gravel, or you can actually use
Speaker 1: it in building materials like you can build You can
Speaker 1: use it to help create concrete or bricks, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. If you cool it. If you if you
Speaker 1: were to let the slag hit water, then it would
Speaker 1: beat up and turn into this pebbly kind of material. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you were to blow compressed air through it, you
Speaker 1: would look like a maniac. But you would also generate
Speaker 1: what's called rock wool. And rock wool is this very
Speaker 1: fluffy substance looks kind of like cotton. Really, it's so
Speaker 1: great for installation. It also can soak up oil while
Speaker 1: still floating on the surface of water, so you could
Speaker 1: actually use it to help with oil spills and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff for cleaning purposes. Um, it's it's neat stuff.
Speaker 1: And the fact that you could do all of this
Speaker 1: if you co located the plasmafication the gasification facility next
Speaker 1: to a power generating facility, and you did that on
Speaker 1: the side of a landfill. Depending upon the capacity of
Speaker 1: the plasma waste converter, you could take in all incoming
Speaker 1: garbage and even start to mind the landfill itself, so
Speaker 1: you could with enough time make the landfill essentially reclaim
Speaker 1: the landfill for other use um. Now grant that would
Speaker 1: take decades of time, but it could happen. You would
Speaker 1: be reversing the trend of the landfill filling up and
Speaker 1: making it empty out. Now possibly with some of that
Speaker 1: compost by remediation, you would be able to reclaim the
Speaker 1: land eventual. Yeah, yeah, it's quite possible. Uh. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: not everything would go into a plasma gasification chamber either.
Speaker 1: Anything that was metal would you know, you'd have to
Speaker 1: sort it kind of like we were talking about with recycling.
Speaker 1: You want to pre sort the stuff before you put
Speaker 1: it into the furnace. So anything that was metal you
Speaker 1: could reclaim and recycle in other ways so that you
Speaker 1: didn't just have it melt down with as part of
Speaker 1: the slag. Uh. And then you would grind all that
Speaker 1: garbage up. You would have grinders that would turn into
Speaker 1: baller pieces, and then that's what the plasma torch would
Speaker 1: then make break apart. Molecularly speaking, it actually breaks the
Speaker 1: molecular bonds. It's pouring so much energy into that material that, yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's just the bonds that hold it together, the
Speaker 1: actual chemical bonds that would normally keep the stuff in
Speaker 1: whatever form it's in, break apart, and you get these
Speaker 1: various elements all turning into either gas or like I said,
Speaker 1: a molten slag. So that's your basic plasma converter approach.
Speaker 1: There are a few facilities. There's actually one that is
Speaker 1: being proposed here in the United States that could take
Speaker 1: I think four hundred tons per day of plasma gasification.
Speaker 1: This comes to me as of, like thirty seconds before
Speaker 1: I started talking, I got an email from Dr Louis Cercio,
Speaker 1: who is an expert on plasma converters. He's one of
Speaker 1: the guys who actually kind of pioneered this technology. Um,
Speaker 1: and he works at the George Tech And I actually
Speaker 1: emailed him earlier today and he just got back to me.
Speaker 1: I was just reading the email before we started chatting,
Speaker 1: which is kind of cool. UM. So there are a
Speaker 1: few facilities. Most of them are in Japan's just a
Speaker 1: couple of them. Uh, And there aren't. Like I said,
Speaker 1: there are other problems. Just like withincinerators, you still have
Speaker 1: some byproducts you have to worry about, but it's you
Speaker 1: measure that against the impact of landfills and then you
Speaker 1: have to decide whether or not it makes sense economically
Speaker 1: and environmentally. Um, but what about other solutions to our
Speaker 1: our garage problem. I got an idea. This solves everything. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've talked about landfills and recycling and composting and that
Speaker 1: are blah blah bla bla blah. Why don't we just
Speaker 1: shoot it into space? Right? I mean, that's like the
Speaker 1: easy way we goes forever. You just aim it at
Speaker 1: the Sun and Star Trek Generations teaches us that a
Speaker 1: rocket can reach the Sun like in thirty seconds. So
Speaker 1: you sell like a man who's seen the movie Super
Speaker 1: in for ah, yes, the Quest for Peace. Yeah you can.
Speaker 1: In that case, it was nuclear weapons we were throwing
Speaker 1: into the sun. But why stop there. Let's just throw
Speaker 1: all of our garbage into the sun. And I mean
Speaker 1: it's like a giant plasma. In fact, it is a
Speaker 1: giant plasma, Joe, why don't we do this? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean number one, As we've talked about before, space launches
Speaker 1: are just mega crazy expensive and resource gobbling. It would
Speaker 1: make absolutely knows it would cost ten thousand dollars per
Speaker 1: pound of every uh pound of garbage you put into orbit.
Speaker 1: And that's just into orbit. So that would mean you'd
Speaker 1: get it far enough up to like collide with the
Speaker 1: I S S or something while it's floating around. You
Speaker 1: actually have to take it further out beyond our Earth orbit,
Speaker 1: which you know, if you didn't take it that far
Speaker 1: it eventually you just get sucked back into orbit, right,
Speaker 1: So you have to really shoot it out there with
Speaker 1: space garbage, which would end up causing potential major problems
Speaker 1: with things like satellites, the I S S, any other
Speaker 1: kind of space slips on up an an appeal. That's
Speaker 1: that's serious. Business is moving at per hour, That's that's serious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're going to shoot garbage into space, it would
Speaker 1: it would probably be more economical to just bury it
Speaker 1: under diamonds. So first create a diamond mine, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then underneath it. Yeah right, yeah, I can see. I
Speaker 1: can see why he's shooting it into space, might not
Speaker 1: be the best idea, darn it. Whatever my starter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could just pay Tom Cruise by the hour to
Speaker 1: figure out an idea for something to do with it.
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp or who's the highest paid, right maybe Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Jr. After that Avengers deal and some serious cash
Speaker 1: right there, So we'll get in the nineties, right right, Well,
Speaker 1: I'll get on the horn with with r DJ and
Speaker 1: see what he has to say about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I think I think if we
Speaker 1: if we get together some kind of reality show about
Speaker 1: shipping garbage to Mars. That's a little slide take that
Speaker 1: Mars one. Okay, no, but this is actually this This
Speaker 1: does make me think of something interesting. Um. So, everything
Speaker 1: we've been talking about is earthbound. Um, but there's still
Speaker 1: a garbage problem once we leave Earth, right well, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, I mean we're still going to be generating
Speaker 1: waste hypothetically if we if we haven't gotten our gotten
Speaker 1: our stuff together to reuse absolutely everything that we I mean,
Speaker 1: or to manufacture in a way that we do not
Speaker 1: create waste. Yeah, there's waste in space. So I was
Speaker 1: reading there's an NBC report from and it estimates that
Speaker 1: a four person crew in space, I think on the
Speaker 1: I S S is what I was talking about, uses
Speaker 1: about eleven pounds of waste daily, not uses produces. So
Speaker 1: four people produce about eleven pounds. See, that's still better
Speaker 1: than here on Earth, or at least, but especially in
Speaker 1: the United States. We should say, like when I quoted
Speaker 1: that four point four pounds of waste generated per day
Speaker 1: per person, that's in the United States. There are other
Speaker 1: places in the world that are where people generate less,
Speaker 1: much less, significantly less waste per day. I think we're
Speaker 1: behind only Japan and the amount of packaging that we use.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so in space they're using less than the
Speaker 1: typical United States citizen. Oh, I mean you'd have to
Speaker 1: imagine that, because what is this waste? I mean, we're
Speaker 1: paying huge amounts of money to ship it up there,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Um, So we got to find out
Speaker 1: something useful to do with it. You can't let waste
Speaker 1: pile up in a pressurized cabin in orbit around the Earth. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you like your garbage can in the I S
Speaker 1: S would not only stink mightily, um, but it would
Speaker 1: probably be biohazard. You know, it's it's just not a
Speaker 1: good idea. Um, So you need to find a way
Speaker 1: to dispose of waste in space. In the past, what
Speaker 1: they used to do with the from the I S
Speaker 1: s as well, they just bag it up and make
Speaker 1: these little like garbage footballs duct taped up and then
Speaker 1: they put that back on the shuttle and the shuttle
Speaker 1: would return it to Earth the most expensive curbside in history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well no, I wasn't returning just for the garbage. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you happen to be in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: taking you swing by and take these footballs of waste, please.
Speaker 1: So they used to do that, but now no more shuttle.
Speaker 1: Uh So now you can put it in a module
Speaker 1: that basically when it comes by, it will take your
Speaker 1: trash away and drop it into the atmosphere so it
Speaker 1: can burn up on reentry. Um. But that still means
Speaker 1: you've got all this waste hanging around on the space
Speaker 1: station until somebody can come take it away from you.
Speaker 1: If you just throw it out the hatch, it will
Speaker 1: continue along in orbit with you and potentially collide with you.
Speaker 1: Cause trouble like that. If you launch it out real fast,
Speaker 1: it can you can meet it the other way around.
Speaker 1: It's just you just it's yeah. Um. So there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of different ideas about what we should
Speaker 1: do with space trash. One of the interesting things they
Speaker 1: read about was this idea of heat pump dehumidification drying. Um.
Speaker 1: What heat pump dehumidification drying and so what that is? It? Say,
Speaker 1: you imagine that astronauts are producing some food waste, okay um,
Speaker 1: and that is accumulating. What are you going to do
Speaker 1: with it? Well, this idea, if it worked, what it
Speaker 1: would do is put the waste in a capsule and
Speaker 1: then you blast that with hot air in a way
Speaker 1: that dehydrates the waste enough to make it bioneutral, so
Speaker 1: it's not going to rot. Yeah. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: the dehumidification process renders excess moisture, which is gold. You know,
Speaker 1: you need every drop of water you can get, So
Speaker 1: that's sort of a two in one. Um. So you
Speaker 1: can prevent it from rotting while it's up there with you,
Speaker 1: and you can get water from it. And I guess
Speaker 1: then the idea would still be you'd have this dehydrated
Speaker 1: trash that eventually you need to cart away and and
Speaker 1: throw into the uh, the atmosphere or whatever they do
Speaker 1: with it. Um, not ideal, but that that would be
Speaker 1: somewhat of an improvement. UM. A while back, NASA experiment
Speaker 1: in the Kennedy Space Center was experimenting with this thing
Speaker 1: called the Research Space bio Converter, and that was a
Speaker 1: way of doing composting in space. Yeah. And so basically
Speaker 1: the idea was they would, um, they had this big
Speaker 1: rotating drum that you put excess biomass in, and it
Speaker 1: would allow anaerobic decomposition by micro organisms that use nitrate
Speaker 1: instead of oxygen, because you don't want to waste oxygen
Speaker 1: on bacteria. You know, you need that to breathe, and
Speaker 1: all the oxygen you're giving them you're taking away from
Speaker 1: the astronauts. So but instead and of course there's some
Speaker 1: anaerobic decomposition UM that just smells nasty, and having astronauts
Speaker 1: locked up in a pressurized cabin with a horrible smell
Speaker 1: is psychological torture and you don't yeahs again so charming,
Speaker 1: okay um, And but yeah, these micro organisms use nitrate,
Speaker 1: and so that was one idea. Another idea is people
Speaker 1: are trying to see if they can find a way
Speaker 1: to turn waste in space back into usable propellant or
Speaker 1: rocket fuel. Huh. Interesting because you think about a lot
Speaker 1: of organic compounds like that that you would see in food.
Speaker 1: Waste can easily break down to stuff like methane which
Speaker 1: burns and could be used potentially as a supplementary propellant.
Speaker 1: Um and so that's one more idea. Interesting, but it
Speaker 1: is interesting that we're going to have to do something
Speaker 1: about this if we're if we're talking about long term
Speaker 1: space exploration, not so much because actually the waste itself
Speaker 1: is more of a problem on the I S S
Speaker 1: because you're in orbit around the Earth. You don't want
Speaker 1: to launch it out uh to be a problem for
Speaker 1: you to collide with satellites and stuff like that. If
Speaker 1: you're flying to Mars, that's not quite as much of
Speaker 1: a problem. I mean, you could potentially just launched stuff
Speaker 1: out that yeah, litter the Solar System once you get
Speaker 1: on Mars. I guess you would just be littering up
Speaker 1: the planet. Huh, there's a planet there for that. That
Speaker 1: that's the thing too. I actually read one really smart
Speaker 1: comment is a good reason not to be littering the
Speaker 1: Solar System is not to contaminate future experiments that are
Speaker 1: looking for signs of life. Right, So if we contaminate
Speaker 1: Mars or Europa with our garbage, it's entirely possible that
Speaker 1: we could create an ecosystem on these planets of bacteria
Speaker 1: by putting them there, or or at least we could
Speaker 1: end up making it impossible for us to determine what
Speaker 1: life may have at one point or even currently existed
Speaker 1: on that that body. Like. You know, there was the
Speaker 1: story about the Curiosity rover detecting some methane and that
Speaker 1: the initial response, especially in the blogosphere, was, uh, Curiosity
Speaker 1: discovers signs of potentially signs of life on Mars, because
Speaker 1: methane is an organic compound, right, And then there were
Speaker 1: some people who cautioned and said, we need to determine
Speaker 1: whether or not this methane was in fact something that
Speaker 1: pre existed on the planet, or was something that was
Speaker 1: brought along with the Curiosity rover that was actually a
Speaker 1: contaminant that the Curiosity over brought in. What a lot
Speaker 1: of people think now is that is in fact what
Speaker 1: they think that they said that the the amount was
Speaker 1: so small and that there have been no further detections
Speaker 1: of methane that it appears that this was in fact
Speaker 1: a contaminant from Earth. So it's a good example is
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, if we're if the purpose of
Speaker 1: developing a colony on Mars is primarily one to conduct
Speaker 1: scientific research, you don't want to contaminate that research by
Speaker 1: just dumping your garbage out there on the red planet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so so there's the garbage problem itself. But then,
Speaker 1: like we like came up in all of these examples,
Speaker 1: whenever you're throwing stuff away, you're missing an opportunity to
Speaker 1: reclaim and to reuse. You want to try and reclaim
Speaker 1: as much of that as possible, and part of that
Speaker 1: is also about saving energy on just producing new stuff, right.
Speaker 1: It's not just that you know you're saving the environment,
Speaker 1: but if you think of it from an energy perspective,
Speaker 1: like how much energy do you have to expend in
Speaker 1: order to create the stuff you use? If you can
Speaker 1: do do that with less energy by reclaiming things that
Speaker 1: otherwise you would have thrown away, then that's a long
Speaker 1: game right there. That's much better than saying, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: granted we could, uh, we can. We've got plenty of
Speaker 1: the raw material here, there's no scarcity issue, but it
Speaker 1: still might be an energy issue. You know, even if
Speaker 1: it's something that is easily uh, the raw materials are
Speaker 1: easy for you to get. So for example, glass, if
Speaker 1: you can reuse or recycle the glass, even though you're
Speaker 1: not reclaiming as much energy overall, yeah, it's still a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, it's still it's still better than
Speaker 1: going out and building all new stuff. So, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from an energy perspective, it's really important to crack the
Speaker 1: nut on this whole waste problem. So even you know,
Speaker 1: beyond just the the environmental concerns, which are by no
Speaker 1: means trivial, it's important stuff. So I mean that's why
Speaker 1: we wanted to do a full episode on it and
Speaker 1: really look at what is the future of of trash
Speaker 1: and garbage and what can we what can we do
Speaker 1: to uh to reduce it as much as possible and
Speaker 1: reclaim as much as we can. So I guess that
Speaker 1: wraps this up. Does anyone have anything else they want
Speaker 1: to talk about before I I finish? Joe, I was
Speaker 1: gonna try to quote a lyric by that band Garbage,
Speaker 1: but then I couldn't remember if the lyric that was
Speaker 1: in my head was actually them Stupid girl. All right,
Speaker 1: So guys, that wraps up this conversation about trash. Why
Speaker 1: don't you let us know what you think? Write write
Speaker 1: us and tell us what do you think about the
Speaker 1: future of garbage? What? What? What would your solution be.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's something that we didn't cover that
Speaker 1: we should have, uh, you know, taken time to to
Speaker 1: talk about. We want to hear from you. Write us.
Speaker 1: Our email address is FW thinking at discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can go to FW thinking dot com. That's,
Speaker 1: of course where you will find all the videos, the blogs,
Speaker 1: the podcasts, links to other information that's that are all
Speaker 1: about the topics we've talked about today, and you can
Speaker 1: learn even more about this. We are excited to hear
Speaker 1: from you, and we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic in the future of technology,
Speaker 1: visit forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota.
Speaker 1: Let's go places.