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Geo

Beach Fanatic
Dec 24, 2006
2,750
2,782
Santa Rosa Beach, FL
My beef is the word, LANDFILL! In this day of going green and recycling, shame, shame! Taking this stuff to the landfill? Useable stuff should be taken to the Caring and Sharing, Haven House, Habitat for Humanity, or someother charity organization to be sold to raise money for these organizations. The rest of it should be sorted and deposited in the appropriate places! Failed the ECO-FRIENDLY award!

I have been looking to pick a fight. This might do. Why are landfills an issue? My wife got on this kick of using ecofriendly diapers for our youngest that were more expensive than regular ones and were a big pain because they required an outer shell that needed to be washed after every poop. She said we needed to do this because it was environmentally irresponsible that our diapers stayed in the landfill for 100 years before they decomposed (or something like that)...

So I probed. Why is it bad for diapers to stay in a landfill? Is it not equally or more environmentally irresponsible to use all that water and chemical detergent to wash the outer shell that we use for these recyclable diaper inserts?

Have you flown over this country lately. Lots and lots of open space for landfills.

Someone set me straight. Dummy it down for me. Why is it bad that we put our stuff in landfills? I am under the impression that they serve their purpose completely...

Dare I bring in the whole recycling thing? Don't we burn fossil fuels to transport the cans, plastics, etc. that we are recycling? Don't we use water in the process? Don't the machines that compact/reshape the materials emit pollution into the atmosphere?

Conventional wisdom seems to point to recycling being good, landfills being bad. But what does science say? Gimme some data...

Otherwise, I wonder how much of this is the result of effective lobbying/PR by some enterprise/industry that profits from recycling...

EDIT: Sorry for the tangent. I know this isn't directly (or that indirectly) about removing items from the beach. I just got excited that I got excited. It's been a while!!! :)
 
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Bob Wells

Beach Fanatic
Jul 25, 2008
3,380
2,857
I guess Turtle Watch may be going militant. There is a story on www.WJHG.com about someone doing damage to items left on the beach behind an east end Condo. The person in question denies she caused the damage. She was charged with Criminal Mischief and bonded out.
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
16,732
3,330
Sowal
Geo - landfills are an issue because there isn't enough room to just dump it all somewhere and we keep producing more and more trash per person that never breaks down. If it all rotted or rusted away safely it would be less of an issue, but plastics will outlive us all and electronic components have many hazardous components.

Recycling trucks may currently run on fossil fuels, but that is far better than building more "Trash Mountains" that accent many urban or landlocked skylines or the mess of plastic bags the size of Texas churning in our oceans.
 

Geo

Beach Fanatic
Dec 24, 2006
2,750
2,782
Santa Rosa Beach, FL
Geo - landfills are an issue because there isn't enough room to just dump it all somewhere and we keep producing more and more trash per person that never breaks down. If it all rotted or rusted away safely it would be less of an issue, but plastics will outlive us all and electronic components have many hazardous components.

Recycling trucks may currently run on fossil fuels, but that is far better than building more "Trash Mountains" that accent many urban or landlocked skylines or the mess of plastic bags the size of Texas churning in our oceans.

Just because "isn't" is bolded above doesn't make it true. When did we run out of space for landfills? I fly from anywhere to anywhere and see plenty of space for landfills.

You say that running the trucks is "far better" than landfills. In what way? How do you know this? Because you've heard it for a long time like I have? Data please. Sources?

Hazardous components? That sounds like a good reason to put them in- a landfill...

My understanding is that the stuff in landfills gets compacted over and over again. Landfills don't cause the trash issues in the oceans. But they could solve them, no?
 

scooterbug44

SoWal Expert
May 8, 2007
16,732
3,330
Sowal
You may think you see plenty of space for landfills, but that doesn't mean every location in the world has appropriate space for landfills or is a good place to dispose of hazardous items. Dense urban areas in particular have nowhere good to put their trash.

In many places the landfill is just a place where trash is dumped - not compacted etc.

Sorry, I do not have a link to a scientific study that tells us that it is better to recycle an item than to go dump it somewhere for thousands of years.
 

Geo

Beach Fanatic
Dec 24, 2006
2,750
2,782
Santa Rosa Beach, FL
Scoooter, your responses lead me to believe that neither you nor I really know that landfills are bad/recycling is good but rather that we just believe this as fact because we have been told this by so many people for so long...
 
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