You have incinerators in your area? Everything in my area is landfill, so it will eventually become dirt.
Comment on Anon has a question
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 1 month agoTake it to the recycling center. Even just tossing it into the trash is better than pouring it down the drain. If you toss it in the trash it will just get incinerated. If you pour it down the drain it can clog the sewage system.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Do plastics go in the landfill too? Or is it somehow separated so that only stuff that decays in years rather than centuries goes there?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The regular trash doesn’t get separated, it’s just dumped. There’s also almost no restrictions on what can go in there, our trash cans are massive, and we have to pay for recycling, so many people just don’t bother (and a second trash can is not much more than a recycling bin).
We do have a recycling service that accepts most plastics (#1-#7), and they claim to recycle it, but they have pretty strict standards (needs to be clean, need to separate caps from bottles/jugs, etc), so I wouldn’t be surprised if most of it just ends up at the landfill anyway. Our area is a “single sort” facility, meaning people just dump everything into one bin and they sort it on their end. This means workers are even more likely to just throw stuff out that isn’t easily identifiable as recyclable.
One big issue is that they don’t accept glass, so to recycle glass, you need to take it somewhere special. I’m pretty obsessive about recycling, so I go out of my way to recycle everything I can (I have a bag of dead batteries in the garage, I make regular trips to recycle glass, etc), but I highly doubt most people bother. In fact, I have a few neighbors with 2 garbage cans and no recycling can.
Damage@feddit.it 1 month ago
Wow weird. May I ask where that is? Not recycling glass sounds WILD to me, it’s one of the most recyclables, even decades ago when plastic recycling was uncommon, glass “dumpsters” where everywhere.
Being forced to separate caps from bottles of very exotic as well, considering the EU just introduced a regulation that forces manufacturers to make caps that stay on the bottle even when opened.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Random question, where do you take old gasoline? Will auto part stores take a jug of old motor oil and gasoline that’s been mixed? I guess I should probably just call and ask a local store after I’m done shitting on company time.
tyler@programming.dev 1 month ago
The landfill stuff doesn’t eventually turn into dirt. They purposefully make sure that it’s wrapped in plastic in such a way that it never decomposes. Landfills are terrible.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
They do it to protect the water table from things like battery acid. But a good chunk of it will become dirt, because there’s enough organic matter in mixed trash to decompose. It’ll just take a really long time because of the mix of plastic and whatnot.
tyler@programming.dev 1 month ago
WM at least has rules that every load of trash must be in individual bags, and they must be tied. So you’re not getting that mix you’re talking about. Their goal (every landfill) is to make sure that nothing breaks down as it costs more to deal with (like leachate and methane).
Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
“it will just get incinerated”
Look at you, living in a country where they actually do something with trash instead of just accumulating it in a huge field
jballs@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Going to the dump is so weird. It’s just like, here’s a field…just throw your shit wherever and let’s get outta here.
MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
Better for fighting Climate Change. Unless your incinerators are burning hotter than anything our regulators would ever enforce.
Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
It eventually becomes a huge hill, then we can build a ski slope on it.
Cliff@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I know a place where they did exactly this.