Are landfills the best solution for rubbish

[WWGD]

Chopped the first clause because i) the 2nd is a non-sequitor to the 1st, ii) DEvens already responded to the fallacy, iii) I didn't claim here anything about Friedman's academic career.

.

i') Not a non-seq. You can always fall on the : yes, regulations ( or just-about anything you want) are bad, but they are necessary in an imperfect world.

ii') I never accepted it is a fallacy. By that same token, no one has to be held to anything, since they can always claim that their views hold only under certain assumptions/conditions, but not in this imperfect world. I believe one should not kill. But only in an ideal world where certain things happen.

My bad, I confuse

 

[WWGD]

Chopped the first clause because i) the 2nd is a non-sequitor to the 1st, ii) DEvens already responded to the fallacy, iii) I didn't claim here anything about Friedman's academic career.

The main problem with the part of your post that I quoted is demonstrating that regulations render the imperfect world at large more perfect. Yes regulations on the surface seem to have an upside, but they almost always have a downside. That video clip has several examples. See for instance the EPA's recent yellow paint job on the Animas river yellow even though it was warned of the likely outcome of tampering with a mine. So, instead of slapping a new regulation on every perceived imperfection, I would make regulations relatively rare, used as an absolute last resort.

Why didn't you require Evens to argue that in a world with tenure (and regulations?) accepting a position with tenure does no harm?

And I entirely agree with you; regulation is an art, and should be kept at a minimum, though 'minimum' is kind of a loaded term..

 

[wolram]

I work for a charity, we collect items from donaters that would normally be taken to the tip, i can tell you it is unbelievable what people throw away that can be recycled.
our charity is self sustaining and we sell all the items bought in, electronics, furniture, crockery etc are sold to the general public, plastic. paper, cardboard, metal and rags are all recycled
So it is incomprehensible why we need land fill sites, by the way we make about £2000 a week from our donations.

 

[OmCheeto]

One way to save waste is to buy your veg (loose) instead of in plastic bags, compost all food waste and do not buy any thing that has multiple wrappings.

Thank you!
I went shopping shortly after this post, and it actually affected my habits.
I did not put my single onion into a plastic bag. (pat on back, pat on back)
Though, I did put my 6 apples into one.
But, when I arrived home, I noticed my front porch, recycled/purposed rubbish collector, was full.
I deposited said apples onto my kitchen counter, and promptly used the apple bag as a new liner.

Of course, empty coffee ground containers also make good flower pots.

In spite of Evo's claim, that potting tomatoes is a fool's endeavor, I seem to have had much success.

And the lids come in handy, also, when feeding the neighbor's little Mexican hound.

IMHO, not recycling, is a social disease.

I work for a charity, we collect items from donaters that would normally be taken to the tip, i can tell you it is unbelievable what people throw away that can be recycled.

I will comment on this later, as things are afoot. (Remind me tomorrow, to mention the world's tiniest radiator, that I found the other day.)

 

[edward]

Even China is now rejecting our dirty recyclables.

The problem is we don’t have a market for it,” Jeff Hardwood, an Olympia-area recycling center manager, tells Washington state’s KIRO-TV. “China is saying we are only going to accept the high-value material we have a demand for now.”Hardwood is referring to China’s “Green Fence” campaign banning “foreign garbage” (link in Chinese). China has rejected 68,000 tons (61,700 tonnes) of waste in the first five months of 2013, when the program was officially launched. The Green Fence initiative bans bales of plastic that haven’t been cleaned or thoroughly sorted. That type of recyclable material, which costs more to recycle, often ends up in China’s landfills, which have become a source of recent unrest in the country’s south.

Instead of investing in the sorting and cleaning technologies required to process soiled and unsorted recyclables, which both China and the US have been reluctant to do, China’s Green Fence policy blocks the import of those plastics. As a result, US recycling centers that once accepted scrap plastic for recycling are being forced to send it to American landfills.

http://qz.com/117151/us-states-banned-from-exporting-their-trash-to-china-are-drowning-in-plastic/

 

[Czcibor]

The purpose of letting the government continue is what it does. It let's the government continue. Thus, such a scheme is automatically successful, since its purpose is to expand and extend the power of government. Whether it helps the environment or not (almost universally not) is irrelevant to the evaluation of a scheme to let the government continue.

That we are most certainly NOT doing our best to protect the environment is not even on the list of evaluation checks for such a scheme. There is no mechanism nor measurement even contemplated. Other than compliance that is.

A recycle scheme, for example, is deemed successful if everybody complies. No check is made, nor even contemplated, that it actually helps the environment. Rules about packaging are deemed successful if everybody complies. No check is made, nor even contemplated, that it actually helps the environment. Helping the environment is not the purpose. Extending and expanding government control is the purpose. For that is what it does.

Maybe that's a cultural difference (I'm not American, and consider US anti-state approach as a bit weird), but I think that you get the problem incorrectly. Generally the point of flawed gov interventions is NOT to expand power of state. (there may be indeed an incentive to expand number of gov officials, as there would be a chance for patronage while hiring, but the power as such has got a limited value for politician who would anyway end his term soon)

A democratically elected gov has to show voters that is doing something about existing or perceived problems. The easiest way to show that gov is doing something would be pass new laws and create new agencies, regulate problematic activities... Take into account that voters want to feel good concerning their choices (pending on place on left-right axis it may be more ecological and social stuff or religion mixed with nationalism stuff), so they would insist on passing a law that would make them feel good, not necessary that would indeed work. Moreover voters tend to express contradictory expectations (low taxes, low deficit, high spending ;) ) and rarely try to look about further reaching consequences of some policies (I really doubt that voters see relationship between zoning laws and prices of housing). Additionally policies usually need while to make possible to assess their effectiveness, so a politician who regulated something presumably scored some points from his voters, while quite possibly, whether it worked in long run or not would have limited impact on next election.

Nevertheless, I think that one crucial point, actually mentioned by Milton Friedman (in Free to Choose), got neglected here - gov creates the framework for private companies to work. I mean, as a way of including social cost of pollution, he suggested gov auctioning pollution quotas / sin tax, to allow market mechanism to reduce pollution in most cost effective way.

 

[wolram]

Czcibor
I am sure a sin tax would work in the UK, more people would bring their used items to us for recycling, we recycle everything, electrical goods, we PAT test them, any that do not pass get stripped down for there metal and plastic, all household goods, furniture, clothes, paper, cardboard about the only stuff we chuck away is dirt and thin film plastic, we have not found a way to recycle this yet, bubble wrap is a pain in the ass, people should not use this or Styrofoam for packaging,

 

[OmCheeto]

Even China is now rejecting our dirty recyclables.

http://qz.com/117151/us-states-banned-from-exporting-their-trash-to-china-are-drowning-in-plastic/

Wow! That's an interesting article.

China imports around 40% of the world’s plastic scrap, collecting the rest domestically.​

Coincidentally, the husband of a young lady I worked with, used to work for a local company called Agilyx. I'd have probably never heard of the company otherwise, as I've never seen an advertisement for their product. Anyways, they have a machine that converts unsorted plastics back into crude oil. I thought that was kind of a brilliant solution to my problem. And fortunately, a wealthy Brit also likes the idea.

Another step closer to zero waste [Virgin, Richard Branson]
Delighted to have invested in Agilyx, an alternative energy company launched to convert plastics that can’t be recycled into crude oil. Every year over 200 million tonnes of plastic around the world ends up in landfill. In addition, many millions of tonnes end up in the ocean and on beaches where they can fatally harm wildlife and ecosystems as a whole.
...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Anyways, they have a machine that converts unsorted plastics back into crude oil. I thought that was kind of a brilliant solution to my problem. And fortunately, a wealthy Brit also likes the idea.

There's a lot of people working on this.

Here's a thread I found on snopes:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=67107

The process requires energy, of course, and one objection would be the complete dumbness of using grid electricity to effect the conversion.

However, if solar or wind power were used to convert plastic to oil, it would represent a way of storing those intermittent forms of energy for use as needed. The other benefit is less junk in landfills.

 

[OmCheeto]

There's a lot of people working on this.

That is good news!

Here's a thread I found on snopes:

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=67107

The process requires energy, of course, and one objection would be the complete dumbness of using grid electricity to effect the conversion.

However, if solar or wind power were used to convert plastic to oil, it would represent a way of storing those intermittent forms of energy for use as needed. The other benefit is less junk in landfills.

Very true. I would imagine that economic science dictates that if it were a losing system, it wouldn't be feasible, and it would be cheaper to just dump it.

But Agilyx claims;

http://www.agilyx.com/index.php/our-technology
...
Our proven technology returns 5X more energy than it uses (“EROEI”) in the production process.

If true, all we would need to know, or guesstimate, would be:

1. the cost of one of their "Gen6" devices, if produced at an economy of scale
2. the current cost of dumping plastic
3. future costs of cleaning up landfill dumped plastics, should it be determined that it's an environmental problem
4. forecast cost of crude oil
5. logistical costs
​

to determine the time to profitability.

 

[zoobyshoe]

That is good news!

Very true. I would imagine that economic science dictates that if it were a losing system, it wouldn't be feasible, and it would be cheaper to just dump it.

But Agilyx claims;
If true, all we would need to know, or guesstimate, would be:

1. the cost of one of their "Gen6" devices, if produced at an economy of scale
2. the current cost of dumping plastic
3. future costs of cleaning up landfill dumped plastics, should it be determined that it's an environmental problem
4. forecast cost of crude oil
5. logistical costs
​

to determine the time to profitability.

Due to claims made in the snopes thread, that it takes more energy to convert plastic to oil than you can get from the oil produced, the Agilyx claims are suspect in my mind. Regardless, using solar or wind to convert it, would still take care of the landfill problem and produce stored energy in the form of the oil produced.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here you go:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Waste-Plastic-to-Fuel/?ALLSTEPS

Apparently this is simple enough that a person can try it at home. Essentially you are heating the plastic till it gives off fumes, then collecting and condensing the fumes as oil. I suppose a good test would be to start the "reactor" with, say, a conventional propane stove top burner, then switch to using some of the output of the reactor to continue the process and see if you end up with any leftover.

If that didn't work, I'd try rigging up a big fresnel lens and a mirror to heat the "reactor".

 

[OmCheeto]

Due to claims made in the snopes thread, that it takes more energy to convert plastic to oil than you can get from the oil produced, the Agilyx claims are suspect in my mind. Regardless, using solar or wind to convert it, would still take care of the landfill problem and produce stored energy in the form of the oil produced.

If you are referring to the 7th, and final post, well, I'm very suspect of the duplicitous comments made by the author:

...BUT actually it's impractical because it uses more energy than it converts.
...
Admittedly waste plastic IS a very pure raw material and has a very high calorific content. That's why it's also good to simply burn it in a (clean) waste incinerator (along with other general refuse) and recover the heat energy to provide district hot water and electricity (Scandinavia, Switzerland, Holland and probably Germany)

bolding mine

Probably a good topic for the Chemistry Forum.
And perhaps another forum.
I knew someone, who bragged about how he made all his money, by falsifying the records, while chief chemist, at a now defunct chemical company, so the company could dump toxic waste into the environment.
I wonder how Mr. Friedman, were he still alive today, would respond to that situation.

Well, this is a third party issue. Obviously, the government should have been paying attention, and caught that. But, because they are so big and bloated, they didn't.

 

[wolram]

Here are some ways plastic is all ready being recycled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_recycling

 

[OmCheeto]

Here you go:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Waste-Plastic-to-Fuel/?ALLSTEPS

Apparently this is simple enough that a person can try it at home. Essentially you are heating the plastic till it gives off fumes, then collecting and condensing the fumes as oil. I suppose a good test would be to start the "reactor" with, say, a conventional propane stove top burner, then switch to using some of the output of the reactor to continue the process and see if you end up with any leftover.

If that didn't work, I'd try rigging up a big fresnel lens and a mirror to heat the "reactor".

Nyet!
I've done many an experiment, but I will not do that.
My friends' house burned down a couple of weeks ago, and upon arriving at my convenience store about an hour ago, something burst into a 4 firetruck fire, less than a mile from my house.
It's a sign!

ps. Champagne glassware that Om was told to throw away after the fire, but instead, meticulously cleaned, and yesterday broke in the dishwasher, goes in the garbage. It is not municipally recyclable.

 

[wolram]

Nyet!
I've done many an experiment, but I will not do that.
My friends' house burned down a couple of weeks ago, and upon arriving at my convenience store about an hour ago, something burst into a 4 firetruck fire, less than a mile from my house.
It's a sign!

ps. Champagne glassware that Om was told to throw away after the fire, but instead, meticulously cleaned, and yesterday broke in the dishwasher, goes in the garbage. It is not municipally recyclable.

Our broken glass on non recyclable glass goes to hardcore.

 

[OmCheeto]

Our broken glass on non recyclable glass goes to hardcore.

I am not googling that...

 

[edward]

Garbage (trash) companies here pick up recyclables once a week as they do in many places I assume. The one material that they will not take is glass of any kind. As a kid I made a fortune returning glass soft drink bottles to the store. The pay was 2 cents for small bottles and 5 cents, a whole nickel, for the large ones. Now, at least in Tucson AZ, they go to the landfill.

There is some hope. There are companies making countertops out of recycled glass, cement, and a few other ingredients.

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Recycled_Glass_Countertops

 

[OmCheeto]

Garbage (trash) companies here pick up recyclables once a week as they do in many places I assume. The one material that they will not take is glass of any kind. As a kid I made a fortune returning glass soft drink bottles to the store. The pay was 2 cents for small bottles and 5 cents, a whole nickel, for the large ones. Now, at least in Tucson AZ, they go to the landfill.

There is some hope. There are companies making countertops out of recycled glass, cement, and a few other ingredients.

http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Recycled_Glass_Countertops

That's quite interesting about the bottles. Knowing approximately how old you are, that does sounds like a fortune!
A very successful business owner friend of mine started out almost the same way.
He would collect dead old lead acid batteries, and via some kind of voo-doo scientific magic, restore them, and re-sell them.
I'm guessing he's about 75 by now, and from my recollection, he was 15 at the time he started. So he was recycling, profitably, before I was born.

So, I guess the problem has 4 "-ate" avenues of solution:

1. Innovate
2. Legislate
3. Litigate
4. Ignore it until it's too late​

I'm going to throw out #4, as I'm a believer in the "7th Generation" philosophy, and #4 leads to #3; "let the problem happen, and then sue them". Great idea, if you can afford a lawyer. And pray that the statute of limitations hasn't run out when you find out about it.

I guess my stance is a combination of #1 & #2, as neither one is really an ideal solution.

 

[Czcibor]

Due to claims made in the snopes thread, that it takes more energy to convert plastic to oil than you can get from the oil produced, the Agilyx claims are suspect in my mind. Regardless, using solar or wind to convert it, would still take care of the landfill problem and produce stored energy in the form of the oil produced.

Maybe it is just simpler, cheaper and comparably ecological to just leave it in landfill?

we have not found a way to recycle this yet, bubble wrap is a pain in the ass, people should not use this or Styrofoam for packaging

Really? I recycle both of it from time to time, when I have to send someone a package and I am unwilling to spend any money on protection. ;)

 

[OmCheeto]

Maybe it is just simpler, cheaper and comparably ecological to just leave it in landfill?
...

Could be.

I spent about an hour yesterday trying to figure out what "plastic" was.
I just spent another 3 hours today, doing the same.

I don't really know much more than I did yesterday: Melting points, the difference between a monomer and a polymer, why the boiling points are irrelevant, formulas, names, ranks by production.

Too much for my brain to process.

One neat site I found, listed a whole bunch of fascinating statistics:

http://www.plasticsindustry.org/economicstats [plasticsindustry.org]

Plastics play an indispensable role in a wide variety of markets, ranging from packaging and building/construction to transportation, consumer and institutional products, furniture and furnishings, electronics and more.

A Few Facts on the Plastics Industry

The plastics industry is the third largest manufacturing industry in the United States
...

I did not know that.

hmmm...

 

[rootone]

Plastics industry:
Is that just manufacturing of plastics as such, or does it also include manufacturing of items using plastics? - a vast range.
Probably the latter is a bigger industry in cash value terms.

 

[mheslep]

I suspect the low price of oil and natural gas and therefore the low price of ethylene is pushing down the value of recycled plastics, especially in developing world countries where oil and gas imports were very expensive just a few years ago (e.g. China ).

 

[edward]

What happens to rubbish in the landfills?? Sometimes not much. I remembered an article in the local newspaper about a group in Tucson from back in the late eighties. They dug up, among other things a copy of the Tucson newspaper that was dated 1950 something. The newspaper was in good condition. I couldn't find that article, but the article below from 1992 was most likely that same group.

After 20 years of sorting through garbage cans and landfills, the archaeologist William L. Rathje has accumulated precious memories. There are the 40-year-old hot dogs, perfectly preserved beneath dozens of strata of waste, and the head of lettuce still in pristine condition after 25 years. But the hands-down winner, the one that still makes him shake his head in disbelief, is an order of guacamole he recently unearthed. Almost as good as new, it sat next to a newspaper apparently thrown out the same day. The date was 1967.[QUOTE/]

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/13/nyregion/seeking-the-truth-in-refuse.html?pagewanted=all

 

[zoobyshoe]

What happens to rubbish in the landfills?? Sometimes not much. I remembered an article in the local newspaper about a group in Tucson from back in the late eighties. They dug up, among other things a copy of the Tucson newspaper that was dated 1950 something. The newspaper was in good condition. I couldn't find that article, but the article below from 1992 was most likely that same group.

That's mind-blowing, Edward.

The article continues:

The garbage dumped in landfills tends not to biodegrade. It becomes mummified.

That's not all. "Rubbish!" pulls the rug from under a number of popular misconceptions about what experts call the "solid-waste stream." It reports that disposable diapers, plastic and foam account, by volume, for perhaps 3 percent of the nation's landfill waste. "If you could wave a magic wand and make all the plastic and the disposable diapers disappear overnight, landfill operators wouldn't even notice," said Mr. Rathje, who has sorted through parts of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island and was interviewed recently in Manhattan with Mr. Murphy. Not a Crisis, but a Task

Paper, on the other hand, counts for more than 40 percent of landfill volume, and like the guacamole, it stubbornly resists biodegradation.

So, plastic is not the main offender by any means, it is actually paper.

The fact all this stuff is "mummified" means it could eventually be mined, for whatever that's worth.

 

[OmCheeto]

That's mind-blowing, Edward.

That was interesting.

So, plastic is not the main offender by any means, it is actually paper.

The fact all this stuff is "mummified" means it could eventually be mined, for whatever that's worth.

You might want to double check the date on that article. It's 23 years old.
Plastic production has almost tripled since then [ref: plasticfreetuesday.com, Aug 2014]
In spite of their name implying that they might be a group of hippie do-gooders, they do seem to use some good references.
Check out Pretty Photo #6.
On the right hand graphic, they have a red bar marking 9 countries which purportedly: "Countries with landfill ban [on plastic]".
Now there's a radical solution.
From the orange bars on the graph, it appears that they simply burn most of their garbage for energy.

Another article about how Sweden is dealing with it

Förbränning for All!
Slate, July 2014
...
The country is so efficient and smart that, as one Swedish person casually acknowledged to me, “We only put 1 percent of our garbage in landfills.”

That is true.
...
Waste-to-energy, or WTE, is responsible for about 8.5 percent of the country’s electricity.
...

That seems pretty significant.

The most recent number I can find on "paper" in landfills in the USA is 28%. [http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf : epa.gov, page 36, 2011]
This is probably why my garbage production is so small. I have an in-house incinerator. Some people call them wood stoves.

[edit] From the same paper; "As a percentage of MSW generation, plastics were less than one percent in 1960, increasing to 12.7 percent in 2011." [page 50]
So you are still correct, in that paper is a bigger problem, volume-wise.​

Another interesting article is by The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC):
PlasticsEurope's interview about "Zero Plastics to Landfill by 2020: A clear target"

It appears to be that the plastic industry itself that is doing something about it.
Probably a good thing, as if you let a problem go on too long, people start banning the problem.
And that would probably be bad for business, in the end.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

It's better than just throwing it wherever, concentrating our garbage in one location does solve some problems. The issue is how we chose those locations. Free market is the worst way to do that, they'll just pick whatever's cheapest, and that's usually just dumping it into a river or the ocean. Intelligent, altruistic people deciding where the garbage would have the minimal impact on the rest of the biosphere is the best. How we come up with those intelligent people and how we get everyone to listen to them, we haven't figured that out yet, government is full of smart people, the problem is that we tied our money up in our government so much, it tends to attract more sociopaths than not.

Our technology is also helping with the situation of where a paper from the 50s is still readable. Modern landfills are anything than just piles of garbage, they are high tech. They're constantly turned over, they are covered in bacteria, we filter out recyclable materials, and we capture the leftover methane of everything rotting. Some countries are starting to get really really good at this.

 

[Jeff Rosenbury]

Unregulated free markets are a poor solution to problems like this. Costs tend to be handed to third parties (like our grandchildren). But a well regulated free market should solve the problem.

Instead of everyone recycling, make manufacturers pay a consumption tax on packaging (as well as products of course) to offset the cost of large scale robotic recycling plants. These would provide jobs for robot wranglers who help robots sort rubbish for recycling. Pay these a bonus per ton based on the consumption tax. This would provide useful, economic stimulus while passing on the true cost of use to consumers.

The incremental time cost for our current recycling is expensive, and even so it costs almost twice the landfill cost. Time taken from other activities costs the economy even when it doesn't show up in any budgets.

Free markets work when properly regulated. The regulations just need to be made to be market neutral.

(A free market is one where participants are free to enter or leave the market, not simply unregulated chaos.)

Or just bury it until it becomes valuable enough for our grandchildren to dig it up like rats scurrying over old garbage heaps. [Perhaps there's a value judgement in there somewhere? ]

 

[zoobyshoe]

You might want to double check the date on that article. It's 23 years old.
Plastic production has almost tripled since then [ref: plasticfreetuesday.com, Aug 2014]

The next question would be: how has paper production changed since that article? Did it also triple? Stay the same? Drop? Need to know that.

In spite of their name implying that they might be a group of hippie do-gooders, they do seem to use some good references.
Check out Pretty Photo #6.
On the right hand graphic, they have a red bar marking 9 countries which purportedly: "Countries with landfill ban [on plastic]".
Now there's a radical solution.
From the orange bars on the graph, it appears that they simply burn most of their garbage for energy.

Another article about how Sweden is dealing with itThat seems pretty significant.

Burning it to generate electricity is a 'not bad' (meh) solution, particularly if it replaces coal. I wonder, though, if burning garbage in the US could amount to that very good 8.5%. I also wonder how the emissions compare, coal vs garbage.

[Ruminating a little off topic:] Coal mining, the way it's now done in the US east, is an abominable polluter. That is: the mining process, itself, destroys the land and water in it's wake. (It ["it" being the mining process called "mountain top removal"] also, incidentally, cut mining jobs from 12 to 1.) So, if we look at the plastics industry as a sort of indirect fuel industry, we have to look into how much pollution the creation of plastics produces in the first place, just as coal has to be considered in light of how much pollution it causes just to get the coal. Google tells me most plastics are derived from fossil oil, so it's at least some percentage of the pollution created by the oil industry. However, this site says:

Today, most plastics are produced from petrochemicals which are widely available and tend to be cheaper than other raw materials. However, the global supply of oil is exhaustible, so researchers are investigating other sources of raw materials, such as coal gasification.

http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/qlink.queensu.ca/~6jrt/chem210/Page4.html
So, there's the looming danger of plastics becoming part of the coal problem. (Indeed, if they're going to be gasifying coal to make plastic, we might as well gasify the plastic we have accumulated to make more plastic.) Paper production also causes a lot of pollution, so, looking at garbage as fuel, we have to take into account how much damage was done in the initial creation of what becomes garbage/fuel. Recycled paper pollutes worse than paper directly from the tree, due to the added ink chemicals. [/end rumination]

The most recent number I can find on "paper" in landfills in the USA is 28%. [http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf : epa.gov, page 36, 2011]

So, I guess the information needed is how much landfills have accelerated. Even though paper is now only about 28%, if landfills are booming (I'm assuming a larger population is creating more garbage), then the amount of paper put in them per annum might have increased by billions of tons. (On the other hand, that might not be the case since newspapers and letter writing, and paper records are slowly dying. More dead than not, actually.)

 

[OmCheeto]

The next question would be: how has paper production changed since that article? Did it also triple? Stay the same? Drop? Need to know that.

This is getting a bit confusing.
Actual global production of paper and plastic appear to have increased at vastly different rates.

              mtonne/yr
year    plastic      paper
1960     10[ref 3]   100[ref 1]       
2011    280[ref 3]   363[ref 2]

note: 1 ton = .9 tonne

[ref 1] thepaperlifecycle.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Global-paper-and-paperboard-production_FAO_SOWF-2009.jpg
[ref 2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_and_paper_industry#List_of_main_countries_by_production_quantity
[ref 3] plasticfreetuesday.com/2014/08/05/3-reasons-to-have-a-plastic-free-tuesday-every-week/The production I quoted is earlier was "waste production".

Anyways, paper (curbside) production also tripled, kind of.
It had tripled from 1960 rates, with a peak around 2000, but has declined since then. (mtons/yr)
from the http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf on page 38

year  generated   recycled
1960  30           5
2000  88          38
2011  70          46

It's a bit more complicated than this, as I'm discovering all of this is very complicated.
For instance, when industry recycles paper, the leftover sludge(5-35% of the original paper) is no longer considered "Municipal Solid Waste"(MSW), but are classified as "Industrial Process Waste", so it is not included in the numbers. (page 39)
Ugh!

Burning it to generate electricity is a 'not bad' (meh) solution, particularly if it replaces coal. I wonder, though, if burning garbage in the US could amount to that very good 8.5%. I also wonder how the emissions compare, coal vs garbage.

I'm currently looking into this:

Where's the worst air pollution in Europe and how much does it cost us? [theguardian.com, 2011.11.24]
Spreadsheet data saved to PF hw, under: European Polluters
See Attero BV in Moerdijk, Netherlands

Our waste to energy plants, Attero, Moerdijk [attero.nl]​

I'm hoping I can extrapolate from the CO2 production, the energy outputs of a few examples from "The Guardian" data, comparing the different types of plants.

Facility                         Town        Country      CO2    Nox    Sox    Cost(Damage)
PPC S.A. Ses Kerateas-Layrioy    Keratea     Greece       2700   2.27   4.25   119
Attero BV                        Moerdijk    Netherlands  3050   .442   N.R.   110

This may take some time, as the data is scattered in different places.
I also don't know what "N.R." stands for: "Not Recorded"?, "No Relevant Level"?, etc.

[Ruminating a little off topic:] Coal mining, the way it's now done in the US east, is an abominable polluter. That is: the mining process, itself, destroys the land and water in it's wake. (It ["it" being the mining process called "mountain top removal"] also, incidentally, cut mining jobs from 12 to 1.) So, if we look at the plastics industry as a sort of indirect fuel industry, we have to look into how much pollution the creation of plastics produces in the first place, just as coal has to be considered in light of how much pollution it causes just to get the coal. Google tells me most plastics are derived from fossil oil, so it's at least some percentage of the pollution created by the oil industry. However, this site says:

http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/qlink.queensu.ca/~6jrt/chem210/Page4.html
So, there's the looming danger of plastics becoming part of the coal problem. (Indeed, if they're going to be gasifying coal to make plastic, we might as well gasify the plastic we have accumulated to make more plastic.) Paper production also causes a lot of pollution, so, looking at garbage as fuel, we have to take into account how much damage was done in the initial creation of what becomes garbage/fuel. Recycled paper pollutes worse than paper directly from the tree, due to the added ink chemicals. [/end rumination]

Quite relevant rumination, IMHO.

So, I guess the information needed is how much landfills have accelerated. Even though paper is now only about 28%, if landfills are booming (I'm assuming a larger population is creating more garbage), then the amount of paper put in them per annum might have increased by billions of tons. (On the other hand, that might not be the case since newspapers and letter writing, and paper records are slowly dying. More dead than not, actually.)

I must apologize for my not having a PhD in garbology, but I've mis-represented the numbers. (As I said above, this is all very complicated.)

The most recent number I can find on "paper" in landfills in the USA is 28%. [http://www3.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/MSWcharacterization_fnl_060713_2_rpt.pdf : epa.gov, page 36, 2011]
This is probably why my garbage production is so small. I have an in-house incinerator. Some people call them wood stoves.
[edit] From the same paper; "As a percentage of MSW generation, plastics were less than one percent in 1960, increasing to 12.7 percent in 2011." [page 50]
So you are still correct, in that paper is a bigger problem, volume-wise.

WRONG!
Those are curbside numbers, and NOT what is going to landfills.

Rather than make a fool of myself again, have a look at this graph:

page 147, epa again​

It looks as though 140 mtons has been steadily going to the landfills since about 1980. Recycling and combustion appear to have kept it that way.

More later.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's a bit more complicated than this, as I'm discovering all of this is very complicated.

This is the normal finding whenever a person starts to research anything. Turns out it's an hellacious job just to collect and sort statistics. Then those statistics start to shift under your feet as they're challenged by other statistics and information from different sources. The whole thing turns out to be vastly more complicated than you ever expected. This particular arena is probably worse than most.

Regardless, I'm impressed with your research talents. You're quite the ferret. It is interesting to see so many "thermal power stations" listed as big polluters in Europe, and the cleanliness claims of the Moerdiik garbage plant are intriguing. The last section of your post with the info on how landfills have leveled off due to recycling and combustion, etc. was also pretty informative.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I found this depressing page:

10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment

http://listverse.com/2013/01/27/10-ways-recycling-hurts-the-environment/

 

[wolram]

I found this depressing page:

10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment

http://listverse.com/2013/01/27/10-ways-recycling-hurts-the-environment/

I think this piece just about kills the discussion, darn you Zooby for finding it

 

[OmCheeto]

I found this depressing page:

10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment

http://listverse.com/2013/01/27/10-ways-recycling-hurts-the-environment/

I mentioned that page in post #3.
It was depressing. Mostly because I disagreed with nearly everything the author said.

This was interesting, so I looked it up.
The very first site listed 10 things that were bad about recycling.
Unfortunately for the author, his reference to "lead" in paint, being recycled into new products struck me as odd, as I thought "lead" in paint had been banned.
It was banned, 37 years ago.
So right off, I knew he'd be grasping for straws.
I wasn't disappointed.
My take-away lesson from his list, which is more of a question really; "If it's so horrible to recycle things because of all the horrible toxic things in them, why are we putting horrible toxic things in the things we buy in the first place? Aren't we just going to send these horrible toxic things to the landfill otherwise?"

That article should be recycled. What a waste of electrons.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I mentioned that page in post #3.
It was depressing. Mostly because I disagreed with nearly everything the author said.

Sorry, I never clicked on your link due to your condemnation of it and accidentally discovered it in a separate search. But:

Unfortunately for the author, his reference to "lead" in paint, being recycled into new products struck me as odd, as I thought "lead" in paint had been banned.
It was banned, 37 years ago.
So right off, I knew he'd be grasping for straws.

Regardless of where the lead contamination comes from, it appears to be a real problem:

Even if a processing plant is careful to only recycle products that consist entirely of aluminum, there is still the potential for contamination. According to Dulley, some of the most common culprits are iron, tin and lead. The problem with having even slight amounts of impurities in the aluminum is that these impurities can vary the aluminum's properties. In some instances, they can weaken the aluminum. This potential for contamination also makes it hard for plants to develop long-term contracts with clients, such as municipalities, that may be wary of the low-value material.

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/list_6972061_problems-recycling-aluminum.html

And:

About half of all the aluminum used in the United States is being recycled these days, which is great news – but there’s a catch. Although a lot of energy is saved in the recycling process — since it avoids the need to make new aluminum from raw ore — it turns out that the recycling process, when repeated, creates serious impurities in the end product. Researchers at MIT found that unless specific processes are introduced into the aluminum recycling market now, those impurities will continue to add up, resulting in a glut of impure recycled aluminum which has extremely limited uses.

The author of 10 Ways Recycling Hurts the Environment does indeed make it sound like people may be getting lead poisoning from soda cans, which is highly doubtful, but the impurities in recycled aluminum, including lead, make it less and less usable.

Additionally, recycling aluminum, just like recycling paper, produces an unusable and toxic "dross" that has to be dealt with some how:

Recycling aluminum requires only five percent of the energy required to manufacture new aluminum from bauxite. However, recycling aluminum produces many toxic chemicals that are released into the air. Furthermore, recycling aluminum produces a waste product called "dross" that is highly toxic and has to be buried in landfills. This dross must be tightly sealed in containers so that it doesn’t leak out and enter groundwater.

In order to be recycled, aluminum must be melted to separate the pure metal from the impurities. This process produces a waste product that is known as salt cake. For every tonne of aluminum that is melted, 200 to 500 kilograms of salt cake are produced. This “cake” is not something that you would want to eat -- it contains aluminium oxides, metallic aluminum, carbides, nitrides, sulphides and phosphides. Salt cake is highly toxic to living organisms.

http://education.seattlepi.com/environmental-problems-associated-recycling-aluminum-5736.html

So, as you pointed out earlier, the whole thing is much more complicated than people generally realize.