My Trash's Afterlife (Parts 1, 2, and 3)

Sadly this video story had a lot of video and very little story. Why bother?

My take on this subject of trash dumping.
Paper bagging from grocery stores are what I generally use for dumping my daily rubbish. I do not place garbage in these bags but rather grind it down in a mixer and rid it into the sewage which in turn is fed to bacteria in the septic tank. Grease is never a part of this system, so chicken fats and the like never go in.
The landfills crush up all of that rubbish as we know but it still remains as plastic, the bagging that is used and never rots in the ground. In affect it is a mucky mess.
In the long run composting is not really what is being developed in the ground and it wll for many years never really rot away the contents underground.
Brown paper bagging is the answer since the paper will rot in the ground, but tell that to the rubbish man who picks it up. He would rather it be plastic.

oh btw i can't wait to see part 2.

The half of the equation that hasn't even been mentioned here, is smart-shopping to make these recycling dilemmas less frequent. For example, never buy juices and ther liquids in those "tetra-pak" cartons which contain fused layers of aluminum, paper, and plastic/wax. They're simply impossible to recycle. Another silly example is glass jars - the metal lids often contain a lining of rubber/plastic to make a good seal against the glass, but this means the lids cannot be recycled (not here in the northeast anyway). A third example is "non-degradable" food waste - animal bones and similar items, which will muck up a compost heap. Not buying these things stops the problem at its root.

I was surprised the fellow in the article tossed a half eaten sausage into the compost. I'd always thought meat should be kept out because it attracts rats and other vermin while vegetables do not.

The main problem with these recycling programs is that they are relying on people's good nature or threat of fines to recycle which will only get us so far. Why should someone who only throws out 1 bag of trash a week pay the same price as his neighbor who throws out 5 bags. In my City of Decatur, GA they started a pay you throw trash program that charges residents for the disposal of trash by volume. Residents buy various size trash bags from the City that include the cost of disposal (more expensive than hefty). Residents have a monetary incentive to recycle and now our City leads the state in recycling.

I Agree with "Don't Sweat" (Really??? Submitted by Anonymous) must be having a bad day and wouldn't know a good story or good reporting if it bit "Anonymous" in the ass. People who leave nasty comments should be required to own up to them by at least posting a name. Coward. Other papers might be littered with typos, bad editing and reporting due to staff cuts and a pervasive fear among the journalist of job loss but Mother Jones is still my one stop for quality reporting- interesting, informative, and entertaining. I liked the cat shit part too! (:

Federal Trade Commission Defines Biodegradability

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the local garbage dump. I discovered that my trash wasn’t biodegradable. The trash in the back of my truck was headed for a “Dry Tomb” landfill where my garbage will be compacted, covered with dirt, compacted some more and then layer upon layer the process will continue rendering my trash non-biodegradable. Archeologists thousands of years from now will be able to drill through these layers and just like Indiana Jones, find out how I lived by looking at what I threw away.
In a traditional “Dry Tomb” landfill, the stuff isn’t going to go away, at least not very fast. We use our dry tomb landfills to hide our trash...keep it away from our sight and noses.

I was surprised yesterday, to see an interesting tidbit about our landfills in the press. The federal government (Federal Trade Commission) has determined that since things do not biodegrade in a landfill, any item that is disposed of by tossing it in the garbage cannot be called biodegradable. Why you ask? Well, things in a typical “Dry Tomb” landfill don’t biodegrade and that would include things that normally do biodegrade...like paper, and food waste. It seems that anything that isn’t burned or composted in a commercial composting site and is disposed of in a landfill....can no longer be called biodegradable.

Take PLA (Corn starch or other plant starch) plastics, most PLA plastic will end up in a landfill. Historically, 70-80 percent of plastics isn’t recycled and end up in our landfills, streams and oceans. PLA can’t be mixed in with the normal recycling stream with other plastics so most PLA will end up in a landfill. For proper disposal, PLA must be processed in a commercial composting site. Commercial composting sites in the U.S. are far and few between. Since most PLA will probably end up in a “Dry Tomb” landfill under the FTC ruling it should no not be considered/labeled as biodegradable plastic.

Let’s take another example, leftover food. If you dig a hole in your backyard and put your food scraps in the hole and cover it with dirt, your food scraps will biodegraded within two to three weeks. Food placed in a back yard hole would be considered biodegradable. Now, let’s take that same piece of lettuce and take it to our local garbage dump...oops; it’s no longer biodegradable (Assuming your landfill is the “Dry Tomb” type).
However, if you happen to be lucky and your local landfill is a “Bioreactor landfill”, then paper, lettuce and a lot of other garbage will biodegrade.

Bioreactor landfills are designed to cause things to biodegrade and a bioreactor landfill is designed to capture biogases and turn those gases into clean energy. There are only a few bioreactor landfills in the U.S., they cost more to build then dry tomb landfills. Another thing that impedes bioreactor construction is that compliance with EPA and other environmental regulations takes years of paperwork and meetings to get the building permits. The process to build these modern landfills should be faster and easier, bioreactor landfills are better for us, the environment and future generations.
Many dry tomb landfill operators are all that interested in building a new generations landfill, operators have told me that it’s easier for then to maintain status quo and as one operator told me,” We have land for another 50-100 years, then it will be someone else’s problem.”

There are exceptions to every rule, and there are things that go into a dry tomb landfill that can be considered biodegradable. Stuff in a landfill does biodegrade but some of it might take thousands of years. However, anything that can biodegrade in an anaerobic environment will biodegrade in a dry tomb landfill much quicker then something that needs oxygen. ENSO Bottles, an environmental company, realized that all plastics ultimately end up in a landfill and with more than 150 billion bottles being produced each year something needed to be done about reducing plastic pollution. Less that 30 percent of plastic bottles are recycled, the remaining 100 plus billion bottles are ending up in our landfills, streams and oceans. ENSO is a supporter of recycling, which is an important step in conserving our scarce resources and protecting our environment.

ENSO decided to do something about the pollution problem and recently announced the development of a modified PET plastic bottle that will biodegrade including in a “Dry Tomb” anaerobic landfill environment. The ENSO Bottle has been tested for biodegrade in an anaerobic or aerobic microbial environment. The ENSO Bottle may be the only plastic product that meets the FTC’s requirement of biodegrade in a landfill microbial environment, leaving behind natural elements of biogases and humus within a reasonable time frame.

We believe that consumers have a right to know is their products are correctly labeled. Consumers and competitors can request test result from ENSO Bottles, LLC.

ENSO bottles with EcoPure™ have been tested and validated for the following:

(1) Recyclability through a third-party lab for ASTM D 1003 (Haze and Transmission).
(2) ASTM D 4603 (Intrinsic Viscosity)
(3) ASTM F 2013 (Acetaldehyde), Fluorescence Visual, and Visual Black Specks and Gels.
(4) ASTM D 5511 Standard Test Methods, a standard for biodegradation testing in anaerobic environments. Results clearly indicate ENSO bottles with EcoPure™ biodegrade through natural microbial digestion.

To learn more about these solutions visit http://www.ensobottles.com and http://www.bio-tec.biz.

To request official test results contact:
ENSO Bottles at 866-936-3676 or Bio-Tec 1-505-999-1160.

Hello MotherJones team!

Thanks for this great article!

Best Regards,
Luiz

I was also surprised that meat is ok in the compost, but they told me it is. I think it's because the compost method that they use is advanced enough to handle it. This stuff with be discussed in part 3 of the piece.
emo