Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/19/new-delhis-garbage-mountain.html
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The Tucson landfill is easily twice that big, if not bigger. Probably more thoughtfully constructed, but that’s not a very big thing for a city of that size.
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Video brought to you by the South China Morning Post.
The issue here isn’t how big/tall this garbage heap is, but rather like the woman in the video describes, as a young and developing economy grows, people will naturally buy more stuff, and waste more stuff, throw stuff away. That’s the real problem here. I don’t see any magical, invisible hand dealing with such a side effect of the dominant economic system as it exists today.
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Another big issue is that it’s immediately adjacent to a river, so it is polluting the water and ground water. There’s residences also right next to it.
The best way to handle it might be to move the location of the dump elsewhere and manage the existing site to become a park as some other former dump sites have done. Though it does seem that even with moving the dump they have more work to do with managing their sites better.
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…BUY LESS SHIT, HUMANS!
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This being in India i would focus more on recycling than shaming people for consuming things. Getting people to think more critically about their waste should naturally shift people’s spending and disposal habits.
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Reuters just did an amazingly horrifying article on plastic water bottles. Excellent use if graphics and animation.
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Was about to post this exact video.
Of course, this assumes we’ll make it to 2505.
My wife and I start laughing every time we pass a Fuddruckers and my girls keep asking “What’s so funny?”. We’ve never been in one, and I imagine we’d just be cracking up the whole time so I can cross that restaurant off of the places I’ll ever eat.
Now to go get a “Full Body” Latte from Starbucks…
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The burgers there are decent, though there’s places i would rather go to if given the choice but its actually not that bad.
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The landfill (one of 4 for the region) was supposed to be closed 17 years ago when it was “full”. The city tried desperately to find alternative outlets for the ever-increasing amounts of trash from the growing population but they had no other place to put the waste that keeps accumulating daily, so they still dump it there. It’s “home” to ultra-poor families who pick through the garbage by hand for anything of value. It’s producing decomposition byproducts like methane and is constantly smoldering or actively on fire. It’s really, really bad.
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Yeah, it’s a huge mountain of garbage, but it’s tiny compared to Fox News.
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I really miss the Fuddruckers that was near me outside of Philadelphia. The burgers and fries were fresh and the fixings bar was wonderful.
A few years ago I was in Puerto Rico with my girlfriend and our hotel was across the street from a Fuddruckers. Sadly she would not let us eat there.
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President Trump was so incensed when he heard about this ecological disaster that he demanded to know who was in charge of it so he could poach him as his next EPA chief.
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I figured out once that a single kilometer-wide, kilometer-deep hole would contain all the world’s trash for decades. It’d create a worldwide trash train, but can you think of a better use for Tucson?
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Plastic everywhere. You get some fast food and they give you a plastic fork, that comes in a plastic baggie.
I’ve heard it theorized that someday when we’re far past “peak oil” mining old landfills for the plastic will actually be a worthwhile endeavor.
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Fair enough, but after watching that movie that name will never get out of my head and I’d be sniggering like Bevis and Butthead through the whole meal.
I had that same idea a few decades back growing up near one of the largest open pit copper mines in the world. It’s about 1 cubic km in volume. The mine can’t produce forever and the surrounding bedrock and extracted overburden are pretty toxic with heavy metals. Reclamation is going to be tough. I came up with the idea back when there was that NTC garbage barge that couldn’t find a destination that would take it. $10 / cubic meter would be attractive to most cities. Moe if you can take contaminated stuff. The place already had trains, railcars, trucks, etc. The ore produces $5 per ton (not including overburden) before mining and smelting costs. Filling the hole can’t be any more expensive and could be more profitable.
So haul in the the nastiest garbage, use the overburden to cap the layers, and you have at least half a cubic km of space. That’s a minimum of $5 billion in revenue from what was previously a toxic hole.
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Oh totally, the two times i’ve eaten there have been in the last couple of years and both times i’m internally chuckling over the business name.
