On: Asian countries take a stand against the rich worl...

[toephu2]

Source?

Landfills take up a lot of space. I saw a documentary about it (forgot the name of it). Humans waste so much and the trash keeps piling up. You can only dig so much.

[jlmorton → toephu2]

Landfills are three dimensional and the Earth is astonishingly large. On millennia timescales, we will never run out of places to put them.

At a depth of 400 feet, the entire US annual trash output is approximately 1,000 acre [1].

There are 37 billion acres on earth. And indeed, much of that is not very habitable land.

And importantly, landfill space is not permanently lost. There are many beautiful parks around the world built atop landfills.

[1] https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-scienc...

[codedokode → jlmorton]

The waste in the landfill produces toxic gases. Also it can burn and produce even more toxic gases. Even if the landfill is several kilometers away from homes, it is still dangerous.

Also, the waste can pollute underground waters, and if there are many rivers in the region, the water will be contaminated in a large area around.

[radford-neal → codedokode]

Yeah. Some toxic/flammable gasses can be produced from landfills. But that toxic gas is not produced by plastic. So reducing the amount of plastic in the landfill isn't going to reduce the amount of toxic stuff. Similarly, the plastic in a landfill is not going to end up in underground water, or in rivers. So what's your point?

[Aenyn → codedokode]

So the problem isn't that it takes space then.