Waste Disposal:
All Photographs are by courtesy of: PHOTOVAULT
PHOTOVAULT is based in San Francisco.
Often Complex solutions are sought for what appear to be insurmountable problems.
By addressing the root cause, a simple solution can often be found.
Whilst it appears that the world is sinking under the rising tide of water, we are also apparently in grave danger of burying ourselves under mountains of our own garbage.
I suppose we could always try to build islands out of it as the water rises, unfortunately garbage has a tendency to decay and produce noxious fumes and is not very stable in water.
Much of the destruction of the global environment is due to the production of the stuff we promptly throw away, stuff like:
Paper & Cardboard for newspapers and packaging.
Plastic bottles and containers.
Glass bottles and containers.
Aluminium in the ubiquitous drinks can.
Metal in all shapes and forms.
Food Waste.
All of this material is recyclable. When we throw it away someone makes a lot of money and pollution or destroys the environment just to produce more so that we can throw it onto the ever increasing pile of shit that we produce. Even food waste is biodegradable into organic fertelizer that most farmers pay a fortune for.
The vast majority of this stuff is called packaging, it is produced at great cost to you the consumer just to ensure that you buy one brand over another. This proposal will encourage the producers of the waste to pay for a large part of the recycling process.
If we learn to recycle the majority of this rubbish we dont need to cut down so many trees to make paper. We dont have to use up so much energy producing pollution & plastic from oil. We can save a vast amount of energy and effort by not grubbing metals from the Earth.
An interesting story and lesson that the west can learn from a supposed 3rd world country. In Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s, Coca-Cola was sold in the original styled coke bottles. The bottles were hardly recognizable as coke bottles because they had been recycled so many times that they had almost worn away. Presumably the bottles had been rattling together for so long as they were transported around the country over many years. The important thing that caused this recycling was that you couldnt buy a full bottle of Coke without handing over an empty Coke bottle in exchange. Im pretty sure that it wasnt Coca-Cola who instigated this scheme but poverty. Coca-Cola could have benefited a great deal by following up on this idea, but they didnt. Yawn, All so very boring and normal.
In the 1960 & 1970s in the UK and presumably in most western countries, a deposit was paid on glass bottles to ensure their return. It was generally the children who collected the bottles and earned the reward, quite often having to face stiff opposition from other bottle collectors. The point is that the reward system works especially at the individual private level.
Based on the fact that this reward system works, Global Unity has devised a scheme that can be applied in every situation, anywhere in the world where people dump rubbish, especially domestic waste. It is assumed that commerce and industry can easily be encouraged to package and recycle their own waste as normally large amounts of the same type of waste.
Please refer to www.UK DEFRA Landfill Tax Credit.htm for the background info.
Assumptions.
A large amount of landfill waste is domestic generated.
Best Solution: Recycling of domestic waste at source; the Consumer.
Provide financial, credit incentive to the consumer to encourage domestic waste recycling.Domestic Waste can be categorised into a number of main areas:
- Paper, Cardboard.
- Glass.
- Plastic.
- Bio-organic degradable Food Waste.
- Metal, mostly aluminium in cans and foil packaging.
- Metal, wood and other materials in Domestic appliances and Furniture etc.
- Chemical waste, detergents, cosmetics, petroleum waste such as engine oil, solvents etc.
The normal trend is for domestic users to mix domestic waste in a kitchen waste bin. This is collected by the local waste disposal units. It is very difficult to separate the mixed waste for recycling.
All local council provide limited public recycling facilities.
The main drawback is the lack of incentive for the public to use these recycling facilities.
Providing an incentive for the general public.
The waste could easily is separated at source, in the home, packaged and delivered to the recycling centre.
Households and individuals can be awarded credit reward points for delivering their packaged waste to the recycling centre.
The waste products can be delivered by the individual householder and can be given a credit reward depending on the material and the weight.
Using an electronic weighing machine linked to a smart card reader/writer. The individuals credit card can be upgraded with the appropriate credit for the recyclable waste delivered.
Use & Disposal of the credit.
There are several ways the accrued credit can be used.Lottery entries. Virtually everyone over 18 enters the lottery, as a government sponsored organisation the lottery organisation; Camelot, in the UK, should permit a special credit scheme to allow card holders to use their credit for lottery entries.
This provides the added incentive of possibly winning the Lottery, most peoples dream.
Credit against local council tax. This would link the council taxes and other payments to involve households and council that both benefit from the scheme.
Credit against other bills such as mobile or normal phone bills.
In addition, separate reward/prize schemes could be established that rewarded individuals that recycled the most waste.
Companies could offer prizes and incentives against the earned credit to promote their goods and marketing. At the same time they will be seen to be supporting the recycling initiative.
By involving the companies that produce the waste in this way, much of the cost of the scheme will be absorbed by the companies as part of their promotional campaign.
Juvenile vandalism and employment.
In many communities juvenile vandalism and crime is a growing concern. This problem is generally attributed to the lack of employment and boredom of the modern youth.
There will be local residents who do not wish to deliver their own waste personally to the recycling centre.
The local youths could be organising into teams, supervised by a responsible, interested person.
These teams could contract to the local residents to collect their waste that is packaged and placed outside the house for a regular evening collection.
In this way the local juveniles would be rewarded for their efforts.
This scheme would go some way towards instilling a sense of responsibility and self worth, very much lacking in much of the modern youth.
It will probably see local youths actually picking up rubbish, litter from the streets to gain their quota of waste. It will also make them think twice before casually throwing there empty coca-cola (or beer) cans and litter in the street.
Special Team reward schemes could be set up to exchange the credit into the much desired mobile phones, computer games, videos and other electronic luxuries.In many areas these juvenile related schemes can be sponsored by the drinks companies and others that produce large amounts of waste packaging.
If this type of scheme were successful it would phase out the normal contracted waste collection system.
The recycling centres will need constant supervision to monitor their correct use and to prevent abuse of the system. The waste disposal companies and individuals could be employed as supervisors in the recycling centres.
Bio-organic degradable Food Waste.
This is the only waste product that has no apparent value.
It is also the only waste that a household needs to dump into its kitchen waste bin.
Under normal circumstances this biodegradable waste can be turned into natural, organic fertiliser. Through a natural decomposition process normal toxins and pathogens are quickly broken down into harmless compositions.
Plastics and chemical waste can be recycled and processed through the normal industrial processes.
Metal and wood are obviously recyclable in many ways through Industrial & Art processes.
The success of the proposal depends on providing incentives and educating the public in environmental awareness and responsibility in waste management.
Land fill is obviously big business, if this scheme was adopted it could see a serious change in this area of the waste disposal industry and management.
If this outline proposal was adopted and developed on a national level, landfill could become a thing of the past.We would like to hear your views. Send us an email.
Copyright © 2002 Global Unity. All rights reserved.
Revised: November 04, 2011
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e-mail. globalunity2000@aol.com