Strange Trash Facts

Incredible facts..

nice research job valli,

i'm just wondering, you mentioned that alum.cans decomposes from 80-100 years and then on the last part you said plastic and cans never decompose,i would agree plastics really don't decompose,may i ask what kind of can is it you are referring that doesn't decompose?

thanks,
nobert

These are some facts we all need to consider before we put anything in the trash. We should never buy new when we can use what we have for the purpose. As for our house, we do not throw away 4 lbs of trash per day, but we still throw away too much.

amen to that. I'm a firm believer in recycling and reusing.

Hey, great post! Solid facts, nice design.

Thanks everyone for reading and commenting.

@nobert
I said plastic bottles and cans: plastic bottles and plastic cans.

Where are the references? What does the glass turn into in a million years? Do you really think that plastic bottle will look like new in 5 trillion years?

What about the chemicals released into the atmosphere/waterways/soil/whatever during the recycling process? from what I hear it's more damaging to the environment (most of the time) to recycle things like plastic and aluminum cans.. in a different way, granted...

great information Valli... but... doesn\'t this contradict \'global warming\'? jk :_

Great Article!

Great write up, valli. I have done research for breaking down plastic materials and was amazed by what I found. They have done studies by exposing plastic of various kinds to extreme elements and came to the conclusion that some properties in plastic may never break down. There are some particles in plastic that will break down quickly but most plastic compounds will still be here long after we are gone. No one has ever been around long enough to research it\'s decomposition in real time so 1000 years sounded like a safe number.

We recycle nearly everything where I live. We either compost for our own gardens or put food scraps out to be picked up weekly. Paper, plastic bottles. containers, and glass is collected weekly while our trash is now collected bi-weekly. What we are finding is about 95 percent of our trash is plastic bags and plastic food wrapping. They are collecting everything but the most toxic material and burying it in our landfill sites. A garbage can full of compressed plastics per household twice a month adds up quickly.

Great article, valli on one of my pet peeves.

Thank you for the information Darlene.

Thank you Alexa and Slowslow.

@A.Random
Of course, certain chemcials released during recyling. Yet recycling is considered better than decomposition till the date.

@Baloney,
You can find references over the net.

Burn it.

B S Check out the epa site ALL BS

We have to leave something for the future generations to find about us. Its not like we are short of places to dispose of them.

If you're interested in this topic you may want to read this NPR story regarding plastic decomposition.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14194915

Stop being so afraid of your own mortality and the mortality of the human race.

"Plastic bottles and cans never decompose."
From first hand experience, that is quite incorrect. The example 'plastic bottle' in the above photo is a fuel container, which is most often HDPE (plastic sheeting is also HDPE, milk jugs are HDPE). In my home in the northern reaches of the continental USA, after local direct sunlight shone on HDPE milk jugs for 2 years, those milk jugs became so extremely brittle that simply pressing on them reduced them to small chips. It is a well known problem that HDPE plastic sheeting cannot survive direct sunlight exposure, even WITH the famous UV stabilizers, for more than a few months. My experience ranges from pre- to post- UV stabilized blends, I'm not as uninformed as the next person could wish to berate.

Seems that UV can decompose almost any HDPE, so make sure you toss all your milk jugs and old gas cans somewhere where the sun can burn 'em.

Valli, you obviously have not done any REAL research on your topic, by consulting REAL scientists, engaged in the design, manufacture, and eventual disposal of some of the above man-made products. Hell, even some of your times for the more natural products are off by a wide margin. Most \'natural\' or \'organic\' based refuse biodegrades in 30-60 days, which you have correctly stated for the sugar cane. Congratulations, you got ONE right. Other than that, it appears you are simply spouting off with your \'opinion\' instead of facts. And, more likely you are regurgitating the opinion of someone else, who most likely did not bother to actually do any research, but restated something the \'heard somewhere\'. As Spuffler said above, almost all plastics you\'ve mentioned are of the HDPE type, which is in fact designed to biodegrade within 12 months. In North America and the UK, these plastics are engineered by LAW to biodegrade in specific amounts of time (the time depends on the laws in the country of manufacture). Please, next time you decide to post rubbish of this nature, CITE YOUR SOURCES. This way, everyone interested in these things can verify what you state, and maybe you can make your case heard, or at least believably valid.

"B S Check out the epa site ALL BS"

Yes, because the EPA is still functioning and has not been crippled by Bush politics at all.

If you bury it who gives a crap how long it takes to decompose??

It can stay buried for a million years what do I care? As a matter of fact its a good thing because then archaeologists will have something to look at in a million years when they excavate it.

Honestly people get a life.

Word in my community is that 2/3 of public-disposed waste comes from business & industry and their stuff is hard to recycle. Residential trash is separated and supposedly recycled, but not sure that is so even at the 50/50 level of believability. BTW, plastic degrades to powder/pellets but does not bio-degrade. Is that significantly different from sand or gravel? Just wondering.

Great Article! Good Info! Exceptional Photos! Thanks.

Very insightful... I noticed the cigarette was filtered. Without the filter, I'd imagine it's a matter of days for decomposition.

With disposal problems and toxins released in creating, using and destroying plastics, let's focus on alternatives to plastics when at all possible (this doesn't mean easy!) and be wise in using them when nothing else can be substituted. Here's another place plastics end up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HC_jc5_MnH8

All organic compounds decompose. Where do you think oil and gas comes from?

Awwwww how cute! Lets all sing and hug a tree =)

what we need is natural population control on a massive scale. a pandemic, a catastrophic world war, an apocalypse... something to rid the planet of the ultimate parasite: us. go ahead, get offended... it's in our nature.

"What about the chemicals released into the atmosphere/waterways/soil/whatever during the recycling process? from what I hear it's more damaging to the environment (most of the time) to recycle things like plastic and aluminum cans.. in a different way, granted..."

Not sure about plastics, but aluminium is much cheaper and cleaner to recycle than to extract from its ore, which involves a whole bunch of processing.

#21 - Well hell when you put it THAT way ... I'm turning a few 5 gallon plastic gas containers into my personal time capsules. I'll bury them in national parks (less likely to have a Quickie Mart built on it). In a million or milliondy billion years they will discover I invented, the transistor, internet, toenail clippers, mustard, ... I invented inventing !!! Gawdamn skippy

Read "The World Without Us". I would use his references on the plastic, but it was a library book and is no longer in my possession. Many types of plastic we have no idea how long they will take to decompose... especially on the molecular level.

So don't believe what you read on the internet, go pick up a book... and actually learn something. This guy is right about plastic basically. We don't know how long it takes.

Very informative.

Now I understand many things. We have a visitor who hides cigarette butts in our flower pots. The oldest ones still are recognizable (just barely though) after five years. The plot behind our summer cottage was used as a dump upto the end of the seventies. After thirty odd years we can still pick up Tetrapack juice cartons with metal inside, plastic milk bags with recognizable text on them, aluminium caps and of course glass bottles. A leather shoe with the upper almost decomposed but with rubber sole intact also surfaced.
I wonder how this decomposition rate would be affected by climate? We live in Finland, where the earth is frozen and sno-covered for 4-5 months a year.

Valli, I worry less about exact dates of composition, but am impressed more with your focal point - Yes, we do need to make steps towards protecting our environment. Thank you for your message.
I am so sorry that certain individuals felt it necessary to unload some of their negativity on you, particularly cursing and name calling. Neither of those tactics show scholarly behavior.
Take care, Valli.

Judy, First you congratulate someone for their focus, while forgiving their fact gathering (their facts are completely wrong). Then you go one to berate others (who know the facts)for less than scholarly tactics. Just wow.

You Judy, are what is wrong with the world. Idiocy unchecked.

As a person with a degree in Environmental Science and having studied actual landfills over time, I can tell you that the above figures may or may not be accurate for an item that is exposed to light and air, but it matters little when in the anaerobic and dark environment of a landfill. Studies of old dumps show that even the most biodegradable items live vastly extended lives in such conditions, and most of what is in a landfill will, in effect, never break down.
Newspaper, that very quickly-biodegradable substance, has been found to be not even yellowed after 30-40 years in a dump. That doesn't even begin to address what happens to the water table when it's contaminated by the landfill and other unpleasant facts about landfills.

Good info, thanks and take care!

This is a real eye-opener.

Thanks for reminding us once more that we have to be careful with using things that take a long time to decompose. I wonder whether the numbers being true is so importnat here. I don't think you have any pretensions to being scholastic in this article. If I got it right, your idea was to create awareness, and you have been very successful. Even hardcore cynics have read and commented. Cheers!

Good article Valli. I agree with Judy, MindIt, Ruby Hawk,Anne Lyken-Garner and others. I think one purpose of this article is solved, people are reading it and talking about recycling!! Good reminder.

This is for #18 by Spuffler:
Do u really think that after u toss some things up where sun can burn them, they are left in the same position for years together? Dont u know that winds carry enough earth to bury things with time? And also get ur basic definitions right! Decomposition is not just breaking or shattering what u can see by naked eyes, it means complete breakdown of any material into nothing more than basic elements that are found naturally on earth.