For much of human history, solid waste was in
the form of bones, shells, and other biodegradable material. The typical means
of disposal was to throw waste out the door of the dwelling or to toss it into
the nearest stream or ravine. In ancient Mesopotamia, corpses were disposed of
by throwing them into the Tigris or Euphrates rivers. Eventually all of this waste
was naturally broken down and recycled through the natural systems of the earth.
Few traces remain of this material. Only in the case of stones and pottery are
there significant remnants of ancient cultures. In a few cases, bones and flesh
have been preserved under special conditions, but these cases are in fact extremely
rare. Most ancient organic things have perished.
With the advent of the industrial revolution the number and kinds of human objects rapidly diversify. In the twentieth century, the appearance of a wide culture of manufactured plastics and synthetics combined with a global system of production, distribution and consumption increased domestic household inventories beyond any means of comparison with past conditions. Never in human history have people possessed so many things. Eventually all human things cease to be useful and must be either stored or disposed of. This principle is as true of space stations as it is of tomato soup cans and gum wrappers.
While most consumer goods have short shelf-lives in the store, they have comparatively long shelf-lives in the kitchen and in the closet. Closets, attics, basements, and garages are critically important auxiliaries of landfills. It would be something in the order of an environmental disaster if Americans suddenly got rid of the useless things they have accumulated in their houses. Fortunately, bonds of sentiment and patterns of disorganization keep them from such radical gestures of cleaning up and tossing out.
While the consumer good once introduced into domestic space tends to survive for a fairly long time, the packaging associated with the product does not survive but is quickly disposed. This packaging of goods whether in the form of bread bags, food cans and bottles, toothpaste tubes, blister packs, or expanded foam blocks all becomes instantaneous waste and is injected into the stream of waste flowing from homes toward landfills. This waste in all its forms at the domestic level--exclusive of commercial, agricultural, and industrial waste--amounts to an average of 4# per person per day in the United States. Since there is no intrinsic value to this material, it is bagged and tossed out of the house and soon enters a local landfill.
It is argued of course that some waste material such as aluminum beverage cans have high value and can be efficiently recycled. This is true only if the external diseconomy of the cost of labor is ignored. It has been a convenient fiction of recycling fantasy to ignore this cost: recyclers are paid for their cans not for their labor, and what they receive for their cans is incommensurate with their labor. If recycling had actually to pay its way on a full cost accounting of all costs, labor included, it would soon be seen for what it actually is: an industrial scam to by pass union labor with a scab workforce of highly educated dupes.
Ultimately, recycling is a fantasy because it ignores the simple fact of entropy. All forms of organization require an input of energy in excess of what can be recovered from the system: energy is wasted or dissipated and while material can be recovered, energy cannot. Energy--whether in the form of solar energy, human muscle power, or fossil fuel energy--is costly. Recycling can only apparently succeed in cost-effective terms if the cost of energy is ignored. As any item moves along the conveyor belt of production from extracted raw materials to finished product, each of the hundreds of stages of production represent an input of energy: the energy of fabrication, organization, or transportation.
As soon as the finished object is purchased, a severe spiral of entropy sets in that cannot be reversed apart from a production line of recovery which requires energy. This energy may be in the form of the recyclers' labor of sorting and transporting or it may be the energy of reproduction of the reclaimed components. As recycling is widened to include not just aluminum cans, but the entire solid waste stream, the costs of energy rise to the point that the system cannot overcome its inherent entropy and must either fail or be artificially supported by infusions of public money via taxes. At this point the hidden cost of labor in recycling becomes visible: as soon as any community has to pay for the actual costs of recycling, recycling becomes too expensive to pursue.
It is much the fashion in progressive communities of the northeast and northwest to insist that very high percentages of this material--perhaps 85% it is claimed--can be recycled and kept from entering a landfill. Some communities--utilizing powerful economic measures, carefully designed solid waste management equipment, and relying upon high levels of individual commitment--have attained impressive rates of recycling. Seattle, in particular, is touted as an exemplar in this regard.
The simple fact is this: this ain't Seattle. In most areas of the United States, there does not exist the infrastructure of public awareness and commitment, education of citizenry, and the financial resources [despite the cost of landfills] to convert to differentiated systems of waste disposal to make municipal recycling feasible. High efficiency recycling requires a level of public knowledge and support that most--the great majority of--communities simply do not possess and are not likely to possess in anything like the near future.
Franklin County, despite its scenic qualities, is beset with a double problem of roadside trash and diminishing landfill capacity. At the same time, artificial agendas at the state level for recycling haunt local planners and force more and more landfills into closure without measurably significant increases in recycling. In fact, most administrators at the local level know exactly what their constituent citizenry knows: recycling is a pipe dream and is not a solution to the patterns of consumption in developed economies. Developed economies quite literally trade upon trash: economies that do not generate material obsolescence and replacement of goods with new items stagnate and collapse.
It is unlikely that Wal-Mart is going to close its doors in the next decade or that in any foreseeable future the citizens of Franklin County will cease to be consumers of material goods. Yet, sooner or later, every single thing that comes out the doors of Wal-Mart and every other retail facility will end up in a landfill somewhere. Ninety percent of the material will end up there within two years, the remainder will not survive more than an additional five years. There are exceptions: refrigerators may last a decade; a pocket knife may last a half century. But eventually the destiny of all material goods is the final dissolution of their utility into the catchment of a landfill. No law mandating rates of recycling can stem or reverse this process: material goods are inherently doomed to decay and disposal.
It is not a solution to the problem of solid waste for our county to contract with Moore County to receive our solid waste. Lateral removal of waste is not a solution to the solid waste problem. In fact, the solid waste problem is a generic feature of American life and will not be eliminated. The conditions under which solid waste can either be eliminated all together or can be completely recycled are impossible conditions in American life: either would destroy American life as we know it. Our day-to-day life is predicated upon the consumption of goods destined to become trash. Sooner or later we will embrace our destiny--by choice or necessity--and learn to live with our trash. We will either learn to pay garbage taxes at a level higher than our support for all other public services or we will find locations in Franklin County for a series of landfills.
Lateral disposal only extends the external diseconomies of production to our neighboring counties which are too impoverished or powerless to resist our capacity to move our waste into their jurisdictions. Prudent community planning would suggest that the ultimate recycling may be in the landfills themselves. Communities which retain their own trash generate potential mines of material that can be recovered in the future in times of scarcity when the intrinsic cost of these materials has risen and which then justifies the cost of their recovery.
