I was watching the documentary “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy” on Netflix and heard this comment when discussing waste generated from consumerism.
It made me realize, yes we don’t throw garbage “away” because away doesn’t exist … we just pass it on for someone else to deal with. Sometimes that next person might not deal with it right away but eventually someone has to deal with it.
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We should have a device to yeet our garbage into a black hole to fix this issue.
Assuming our universe turns out to be inside of a black hole, it’s possible that you’d potentially be yeeting your garbage into someone else’s universe. Ideally we have all universes yeet there garbage into the one we dedicated to garbage. Then the people at the end of time can deal with that instead of us. Although it’d be much more energy efficient to change compositions of matter than maintain an active black hole, so recycling may still be optimal over tossing your banana peel.
This was the plot of one of the latest Futurama episodes. Instead of general trash it was clothes
This is true. But we pay for that someone to deal with it. Where I live it can be recycled, composted, or burned for electricity. Landfills are the last resort.
Taking it one step further
Garbage is more a side effect that we want to pass on to the poor sod next in line
Lol I literally just watched the same documentary today. It was good (and horrifying), but I really hated the AI voice gimick they used. It probably could’ve reduced the runtime by 15 minutes if they removed those parts.
Tbf, some of it would be broken down and dealt with by fungus, there are some that can eat through some plastics.
So not necessarily a person
In the past, humans and then small communities would dig a hole and bury their waste
Now we have larger communities, so we make a larger hole called a landfill. Same concept and process. Yes, consumption is killing the planet, but pretending landfills don’t a) exist and b) accomplish the exact same thing that all waste filled holes have throughout history is strange. Even other animals bury their waste.
The edge of the continent curls over, everything gets dragged into the elemental garbage disposal of grinding rock and lava. Cities, cars, forests, buildings, everything. It takes a couple million years. But ya, everything gets digested. I think they call it the subduction zone.
Also, someday we will invent nanotrees. Plant them on ancient landfills. Bear fruit of pure iron, aluminum, gold. There is wealth there.
True … there is no real problem for the planet … or the universe for that matter … everything comes and goes and appears and disappears eventually.
The problems are relative to our human species within our few thousand or millions of years of existence, which will probably be shortened because of wasteful habits.
