Unsustainable: Our junk talks volumes
There is a place you must see if you want a graphic reminder of why the Earth’s atmosphere is clogged with gases keeping the heat in. It’s called a refuse transfer station.
As one of my first jobs of the new year, I filled a trailer with junk and headed to one of the city’s transfer stations. Apparently this happens around the world. In Britain households generate 30 per cent more waste, an extra 3 million tonnes, in the month after Christmas.
It’s a nice feeling, cleaning up your own property and dumping the rubbish somewhere else, for somebody else to worry about. It costs a lot these days but is well worth it.
Making it somebody else’s problem was and maybe still is the main principle behind a lot of our recycling. We used to ship a lot of our plastic and other rubbish to places like China, but China decided in 2018 to close that avenue down.
Thailand has also moved in that direction and it can’t be long before Indonesia and India, which still take a lot of our used tyres, follow suit and we are forced to deal with the stuff ourselves.
In theory there is nothing wrong with exporting recyclable goods. For one thing it kept a lot of people in poor countries employed. However once the stuff left our shores it seemed to be anybody’s guess what happened to it.
Much of it was probably dumped in unsuitable places like the sea or burnt. God only knows what sort of conditions the recycling workers laboured under and the bad environmental practices that were tolerated by corrupt officials.
In other words, we sent our used rubbish and recycling to countries that were probably the worst places to deal with it properly.
Anyway, back to the transfer station. A visit is a great illustration of the appalling waste and unstoppable waste stream a modern society generates.
The recycling sections are chokka with the detritus of our convenient lifestyles. Everything from stacks of fridges, heat pumps and lawnmowers, to piles of gas cylinders, paint tins and rusty corrugated iron.
Much was this can be melted down and reused but the process is not simple and requires yet more energy.
You could argue we need to get better at recycling but producing more and recycling more are not the answer.
You don’t need to be a greenie or somebody concerned about climate change to realise our practices are unsustainable. The problem is not so much rampant consumerism but the sort of consumerism we tolerate.
The problem is not so much rampant consumerism but the sort of consumerism we tolerate.
Alot of what we buy is designed to last for a limited life. It’s cheap and poorly made. The late, great Green Party co-leader Rod Donald used to joke that much of the stuff sold by some of our largest stores might as well go straight to the landfill.
Big ticket items are not designed for easy repair and much of the time are not worth repairing. Most repair firms charge first for an assessment and then return later for the actual repair.
The most basic repairs leave little change from $300. You’d think you have a nuclear reactor in your kitchen rather than a household help device.
Technology moves quickly these days so televisions and other devices become obsolete or unfashionable in a short time. The desire for the latest thing is a disaster for the planet, even if new features reduce the draw on electricity.
It would be nice to think manufacturers will start to make products where their life cycle is thought out as part of the design.
Computer maker HP has, for instance, changed from glue to screws and drastically reduced the number of different plastics it puts in devices.
‘‘Extended producer responsibility’’ (EPR) is being adopted across industries throughout the world. EPR rules make manufacturers and brands contribute to the net cost of their products’ disposal, thereby encouraging them to ensure all of the product can be recycled.
In places like Germany and Lithuania, a deposit refund scheme requires customers to pay a deposit on their drinks’ purchases. After use, the container goes in another machine and pays back the deposit.
Mostly individuals will have to lead the charge. Maybe we could live with less choice. The trouble is that less competition and production by Government edict means products like the Trabant and the Lada.
Maybe we should insist that manufacturers or distributors of appliances, tyres and other goods take back their obsolete or uneconomic items for recycling. Necessity being the mother of invention, the innovation would be spectacular.
When I was a kid, a visit to the dump used to be a fun outing. Now it’s a guilt-laden expedition where the excesses of our society are shown in their grimmest aspect.
An outing to the modern dump also illustrates how little our lives have really changed despite the warnings and how fundamental and far-reaching changes must be if we are to get serious about reducing emissions.