The garbage crisis as seen by world leaders, environmentalists, and concerned citizens is a growing problem that must be reckoned with. It has been called “the crisis of the 90’s.” Magazines devote columns of space to warning of this global plight. “Buried Alive,” headlined the cover page of Newsweek magazine. “The Garbage Glut: An Environmental Crisis Reaches Our Doorstep,” the magazine announced. “Tons and tons of trash and no place to put it” was the title of U.S.News & World Report’s article on garbage. “Garbage, Garbage, Everywhere. Landfills are overflowing, but alternatives are few,” Time magazine heralded in bold type. “West’s Garbage​—A Growing Burden for Third World,” headlined the Paris International Herald Tribune.

The Garbage Glut​—Will It Bury Us?

IT IS, indeed, a curious paradox. In this generation, man has traveled to the moon and back. The latest state-of-the-art satellites equipped with high-resolution cameras have been rocketed thousands of millions of miles into space, sending back close-up pictures of distant planets. Man has descended into the depths of the oceans and located sunken vessels of ages past and brought back to the surface their treasured possessions of an era long forgotten. Scientists have harnessed the elusive atom, either to benefit man or to wipe whole cities and their inhabitants from the face of the earth. On a few tiny silicon computer chips no larger than a man’s fingernail, the text of the entire Bible can be recorded for instant replay. Yet, at the same time, the people with this treasure trove of ability and intelligence cannot take out their own household garbage and dispose of it properly, thereby freeing their generation from the fear of being buried alive in it.

To begin with, consider the waste dilemma of the United States. Reportedly, Americans throw out over 400,000 tons of garbage each day. Not including sludge and construction waste, 160 million tons are tossed out each year​—“enough to spread 30 stories high over 1,000 football fields, enough to fill a bumper-to-bumper convoy of garbage trucks halfway to the moon,” Newsweek magazine reported. More than 90 percent of this garbage is trucked to landfills until mounds of trash may rise hundreds of feet above ground level.

New York City, for example, has access to the largest city dump in the world​—2,000 acres [800 ha] on New York’s Staten Island. Each day 24,000 tons of garbage are collected and brought round-the-clock by a score of barges to this mountainous landfill. It is estimated that by the year 2000, this garbage pile will “tower half again as high as the Statue of Liberty and fill more cubic feet than the largest Great Pyramid of Egypt.” It is expected that by the time the landfill closes, within the decade, it will have reached a height of 500 feet [150 m]. When David Dinkins, newly elected mayor of New York City, took office, he was greeted with this message from the sanitation commissioner: “Hi. Welcome to City Hall. By the way, you have no place to put the trash.”

“Every major city in the United States has a landfill problem,” said one expert. “America’s dumps are simply filling up, and no new ones are being built,” stated U.S.News & World Report. “By 1995, half of the existing dumps will be closed. Many do not meet modern environmental standards,” the report continued.

It is estimated that in California the average citizen throws away about 2,500 pounds [1,100 kg] of garbage and trash a year. “In Los Angeles County we generate enough trash to fill Dodger Stadium with garbage every nine days or so,” said one environmental expert. Garbage dumps in Los Angeles are expected to reach capacity by 1995. What then? ask its citizens. But the day of reckoning may come sooner than expected, as indicated by one California environmentalist: “We actually have garbage trucks running around town every day without a place to dump.”

Chicago is faced with the closing of its 33 dumps by the first half of this decade. Other major cities faced with the garbage plague are simply trucking their refuse across state lines to other landfills. This has touched off a furor in states receiving other people’s unwanted garbage. Some 28,000 tons of garbage are transported over America’s highways every day while someone is looking for a place to dump it. It is reported that New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania export eight million tons of garbage a year. A costly disposal process indeed. “Worse still,” writes Newsweek magazine, “some truckers who haul meat and produce to the East in refrigerated vehicles are carrying maggot-infested garbage back West in the same trucks.” Congress is considering banning this practice because of obvious health risks.

The garbage crisis is not a problem for the United States alone. Other nations are also being threatened by the garbage glut. Japan, for example, is trying to come to grips with its problem. It is estimated that by the year 2005, Tokyo and three neighboring towns will have an excess of 3.43 million tons of garbage. They too are faced with exporting it. “Garbage is one Japanese export without a market,” said one writer.

While some nations are not yet plagued with the problem of household garbage disposal, many have come face-to-face with the problem of what to do with their industrial waste. Countries, for example, who operate giant incinerators to burn their garbage are confronted with thousands of tons of ash, some of which can be highly toxic. NIMBY (Not in my back yard) is the rising cry from their citizens when confronted with disposal in their neighborhood. What to do with the waste becomes a perplexing question for those concerned. Barges loaded with thousands of tons of toxic waste roam the seas looking for a “back yard” on foreign shores. Many are turned away. They have collided with the determined NIMBY syndrome.

In recent years, developing countries have become the dumping ground for thousands of tons of unwanted waste. Some of it had simply been dumped in open fields by unscrupulous men. “Europeans and Americans are discovering that protecting their environment can mean polluting other people’s lands,” wrote the magazine World Press Review.

The German Tribune of October 1988 reported that Zurich, Switzerland, was exporting its surplus garbage to France and that Canada, the United States, Japan, and Australia had found dumping grounds in the “backyard” of Eastern Europe.

And so it goes. “The garbage crisis is unlike any other we’ve faced,” said one U.S. official. “If there’s a drought, people cut back on water. But in this crisis, we simply produce more garbage.”

Disposable Products Become Indisposable Garbage

TO BE oblivious to the garbage crisis and what contributes to it is to ignore the practices of this throwaway society. For example, do you find that paper towels in the kitchen are a more attractive option than cloth ones? Do you substitute paper napkins for linen ones at mealtime? If you have babies still in diapers, do you use disposable ones rather than cloth diapers? Have you found that disposable razors and cameras are just too convenient not to buy? Few young people today have ever written with a fountain pen; ballpoint pens, some that are themselves throwaways and others with throwaway cartridges, have long since taken their place. Businesses order ballpoints by the thousands. Advertisers give them away by the millions.

Take-out orders of tea, coffee, colas, milk shakes, and fast-food hamburgers are no longer put in paper cups and on paper trays. Polystyrene containers have made them obsolete. There are plastic knives, forks, and spoons, all to be thrown into the trash after one use. The number and variety of throwaway conveniences are endless. “We have been a throwaway society,” said the director of the New York State Division of Solid Waste. “We simply have to change our ways.”

What can be said of milk bottles of plastic instead of glass; shoes of plastic instead of leather and rubber; raincoats of plastic rather than of water-repellent natural fibers? Some readers may wonder how the world was able to function before the age of plastics. Notice, too, the row after row of products in oversize containers, screaming at you from the shelves of supermarkets and wherever else packaged goods are sold. The age of computers​—spewing out thousands of millions of pages of paper—​adds to an already large paper pile that has become mountain high.

How much inconvenience are we willing to tolerate to see some relief from this mounting garbage problem? Although Americans alone toss into their garbage cans an estimated 4.3 million disposable pens and 5.4 million disposable razors on an average day, it is not likely that this society will step back a half century to the time before the age of plastics and high-tech disposables, even though the price we pay for these conveniences may be staggering.

The same can be said for disposable diapers. “More than 16 billion diapers, containing an estimated 2.8 million tons of excrement and urine, are dumped each year into a dwindling number of landfills around the nation,” reported The New York Times. More than 4,275,000 tons of discarded diapers may be an eye-opener. “It is a perfect case,” said a Washington expert on solid waste, “where we’re using a disposable product that costs more than a re-usable product, is more environmentally dangerous and uses up nonrenewable resources.” Are parents willing to tolerate the inconveniences of laundering their baby’s diapers or subscribing to a delivery service? To many, a world without disposable diapers is unthinkable.

Disposable diapers have become a symbol to environmentalists of the entire garbage problem. “What is worse,” writes U.S.News & World Report, “every plastic diaper made since they were first introduced in 1961 is still there; they take about 500 years to break down.”

Environmental experts and officials of government, however, say we must change our habits or else be buried alive in our own garbage. Modern throwaway products may be a boon to consumers, but they are a bomb to earth’s garbage dumps. No end is in sight for the life of discarded plastics. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the 350 million pounds of paper thrown out each day by Americans and an unknown tonnage worldwide does not break down and disappear in landfills even under tons of garbage for years. Newspapers unearthed in landfills after being buried for over 35 years were as readable as on the day they were published.

The Recycling Problem

It has been written that there are only four ways to deal with garbage: “Bury it, burn it, recycle it​—or don’t make as much in the first place.” Buried garbage in landfills not only presents a noxious eyesore to those who must live nearby but can become a health hazard as well. As waste decomposes in landfills, it produces a colorless, odorless, flammable gas called methane. If not controlled, methane may migrate underground away from the landfill, kill vegetation, seep into nearby buildings, and explode if ignited. In some cases death has resulted. Underground water reservoirs, or aquifers, are threatened as hazardous chemicals percolate through the earth and contaminate man’s water supply.

The problem with recycling newsprint, in particular, is the tremendous oversupply. “The inventory of waste newspaper is at an all-time record high,” said a spokesman for the American Paper Institute. “Mills and paper dealers have in their warehouses over one million tons of newspapers, which represents a third of a year’s production. There comes a point when the warehouse space will be completely filled.” As a consequence of this paper glut, many cities that were getting $40 a ton for their paper a year ago are now paying contractors $25 a ton to haul it away​—to be burned or dumped in landfills.

What can be said for plastics? “The plastics industry has been scrambling to support recycling, mostly out of fear that its ubiquitous products will otherwise be banned,” said U.S.News & World Report. Plastic bottles, for example, can be turned into fiber for making polyester carpets, fillings for parkas, and a host of other things. The industry, however, does well to be concerned about its market. Some places have already passed legislation banning the use and sale of all polystyrene and PVC (polyvinyl chloride) products in retail food establishments. The ban includes plastic grocery bags, polystyrene cups and meat trays, and the polystyrene containers that hold fast-food hamburgers.

It is estimated that more than 75 percent of municipal solid waste in the United States is recyclable. Because of public indifference, however, and the deficiencies in technology, this potential is not now being achieved. “Recycling is entering a very dangerous period,” said one recycling expert. “A lot of governments are going to have trouble riding out the slump.”

Some officials say that burning the garbage in giant municipal incinerators is the answer. But here again, problems exist. Environmentalists warn that incinerating plastics and other trash releases toxic chemicals, including dioxin, into the air. “You can just think of an incinerator as a dioxin factory,” said one noted environmentalist. “The incinerators also produce tons of ash often contaminated with lead and cadmium,” reported Newsweek magazine. A hue and cry can be heard from citizens living near proposed incinerator sites. No one wants them in his neighborhood. They are seen as a hazardous threat to health and environment. So the garbage crisis continues to escalate. Does anyone have the answer?

Nuclear Waste​—The Lethal Garbage

AN AVALANCHE of household garbage is not the only hazard that threatens to choke the life from this world. It pales into insignificance alongside a far greater and deadlier waste problem. Since man first learned to harness the atom for making nuclear weapons and for generating electricity, scientists have been in a quandary as to the safest possible methods for disposing of the highly radioactive nuclear waste the systems produce.

Thousands of millions of dollars have been spent on efforts to find ways to prevent people and the environment from being contaminated for generations to come by this deadly waste. A formidable task, indeed, since radioactive waste can remain lethal to all living things for thousands of years!

For decades much of this waste was simply dumped into on-site burial pits and seepage basins in the belief that the dangerous materials would become diluted and rendered harmless​—an assumption that has proved catastrophic in its effects, as we shall see. Millions of gallons of high-level radioactive waste were stored in giant underground tanks; other waste was sealed in barrels and stored above ground, another method of disposal that proved dangerous.

So hazardous and lethal is this nuclear waste that scientists considered everything from shooting the waste into outer space to putting it under the polar ice caps. There is now under investigation the feasibility of dropping canisters of waste into the northern Pacific Ocean, where they would be expected to penetrate a hundred feet [30 m] into the mud below the ocean floor. “We’ve got stuff on this planet that we’re going to have to deal with, either on land, in water or below the waters of the ocean. That’s all we’ve got,” said the vice president of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

For now, as a stopgap solution until a safer and more permanent method of disposal can be found, most of this radioactive material is stored in water-filled pools inside sealed buildings. Ontario, Canada, for example, has 16 nuclear reactors that have already produced more than 7,000 tons of radioactive waste, now stored in such containers. Britain too is faced with the perplexing problem of what to do with her waste. Presently, high-level waste is being kept in aboveground sites, and this policy is expected to continue until leakproof underground sites can be found and tested. France, Germany, and Japan are also trying to come to grips with their nuclear waste problem.

“Official policy in the United States,” reported The New York Times, “is that the safest method is burial in a ‘deep geologic repository,’ someplace dry, stable and desolate. But finding the spot is proving tough.” Tough indeed! According to scientists, it must be such a dry and stable place that it can safely house the material for 10,000 years. Although some of this atomic waste can remain lethal for an estimated 250,000 years, experts believe that so much geological change will take place over 10,000 years “that it is pointless to try to plan for longer.” “I don’t know of any estimation model on the face of the earth that could even talk about a 1,000-year projection,” said one noted radiation expert. He added that it was “difficult to talk about a health risk 10,000 years in the future.”

Catastrophe!

When scientists unlocked the secrets of the atom, they unleashed a strange new phenomenon with which they were not prepared to cope​—the deadly pollution nightmare that was to follow. Even after being warned of the potential danger, government officials deliberately ignored the warnings. As atomic weapons became the priority of the nations with the ability and materials to make them, regard for the health and lives of people and the quality of the environment was abandoned. Sloppy procedures in containing the deadly waste were used. For example: At one atomic weapons plant, “more than 200 [thousand million] gallons [750 billion L] of hazardous wastes, enough to inundate Manhattan to a depth of 40 feet [12 m], have been poured into unlined pits and lagoons,” wrote U.S.News & World Report of March 1989. “Toxic seepage has contaminated at least 100 square miles [260 sq km] of ground water. Some 45 million gallons [170 million L] of high-level radioactive effluent are stored in giant underground tanks, and more than 50 Nagasaki-size bombs could be built from the plutonium that has leaked from these containers,” the magazine said. It is estimated that the cleanup of this site will cost as much as 65 thousand million dollars.

Some holding tanks built to contain nuclear waste became so hot from radioactive heat that they cracked. It is estimated that half a million gallons [2 million L] of radioactive waste has leaked into the ground. Drinking water has been contaminated by radioactive strontium-90 to a level a thousand times the allowable limit for drinking water as set by the Environmental Protection Agency. In another atomic weapons plant, “radioactive substances from waste pits holding 11 million gallons [42 million L] of uranium . . . are leaking into an aquifer and have contaminated wells a half-mile [0.8 km] south of the facility,” reported The New York Times. The paper also reported that in Washington State, thousands of millions of gallons of contaminated water were poured into the ground, and a steady stream of radioactive tritium is flowing into the Columbia River.

In Idaho traces of plutonium have escaped from shallow waste pits at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex, reported The New York Times. “They are moving through rock layers toward a vast underground water reservoir that supplies thousands of southern Idaho residents.” The deadly element has penetrated to a depth of 240 feet [70 m], nearly halfway to the aquifer, the paper said.

How deadly is this plutonium waste that has poured into the rivers and streams and has belched into the air? “Plutonium remains radioactive for 250,000 years,” reported The New York Times, “and even microscopic particles can be lethal if they are inhaled or swallowed.” “Inhaling even a speck of plutonium dust can cause cancer,” said Newsweek magazine.

The immediate and long-range effects of nuclear waste on people are not known. They may never be. Suffice it to say, however, that at one atomic plant, 162 cancer cases have been reported among those living within several miles of the facility. People are afraid to drink the water, and fear abounds. “They’re going to have anywhere from six to 200 extra cancer cases,” said a university doctor and consultant to the plant workers. “They’re all scared. They feel like they’ve lost control of their environment and their lives.”

And so they have. Many centuries ago a faithful prophet of Jehovah said: “I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.” (Jeremiah 10:23) Certainly history has proved these words true​—dramatically so in these last days. The growing garbage crisis is only one of man’s many failures to direct his steps wisely.

However, there is no need to despair. Bible prophecy shows clearly that soon this present system of things will be removed and a new world ushered in by the Creator. He will not much longer tolerate what man is doing to the earth and to himself but will “bring to ruin those ruining the earth.” (Revelation 11:18) After that, under the Creator’s direction, humans will learn how to care for the earth properly and how to use its resources wisely.​—Psalm 37:34; 2 Peter 3:10-13.