http://www.inentec.com

I’ve been to the pit many times when I was a kid and more recently when I was remodeling a house. Visceral… I was looking for a word… the horror!!!

Nothing like the visceral experience to motivate.

As a kid I remember taking regular trips to the local landfill and also sneaking in with my dad while they were closed to pick through the ruins. The stench of it all was a powerful reminder of what we throw away.

Also, on the cultural aspects you should really check out a documentary film called The Gleaners and I. It is a really powerful story of the modern day gleaner.

After listening to McDonough I have come to understand this as a design problem. He makes a good point about the plastic bottle. It you understand it as stored energy in the form of a pretroleum by product, then you can envision its secondary potential. Namely as a source of fuel that can be burned in a fire or fireplace. The problem is that the product’s toxicity means that if you burn it then you release some of the most powerfully know carcinogens the world has ever seen. But there is no reason the product can’t be designed to be safely combustable.

So the question we have to ask is how can this cycle be changed. The changes have to be structural though, and happen at industry level. There is nothing wrong with the plastic bag if it was properly designed to be used as a fuel afterwords. But it strikes me as unreasonable to even put the onus on the end consumer as so much of the cynical wings of the environmental movement suggest.

Jimmy, rather than expanding the landfill you consider ways in which it can actually be shrunk. Ways to disincentivize the traditional notion of trash. One of the things Seattle does is have huge recycle bins and tiny trash bins. The recycle is basically free but the trash costs a lot.

Once the consumer faces a direct cost to “throw it away” then they seek out products that reduce the absurd amounts of packaging.

This is how you we confront the education issue.

Waste = food. That is the way it needs to be thought of. Our feces become our fertilizer. And our packaging can be designed as a fuel, or an infinitely recycled product. Nutrient flows that benefit our agriculture. There are lots of farms in the area. How can some of the things that go into the landfill be made useful for the farm community? Either as energy or fertilizer.

Also, for existing waste there was an interesting process I have heard about a process called “fluff” which converts solid landfill waste into into building products and soil substrates.

You might check this out

http://www.cftomlinson.com/wastaway/faq.html

Probably needs more study though.

And yes, I’m interested about the methane. I just don’t know enough about that option yet or if it is even cost effective at this point. There seems to be a threshold from what I understand so far.

They actually do use some of the methane produced for power generation, and it is conviently located on the grid.

A shorter speech from TED here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRjz8iTVoo

A similar but longer speech here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzLd6dUmu70

Most interesting is the sustainable city designs he has been working on in China.