 There are really only three things you can do with waste: bury it, burn it or recycle it. All of them carry environmental and financial costs, and all require careful management. At first sight burying or burning the stuff seem the simplest options, but the potentially hazardous consequences require strict controls.
The very idea that waste needs to be "managed" is relatively new. Throughout much of human history waste took care of itself, and in many parts of the world it still does. In poor agricultural societies there is not much of it to begin with. Broken tools and worn clothes are repaired, food scraps are fed to livestock and so on. In such places waste is seen as having an inherent value. The reason why plastic bags blow about by the roadsides in so many poor countries, says Philippe Chalmin of the University Paris Dauphine, is not that the local people are litterbugs but that they are frugal enough not to need a waste-collection system of any sort. Plastic bags are among the few items they cannot recycle.
Waste first became a problem in cities, where it accumulated faster than it rotted away, creating an eyesore and a health hazard. In 1552 Shakespeare's father was fined a shilling for leaving excrement in the street instead of taking it to the designated spot at the edge of town. Benjamin Franklin helped to set up America's first street-cleaning service in Philadelphia in 1757. But even in cities most items that would now be considered rubbish were collected and put to use. Human and animal droppings were gathered up and spread on fields as fertiliser. Rags were used to make paper. |
