Saturday, June 05, 2021
Recycling the timeline of recycling
A not-so-dumb Quora question led to a big realization.
Why aren't landfills located nearer to the city center so that poor hungry people can look for food there?
I've discussed the older approach to recycling before.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Found a couple of USGS topo maps, one from 1950 and one from 1965 or so.
This blinkyGIF gives a better sense of the 'informal' roads around the City Dump. Green arrow points to the mansion, violet arrow to the Mexican restaurant discussed here. Looks like I must have turned onto 'drivable Pott' aka 'Riley Lane' from Manhattan Ave, and then 'drivable Pott' turned into actual Pott, most likely without the clear corners shown on map. At the point where Temple Lane turns south, you're in the Dump.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
Note especially the informally located shacks inside the informal dump, clustered around the lagoon. They were gone in '65, as the city followed the modern trend toward isolating trash. Manhattan moved its landfill several miles south of town and formalized it. The trend became official in the '70s as EPA made it harder and harder to ACTUALLY RECYCLE AND ACTUALLY BIODEGRADE. Because a few materials like asbestos (A NATURAL MINERAL) were sinful in the eyes of Gaia, landfills had to hermetically seal all materials.
Just like the EPA restrictions on factories, this was explicitly designed to remove all economic activity from the areas that needed it, and export all economic activity to China and other poor countries.
Now that China has finished its rise to 1st world status, China is turning off the recycling, forcing cities to rethink their practices. At some point they SHOULD return to the pre-EPA pattern of letting materials ACTUALLY BIODEGRADE, but they won't. I suspect they will end up forcing houses to store the material forever, like the stupid storage tanks at nuclear reactors. Result: Toxic waste and spoilage right inside your house. Oh well. The 'recitied' wolves and grizzlies will break in and consume it, along with the people, and then the problem (ie the peasants) will be resolved.
¶ 1:07 PM 
This blinkyGIF gives a better sense of the 'informal' roads around the City Dump. Green arrow points to the mansion, violet arrow to the Mexican restaurant discussed here. Looks like I must have turned onto 'drivable Pott' aka 'Riley Lane' from Manhattan Ave, and then 'drivable Pott' turned into actual Pott, most likely without the clear corners shown on map. At the point where Temple Lane turns south, you're in the Dump.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
Note especially the informally located shacks inside the informal dump, clustered around the lagoon. They were gone in '65, as the city followed the modern trend toward isolating trash. Manhattan moved its landfill several miles south of town and formalized it. The trend became official in the '70s as EPA made it harder and harder to ACTUALLY RECYCLE AND ACTUALLY BIODEGRADE. Because a few materials like asbestos (A NATURAL MINERAL) were sinful in the eyes of Gaia, landfills had to hermetically seal all materials.
Just like the EPA restrictions on factories, this was explicitly designed to remove all economic activity from the areas that needed it, and export all economic activity to China and other poor countries.
Now that China has finished its rise to 1st world status, China is turning off the recycling, forcing cities to rethink their practices. At some point they SHOULD return to the pre-EPA pattern of letting materials ACTUALLY BIODEGRADE, but they won't. I suspect they will end up forcing houses to store the material forever, like the stupid storage tanks at nuclear reactors. Result: Toxic waste and spoilage right inside your house. Oh well. The 'recitied' wolves and grizzlies will break in and consume it, along with the people, and then the problem (ie the peasants) will be resolved.
¶ 1:07 PM
