Trashing The Planet (or at least one little corner of it)

[Alan W.]

The only thing I collect theses days is dust.
Realized one day that just having something to say I had it was stupid. Told my best friend that I gave the majority of my guns to my son. He thought about it and did the same to his kids. A year later he was dead.
Now dont get me wrong, I have a ton of stuff but its stuff I use.

 

[300UGUY]

We had a local guy who inherited his property from his dad. His dad had run a illegal tire dump for years. Maybe 40k tires? The son walked away from his inheritance, 40 acres, the cost to clean up the property far exceeded its value. I believe the dad charged .25 cents per tire, 60’s into the 80’s. I think it paid the whiskey bill.

 

[gonnasellit]

A few years ago a local businessman was disposing of tires from local shops for a fee. I actually worked for the man as a teenager but not in this endeavor! Turns out he would take a truck load of tires on one of the backroads with a couple of men in the back throwing out tires on the right of way. He threw out thousands of tires before being caught. He was handed a hefty fine and jail time for his efforts.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

When I was at the DEQ, we got a report of open burning, which at the time was prohibited. Upon inspection, it turns out it was a an area where a battery recycling company had been dumping its old battery cases, and somehow the utility company had set the old battery cases on fire, burning off their right of way or some such. They had paid the farmer for letting them dump their old cases in an arroyo on his pasture. We set up some air monitors, and they went off the chart for lead, hydrocarbons, etc.

Scratch ever getting healthy beef off of that pasture. My rod and gun club monitors the pH of the trap range pretty closely to keep lead from dissolving, and every decade we mine several tons of lead off the ground.

 

[tjkubota93]

or at least a single pile in the middle of the field. Why small piles all over the dang property?

I found things here and there in our wooded property, wheelbarrow, bundle of shingles, etc. Figured the folks were just lazy. What pissed me off was finding paper plates and trash under the back deck. Come on. You had trash service. If didnt, you could burn this or take it to a dumpster. Maybe the kids put there without the parents knowing? I look st everything on our property as often as I can. I guess they didn't?

 

[tjkubota93]

Yeah, we live a little ways (30 seconds?) away from a convenience store.
"Only a loser would throw their spent scratch-off ticket out the window." - Literally! They're Losers!

$20 bucks out the window! - Literally! (well, sort of, it WAS worth $20)

I just can't imagine how they justify that 30 seconds of "Oh boy, this is fun, this could be it! Finally, I'm going to be ...ahh ******!" Toss out window.
$20 bucks for 30 seconds of entertainment! That's $2400 an hour. I can't think of anything that I, and know nobody who would, spend $2400/hr for entertainment.

Finally, a cost / frustration justification for marriage

 

[goeduck]

We had a local guy who inherited his property from his dad. His dad had run a illegal tire dump for years. Maybe 40k tires? The son walked away from his inheritance, 40 acres, the cost to clean up the property far exceeded its value. I believe the dad charged .25 cents per tire, 60’s into the 80’s. I think it paid the whiskey bill.

What happened to the property? Seems, as unfair as it is, he would be liable for the cleanup.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I wonder about various local auto recyclers where there has been that same type of business going on for fifty years. Maybe fifty acres in some cases. The current proprieters are just going about their modest business, but who is going to clean up that environmental disaster some day?

 

[2LaneCruzer]

The clean up was going on at least 20 years ago when I was at DEQ; they were being shredded and used as a fuel in portland cement kilns. I think they are making some progress in recycling used tires, but I'm satisfied there are still millions of them still around, and more being created every day.

 

[Oaktree]

You have to remember that at one time, there were no dumps, dumpsters or even pickup trucks. I live in an area where there are houses and farms from the Civil War era. The only place to put stuff was somewhere on your property. That was the way of life. Out of sight and out of mind. Not that it's right, but there was little choice back a hundred or more years ago.

All that trash has to go somewhere. Does anyone else see the upcoming crisis as landfills fill up, and it gets harder and harder to site new ones? Third world countries don't want our trash either.

Yeah, as others noted, that's just the way it was in the country, even thru the mid-20th century.

That reads like a list of the stuff my town dump won't take.

Of course, that is another problem all in itself. There's so much stuff you have to pay extra to get rid of...flourescent tubes, old electronics, etc. Again, fewer and fewer third world countries will take this anymore.

I don't know what the solution is, other than to create less garbage and recycle more, but there doesn't seem to be much market for recyclables these days either...even the old standby aluminum cans' demand has dropped.