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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

> but developed country waste is getting safely landfilled

That's definitely not true in the UK. A lot of our "recycling" has been being shipped to China until recently. I believe that other countries have been doing that too.

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It's hard to define "safely" landfilled as well. Many places still leak out toxic leachate into water tables due to a lack of barriers on the landfill. They also severely disrupt large tracts of land. They also vent off tremendous amounts of methane. There isn't much safe about most landfills out there.

True, there is a lot of variety there. Around here everything is properly lined and the water table monitored for various poisons, but that's not true everywhere. The methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and I see little progress on that, even in eco-conscious California. Composting more or less eliminates the methane but I see maybe half of the households in our neighborhood putting out a green waste cart.

Global warming is really the problem, and I will admit to being a huge hypocrite on that. I drive about half the average American's 13.5K miles / 21.K 7km, but fly a lot, probably 20K miles / 32K km. Sigh.

Indeed, and China didn't always keep un-use-able plastic out of their river systems (therefore leading to the oceans). Now that China stopped accepting recycled plastic, it's going to countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, etc that not only can't handle the volume, but don't have the facilities in place to handle the plastic. Lots of plastic that consumers believe is recycled is indeed ending up in oceans.

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