"he was disturbed by the irony of landfills choked with building materials and yet a lack of affordable housing."
Similarly, grocery stores and restaurants throw tons of food away.
Similarly, grocery stores and restaurants throw tons of food away.
It's a myth that there's a shortage of space for landfills. According to the guest on Penn and Teller you need something like 30 square miles to store 10 thousand years of trash for the US at the current rate - sounds like a lot but work out how much space there is in the US.
And it's also a myth that toxic chemicals leech into groundwater. They don't put landfills near groundwater sources, and they put many feet of clay down to stop things leaking through.
Sure, you can throw out everything you personally don't need, but isn't it more efficient to recycle? Why waste anything, whether that's materials, time, or effort?
It will happen when current sources of raw materials are less economical than raiding the landfill.
If you're interested Mike Munger an Economist talks about these ideas here: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/07/munger_on_recyc.htm...
Until they were sued for offering food that was unsaleable (and therefore probably not ideal healthiness) to people.