One homeowner was shocked to find an enormous bundle of plastic-coated wires and cables while digging in their yard.
They turned to the subreddit r/Environmentalism to discuss the puzzling, concerning find. "Is burying in your yard better than in a landfill?" they asked. "I recently discovered all of this buried maybe a few inches under the forest floor in my yard. I immediately got angry and was pulling it out of the ground thinking 'this is why the planet is dying'! Then I thought, why is it any worse than a landfill?"
As they pointed out, "It's almost all plastic which isn't going to break down anywhere. So is it actually better…or should they have sent it to the landfill?"
Opinions on this issue were nuanced, but everybody agreed on one thing: Burying plastic in the backyard is not the answer.
"The reason we all use a central location (landfill) is because it's less damaging to do so," one person pointed out. "You might think that spreading it all out in yards or farmland would be just as good…but those properties change hands and there are zero controls over what gets buried there. Plus, today's landfills have liners to prevent seepage."
Another agreed. "Landfills are designed with engineering controls to keep contamination from reaching water and avoid human exposure," they wrote. "Send all garbage to the landfills."
However, responsible waste management advocacy group Just Zero argues that a better solution is possible. "At best, landfills keep the thousands of toxics in our trash from entering the environment for a few years — if that," it writes on its website. "But eventually, those toxics escape and enter our groundwater, soil, and air."
Additionally, burying organic material — like food scraps, paper, plants, and natural clothing — generates methane as it decomposes anaerobically. Methane is an extremely potent toxic gas that has been accelerating the atmosphere's pollution and warming temperatures, and landfills are the third largest contributor of it in the US.
Instead, we can work towards a less polluted future by recycling as much as possible, composting both food and yard scraps, and choosing to only buy products and packaging that are designed to be reusable.
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What should America do to fight plastic pollution?
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Stricter regulations on companies 🏛️ And in one silver lining for the OP, as one commenter pointed out, "You've got a few bucks coming your way for that recyclable wire!"
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