If money were no object, why couldn't we dump trash in a volcano or send it to the sun?

Question

Now, obviously, I'm not talking about nuclear waste - just the stuff from landfills - "clean" garbage, as it were. Wouldn't dumping trash in a active volcano like Kilahuea cause it to burn up/melt and return those elements back to the Earth? As for the satellites that are useless and make up space junk that eventually fall to earth, couldn't we just give them a push toward the sun? Even if they were to hit Venus or Mercury, who cares? Serious, scientific, intelligent replies please, thanks!

Answer 1

We could dump stuff into the volcanoes, provided that it isn't too much or that the volcano isn't too active. After all, by throwing stuff into the crater would serve to increase the pressure within the volcano, making it more and more likely for the volcano to erupt. The other issue would be that such a massive amount of stuff going into hot molten lava would certainly cause a fair bit of air pollution. Not everything gets molten immediately - quite a bit will become gaseous, and a lot of gaseous stuff is quite poisonous (like the H2S in farts or the toxic fumes from car engines).

It's much easier to actually cause satellites to fall back into the earth's atmosphere actually. Just a single computer command and the whole satellite will be completely burnt out before it reaches the surface of earth. That's probably why NASA and such prefer to do this instead of shooting the satellite off to the sun. Also, satellites are meant to last nearly forever (excluding the possibility of it being outdated or damaged). Once it's in a fixed orbit you can practically use it anytime you want without the need to change it's trajectory. But if you kept sending lots of satellites to the sun, it's possible that you could trigger a solar flare, which is certainly very bad for electronics back home. A single flare that is strong enough can emit an EMP wave, which could disrupt or practically completely knock out electronics either orbiting around earth (like satellites) or down on earth (like your computer). In fact solar flares happen every decade or so and that's when there's a lot of freak accidents with electronics and birds go haywire trying to navigate. But thankfully without mass dumping of junk into the sun, these flares only last a short while.

Another thing to note is that most space trash is actually bits and pieces left behind whenever we launch anything into space. And it's those pesky things that are the most important, dangerous and hardest to get rid off. Although I guess if you have unlimited resources you could just hire companies to launch thousands of rockets into space with crews to clear all those junk however you like. It'll be even better if you could just take all that junk and bring them back to earth to recycle. But the thing is we don't have unlimited cash, and the amount of pollution created and the amount of energy and resources spent is unjustifiable to attempt to clear all that junk. Not to mention that by trying to clear those junk you'd create even more junk which gets harder and harder to get rid of.

PS. Kevin Friend above is funny!
"the sun would be a good idea but we would have to take them there at night when its cooler"
The sun is always that hot no matter if it's "night" or "day" =p

Answer 2

Incineration is indeed a quick way to get rid of trash. Ancient Jerusalem had Ben-Hinnom Valley, also known as Gehenna, just south of the city where they burned everything (including dead bodies, thus the whole "hellish" aspect of the name) and farmers burn the refuse after harvest. I can smell the smoke already. And therein lies the problem: smoke. Volcano smoke has been known to severely disturb weather on a global scale, such as the Tambora eruption that cause a mini ice age in the 1800s. The amount of smoke that would be produced by the burning of so many tons of trash that the world produces in a single day would severely pollute the air, not to mention some items like plastics give off toxic gases. I suppose a study could be conducted, how much damage to the air would we create via incineration versus how much damage to the soil by using landfills. Where volcanoes would come in handy is in simply melting things, like old cars. Of course, recycling is always the best answer to waste issues.

As for satellites, they usually burn up in Earth's atmosphere, so problem solved. Bigger things like space stations would need a significant push to the sun. Remember, satellites and such are in a perpetual fall toward Earth but stay in orbit by means of rotation. To send an obsolete station to the sun means giving it a fairly large push to break free from Earth's gravity field.

Answer 3

Money competes for fuel and resources. If money were no objection, the project would divert resources from other uses. Also to send enough rockets to eliminate mega-tons of trash to the sun would greatly pollute the earth's atmosphere (each load must be accelerated to 7 miles per second!). It requires tons of new trash to support each launch and you would never catch up let alone get ahead.

Interestingly, embedding certain trash into flowing lava would rid us of it. Unfortunately there is not enough natural lava and producing new flows would also pollute the atmosphere. Certain trash (paper and plastics, etc.) would vaporize within the lava and burn creating a plume of polluting smoke.

Likely, the best solution would be to concentrate the trash in huge dumps that are safely capped and controlled for leaching and groundwater. When money is no object (and earth runs out of metals, etc.) the the dumps could be mined for minerals that have been concentrated.

Answer 4

If money were no object the sun Idea would be cool, except we would be getting rid of our valuable resources. I think the pollution issue with putting the trash into the volcano is right, Imagine all those chemicals, plastics and paper burning. But if money were no object couldn't we just start an immense recycling program. We put all our trash into one bucket and when it gets to the waste site they sort everything. Almost everything is recyclable. Metals, plastics and paper are cheaper to reuse than to mine new. We could use organic waste for mulch and the leftover would be a much smaller amount we could probably burn for energy.

Answer 5

I think you raise a good point about volcanic waste disposal. I hope your idea takes hold.

One reason it most likely never will...how will a company ever procure the rights to dump in an active volcano?

I think the only reason we wouldn't want to shoot atomic waste into the sun is on the chance that the launch would be a failure and it would be the only reason. We don't have enough nuclear material on Earth to "nuke the sun".

Answer 6

The sun is a no-brainer: to expensive. $50M to launch a rocket full of trash? No way, but we'll pay $800 for a $10 hammer.

Volcano: Who would want to see a volcano top riddled in trash? The garbage guys leave more on the ground than they put in the truck. It would be an eyesore.

Answer 7

I don't like the idea of losing stuff by sending it to the sun -- but the volcano might have real possibilities!

I'd be a little nervous, though, about how much you could dump there, and what the effects might be. The cheapest thing, transport-wise, would be to use a volcano near people, and I wouldn't be at all comfortable with that.

Answer 8

well, for the sun, we have limited amount of resources to create space shuttles to take the trash to the sun, so that one is out of the picture. then find a volcano with an open top to dump trash that isnt violently erupting then we can do business, and also when the trash burns it would release tons of pollution into the air, which is worse than putting it into the ground.

Answer 9

Sending billions of tons of trash to space would get a little pricey and it takes a long time to produce the fuel to lauch that into space.

A volcano burns stuff, even earth. Enviro whackos would cry and b**ch about the CO2 levels that the garbage would put out (not like it already doesn't!).

Answer 10

The Sun is probably the best possible place for nuclear waste, but sending it all there is very expensive, and it would be kind of bad for everyone if the rocket blew up on the launch pad, as they sometimes do.