Rubbish disposal a world problem

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32430, 17 October 1970, Page 12

Rubbish disposal a world problem

(By

JUDSON BENNETT)

The throwaway age is here: paper underclothes and a thousand and one other disposable items. Even some makes of cars, like those cheap ball-point pens, are designed to be thrown away rather than be repaired once their useful life is over. And every day, it seems, more and more food products are being pressed in convenient compact plastic containers. . The only trouble is the throwaway age has heightened a problem that is fast reaching crisis proportions—namely what to do with the soaring tonnage of rubbish. And governments everywhere are becoming increasingly alarmed in the face of what they describe as one of the world’s most difficult pollution problems. In fact, it is being estimated that by 1980 we’ll be .creating four billion tons of refuse every day, and unless drastic measures are taken we will, according to the experts, seriously face the danger of being buried under a mountain of rubbish bigger than Everest However frantically we may bum, bury or convert our garbage into something else, they say, the mere volume of it could well defeat us in the end. In short there just isn’t enough room for it aIL Indeed, the warning signs are already glowing. More and more unofficial dumping grounds are scarring the countryside, and even some canals have been made practically unnavigable because of people slinging so much rubbish into them.

So it’s perhaps small wonder that scientists and engineers in every major industrial nation are hard at work in an attempt to find a rapid solution. But with the everincreasing use of plastic containers, their efforts are receiving a grim setback. Every year, hundreds of millions of plastic cups, cartons and bottles are being thrown away, but, unlike other waste, they do not rot or corrode. Grim forecast One small nation lias already predicted its population will be dumping 250,000 tons of plastic this year alone. And by 1980, it is being forecast, there will be If million tons of plastic waste polluting its beaches and beauty spots. Which is why refuse disposal organisations everywhere are hoping that a team of British scientists have come up with the answer. The scientists—from the University of Aston in Birmingham—are patenting a process which, they claim, makes plastic crumble when it is exposed to bright sun-’ light. “It works rather like the action of sunlight on chemical dyes in curtains,” says Professor Gerald Scott, of the university’s department of chemistry. "They fade at first, then gradually crumble.” Professor Scott and his team have been testing various dyes which are sensftive to the sun’s ultra-violet rays, and the idea is for these dyes to be impregnated into the plastic at the start so that after about three months exposure to bright

sunlight the chemicals will start to break the plastics down. Eaten up The plastic will then crumble to powder and finally be “eaten” by < bacteria. The big advantage of using dyes that are sensitive only to ultra-violet light, says the team, is that the plastic containers will not disintegrate indoors. Even so, they are not leaving' anything to chance. The containers, apparently, will change colour to give the housewife and the shopkeeper ample warning that disintegration is about to take place. But there is still a great deal of work to be done, says Professor Scott, and in particular the team will have to make sure that the chemicals will in no way be hazardous to health. Most of the machinery currently under scrutiny is not just designed to dispose of rubbish effectively. Practical uses To justify the immense cost of research, scientists are going out of their way to come up with schemes that have other practical uses, so the actual process of destroying the refuse, in effect, becomes a by-product. The latest idea, already in use, is a £lO million giant incinerator, capable of swallowing up the rubbish of eight London boroughs at the rate of three dustcartloads a minute. The pioneering plant which, according to the authorities, will teach New York and Tokyo a thing or two about refuse disposal without pollution, can eat up anything from a cigarette end to a car engine. Rubbish disposal Usually means dust, smell and noise, but this huge machine apparently does away with all that. Not only that, but heat

from the burning process can be utilised to generate electricity for the national grid, earning £500,000 a year, while clinker and metal crushed into neat hundredweight cubes can bring in another £250,000. Commercial compost Another processing plant,, under development, actually converts garbage into commercial compost which can be sold to under-developed countries with agricultural problems, as well as nurseries, farms and home gardeners. , Decomposition takes a mere six days and the end product, it is claimed, is one fifth the volume of the garbage you start with, and four-fifths the weight. Even glass and aluminium, the engineers claim, can be' ground into sand-like particles and included in the compost. But it will be many years yet before such sophisticated machinery will be in wide, everyday use. Meanwhile, one particularly effective method of disposal—the use of rubbish in land reclamation schemes and for levelling building sites—continues, but as the experts point out, directly the new housing on the land is made available it becomes increasingly difficult to find fresh dumping grounds for garbage. Certainly, there’s nothing to compare with the spectacular mountain of rubbish two miles from the coast of the United States in Boston Bay. There, the continual disposal of refuse has created a 50-acre island rearing 30ft out of the water. It is perhaps the grimmest warning yet of what the future may have in store. As one sanitary engineer put it: “In centuries to come, unless the scientists keep apace with the immense problem of rubbish disposal, man could reach the stage when he will • have no oceans left.”