Friday, July 31, 2009
City of a Billion Garbage Cans?
It's tough to imagine the trash form a city of a billion people. If we were to simply increase the trash from a city of a million by three orders of magnitude, we'd be left with a pile of trash that's effectively infinite. It would look like a scene out of the Pixar movie Wall-E after the humans abandoned Earth. Furthermore, in a world of a trillion, there wouldn't be any place to put it all.
I don't think cities of a billion will make trash. It seems far-fetched, but I can't imagine any alternatives. The cornerstone of this thought experiment has been to imagine a future in which there are lots of people, and these people are not overwhelmingly miserable. It would be easy to arrive at the same conclusion as the aforementioned movie, where we've just fucked up the planet beyond use, but I'm not writing a cautionary tale. I'm imagining a far flung future in which there are more of us, and we've figured out how to do it right.
As such, I think trash will disappear. I can't see any other way forward that doesn't involve making bigger and bigger dumps and eventually crowding ourselves off of Earth, to go on and create even bigger dumps elsewhere.
Imagining we've arrived at a world without trash, starting from a world with a lot, and that those two worlds are only separated by time, how did (will) we get there? I imagine two modest changes to our thinking would be sufficient:
On Making Better Trash
The world has already discovered value in some kinds of trash. Vehicles are a good example: junk cars don't generally wind up in dumps; they are sold. Even when I totaled my dad's pickup twenty years ago this was true. The insurance company cut him a check for the full value of the truck, then they sold the wreck to help cover their costs. A guy in town bought it and used some of the parts to fix up another F-150 that had been wrecked in a completely different fashion.
On a smaller scale, I can remember raiding Grandma Helen's basement recycling stash when my brothers and I were little. Uncle Larry had been staying there for a while, and between he and Grandma, let's just say there was a lot of recycling to be had. We made five bucks each carting it to a recycling center in a wagon.
And for a last example, consider the aftermarket for used diapers. We bought cloth diapers to use for our first child, and used nothing else until she was potty trained. We used the same diapers for my son until he was potty trained. We offered them to an office mate of my wife's, who has just recently returned them for us to use with our third child. If we're ever done with them, we'll either give them away again or sell them on eBay or make a patchwork quilt out of them.
By picking our trash carefully, we can ensure it has value to someone even when it no longer has value to us.
On Making Trash Better
There are some kinds of trash nobody really wants. Banana peels, for instance. Animal carcasses. Poop. It's hard to imagine making better trash in place of these genuine waste products. But there is someone who finds them useful: microbes and scavengers. And, as it turns out, the waste products of the microbes and scavengers (well, especially the microbes) is better (from a human perspective, at least) than poop or banana peels.
In many cases, it's dirt. In other cases, it is heat. In a few growing cases, it's fuel (e.g. methane or biodiesel). If trash is inevitable, there's a good chance it can be turned into something usable by someone or something, even if it takes a little planning and intention.
Making trash better is something we're getting better at all the time. Extracting methane from sewage, extracting soil from all sorts of stuff that goes into hot compost. Extracting chicken stock from that leftover chicken carcass when the reason we had it was that the guests who devoured beer can chicken just didn't want to gnaw on the bones.
How?
I imagine in the far flung future where there are cities of a billion, on an Earth of a trillion, we're going to figure out how to make better trash, and how to make trash better. In the meantime, we ought to be able to take some small steps in that general direction.
First, before buying anything, I'm going to try to imagine it as trash. Imagine a world in which I have to keep it, or in which it is excessively costly to get rid of it. This might make anyone think twice about disposable diapers or plastic water bottles. Same goes for excessive packaging or basically anything "disposable" that I can't put in my compost and get good dirt from.
Beyond that, I will vote for legislation that encourages less waste. I won't vote to subsidize garbage creation or removal, and I will vote to make rules that reward people for creating less garbage (e.g. not charging people for trash pick up when they're not making trash).
Last, but not least, I'll try to imagine a trillion people doing what I'm doing on a crowded Earth, and think whether it's a great idea.
I don't think cities of a billion will make trash. It seems far-fetched, but I can't imagine any alternatives. The cornerstone of this thought experiment has been to imagine a future in which there are lots of people, and these people are not overwhelmingly miserable. It would be easy to arrive at the same conclusion as the aforementioned movie, where we've just fucked up the planet beyond use, but I'm not writing a cautionary tale. I'm imagining a far flung future in which there are more of us, and we've figured out how to do it right.
As such, I think trash will disappear. I can't see any other way forward that doesn't involve making bigger and bigger dumps and eventually crowding ourselves off of Earth, to go on and create even bigger dumps elsewhere.
Imagining we've arrived at a world without trash, starting from a world with a lot, and that those two worlds are only separated by time, how did (will) we get there? I imagine two modest changes to our thinking would be sufficient:
- Make better trash
- Make trash better
On Making Better Trash
The world has already discovered value in some kinds of trash. Vehicles are a good example: junk cars don't generally wind up in dumps; they are sold. Even when I totaled my dad's pickup twenty years ago this was true. The insurance company cut him a check for the full value of the truck, then they sold the wreck to help cover their costs. A guy in town bought it and used some of the parts to fix up another F-150 that had been wrecked in a completely different fashion.
On a smaller scale, I can remember raiding Grandma Helen's basement recycling stash when my brothers and I were little. Uncle Larry had been staying there for a while, and between he and Grandma, let's just say there was a lot of recycling to be had. We made five bucks each carting it to a recycling center in a wagon.
And for a last example, consider the aftermarket for used diapers. We bought cloth diapers to use for our first child, and used nothing else until she was potty trained. We used the same diapers for my son until he was potty trained. We offered them to an office mate of my wife's, who has just recently returned them for us to use with our third child. If we're ever done with them, we'll either give them away again or sell them on eBay or make a patchwork quilt out of them.
By picking our trash carefully, we can ensure it has value to someone even when it no longer has value to us.
On Making Trash Better
There are some kinds of trash nobody really wants. Banana peels, for instance. Animal carcasses. Poop. It's hard to imagine making better trash in place of these genuine waste products. But there is someone who finds them useful: microbes and scavengers. And, as it turns out, the waste products of the microbes and scavengers (well, especially the microbes) is better (from a human perspective, at least) than poop or banana peels.
In many cases, it's dirt. In other cases, it is heat. In a few growing cases, it's fuel (e.g. methane or biodiesel). If trash is inevitable, there's a good chance it can be turned into something usable by someone or something, even if it takes a little planning and intention.
Making trash better is something we're getting better at all the time. Extracting methane from sewage, extracting soil from all sorts of stuff that goes into hot compost. Extracting chicken stock from that leftover chicken carcass when the reason we had it was that the guests who devoured beer can chicken just didn't want to gnaw on the bones.
How?
I imagine in the far flung future where there are cities of a billion, on an Earth of a trillion, we're going to figure out how to make better trash, and how to make trash better. In the meantime, we ought to be able to take some small steps in that general direction.
First, before buying anything, I'm going to try to imagine it as trash. Imagine a world in which I have to keep it, or in which it is excessively costly to get rid of it. This might make anyone think twice about disposable diapers or plastic water bottles. Same goes for excessive packaging or basically anything "disposable" that I can't put in my compost and get good dirt from.
Beyond that, I will vote for legislation that encourages less waste. I won't vote to subsidize garbage creation or removal, and I will vote to make rules that reward people for creating less garbage (e.g. not charging people for trash pick up when they're not making trash).
Last, but not least, I'll try to imagine a trillion people doing what I'm doing on a crowded Earth, and think whether it's a great idea.
// posted by David @ 9:35 AM
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
City of a Billion: Introduction
Imagine with me, for a moment, that Earth's population reaches a trillion people.
If you're having a hard time imagining, try this instead: New York City has about 27,000 people per square mile. Earth has somewhere in the range of 40 million square miles of land, if you take out the ice, mountain peaks, and volcanoes. Sprawl New York City over all that land, et voila! You've got a trillion people.
There are about 27 million square feet in a square mile and a little over 300 square miles in New York City, which means every person has about a thousand square feet. Or would, if it were evenly distributed. As it stands, every person has an efficiency apartment, they all share Central Park, and nobody lives on Staten Island, because it isn't cool enough.
So it would be on an Earth with a trillion people: each person would be allotted one thousand square feet of sunshine. Keep in mind, we haven't started going up or down yet, we're just talking surface area. I'm not convinced surface area matters nearly so much as cubic, but (call me a traditionalist) I do think occasional access to sunlight may continue to be important to humans.
The goal of this post, and the subsequent posts on this topic, is to imagine this Earth with a trillion people, to imagine living in a city of a billion. If humans can find a way to thrive in a city of a billion, in a world where there are a thousand other cities of a billion, I imagine we would have found something worthwhile. I imagine we would have learned how to get along. I imagine we would have solved problems about consumption, waste, disease, wealth, energy, water, and politics. I imagine we would have created reasonably self-contained ecologies with few enough inputs and outputs that they would translate naturally off of Earth.
I imagine, in a word, we would have become better.
I fear, in a word, we would have become smaller.
This series imagines a city of a billion, in all its glory and all its limitations. It's fun to think about, and I also hope to glean from that far-flung future some helpful tips about how I might live better today.
If you're having a hard time imagining, try this instead: New York City has about 27,000 people per square mile. Earth has somewhere in the range of 40 million square miles of land, if you take out the ice, mountain peaks, and volcanoes. Sprawl New York City over all that land, et voila! You've got a trillion people.
There are about 27 million square feet in a square mile and a little over 300 square miles in New York City, which means every person has about a thousand square feet. Or would, if it were evenly distributed. As it stands, every person has an efficiency apartment, they all share Central Park, and nobody lives on Staten Island, because it isn't cool enough.
So it would be on an Earth with a trillion people: each person would be allotted one thousand square feet of sunshine. Keep in mind, we haven't started going up or down yet, we're just talking surface area. I'm not convinced surface area matters nearly so much as cubic, but (call me a traditionalist) I do think occasional access to sunlight may continue to be important to humans.
The goal of this post, and the subsequent posts on this topic, is to imagine this Earth with a trillion people, to imagine living in a city of a billion. If humans can find a way to thrive in a city of a billion, in a world where there are a thousand other cities of a billion, I imagine we would have found something worthwhile. I imagine we would have learned how to get along. I imagine we would have solved problems about consumption, waste, disease, wealth, energy, water, and politics. I imagine we would have created reasonably self-contained ecologies with few enough inputs and outputs that they would translate naturally off of Earth.
I imagine, in a word, we would have become better.
I fear, in a word, we would have become smaller.
This series imagines a city of a billion, in all its glory and all its limitations. It's fun to think about, and I also hope to glean from that far-flung future some helpful tips about how I might live better today.
// posted by David @ 12:19 AM
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