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One great source of trash is hospitals, nursing homes.
I work in a LTC/Rehab facility and I'm shocked at all the trash generated in one day in that place, and none of it is recycled. I asked the Director of Nurses why none of it gets recycled? It's contaminated!
Someone exits the facility, bedpan, urinal, wash basins, toiletries: into the trash it goes! G-tube bottles: into the trash! In our Vent-Trac unit, they replace all the tubing every single night, into the trash, none of it recycled! We're urged to dispose of gloves after we leave a room, put on a new pair for the next room. Into the trash!
And this is just a Long Term Care/Rehab facility, and at a Hospital, I can only image the waste every day!
Just because it's contaminated, in some way, it can't be recycled?
This could be an opportunity for the right person. There are local companies that recycle oil. Instead of dumping it, they collect and deliver it to collection facilities where it is either recycled or disposed of safely.
If waste oil can be recycled anything can.
Someone familiar with the health care business might be able to turn this problem into an opportunity and make a good buck doing it.
eddie1278 - Even with our messier excesses I do not believe that human effort, including full out nuclear war, will ever make the planet uninhabitable. It will take Nature to do that and even them it will not be a complete wipeout.
Volcanic eruptions the same size the last great eruption of the Yellowstone or Long Valley calderas in the American West would likely shut down Northern hemisphere agriculture and kill billions of people and most likely other complex life in the Northern Hemisphere enough humans and their agriculture would survive in the Southern Hemisphere to maintain humanity. Even the deadly meteorite impact when Dragon slayer landed at Chicxlulub 65 million years only killed the dominant creatures (dinosaurs), and not even all of them (birds), while the smaller mammals survived to evolve into the dominant creatures in today's world.
Yea, nature can create Great Extinctions but so far has not made the planet completely uninhabitable. Humans cannot even come close.
True...uninhabitable by Humanity, however..is quite possible.
One great source of trash is hospitals, nursing homes.
I work in a LTC/Rehab facility and I'm shocked at all the trash generated in one day in that place, and none of it is recycled. I asked the Director of Nurses why none of it gets recycled? It's contaminated!
Someone exits the facility, bedpan, urinal, wash basins, toiletries: into the trash it goes! G-tube bottles: into the trash! In our Vent-Trac unit, they replace all the tubing every single night, into the trash, none of it recycled! We're urged to dispose of gloves after we leave a room, put on a new pair for the next room. Into the trash!
And this is just a Long Term Care/Rehab facility, and at a Hospital, I can only image the waste every day!
Just because it's contaminated, in some way, it can't be recycled?
I have a big time issue with medication disposal.
Most hospitals get their meds in a blister pack (individual pills in a sealed sheet).
Every month those unused, untouched, not expired pills are trashed... into the toilet. Later on we all drink that municipal water still containing cocktail of meds.
All of these drugs out there on the market are at some time going to be discharged into the environment, and we don't know what the effects are, because there's no requirement to do an assessment on the front end. Don't we need to know what these chemical compounds will do to the environment, and what are the long-term effects for humans?
Besides the fact that all those meds could be sent to low income clinics, homeless shelters, given to people with no insurance, sent to poor countries etc.
Statistically over 60% of US population take prescription drugs, 25% of US women are on antidepressants.
A 2008 reports indicated that 46 million Americans were drinking water containing psychiatric, cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, heart and pain drugs as well as antibiotics.
I am sure the numbers are much higher now...
Government appears (like always) clueless, in fact, drugs in the drinking water system seem to be governed by a "don't ask/don't tell' policy.
I do think the planet is overpopulated as it is, but we're still a long long way from ruin. What we will see though is a diminishing quality of life. The current American quality of life is not sustainable for the entire planet's population. Basically the planet will be fine long term, it's just us shooting ourselves in the foot.
It is funny that we think so highly of ourselves and think we are destroying the planet.
What we are destroying is our sustainability on this planet. We are like the parasite that goes to far and kills the host.
This planet and it's life have gone through five extinction events. The planet is going to be fine, life will bounce back, we however may not.............
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