What do do with the trash from Hawaii? (Home Depot, buy)

[mdand3boys]

Actually, even the incinerators have by-products; waste products that don't burn such as steel, aluminum, etc.

[HookTheBrotherUp]

Originally Posted by mdand3boys

Actually, even the incinerators have by-products; waste products that don't burn such as steel, aluminum, etc.

Re nuclear. A nuclear plasma incinerator would not have this problem, here is just one web site I found which talks about it. There are others. I'm not sure how old the data/site is. The heat is so intense, 5-6K degrees F, but I think modern nucear reactors can generate more like 10K degree temps. In either case, 5-6K degrees will vaporize anything, and the output would be slag, which can be used for road building, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen, both of whch can be captured and reused.

There are not many favorable options it seems; but people need to begin to address the unattractive truths now. If anyone ever saw the movie W.A.L.L.E, you would remember the little robot building mountains of cubes of trash. That is sort of what is happening now, but those plasic wrapped cubes won't remain viable for long.

[winkosmosis]

All we have to do is turn some of those useless cane fields into more dumps.

[nullgeo]

PacificFlights: in spite of my obvious enjoyment of this volcano-incinerator concept, I commend you for your sensitivity to the preservation and spirit of Hawaii’s volcano(s). I typically have similar feelings about these kinds of issues. Furthermore, I often find your other contributions on this Hawaii forum to be very informative and helpful to folks seeking practical information and answers. Again, commendable.

That said (and meant), I find HooktheBrotherUp’s contribution in this case also commendable. Other than giving me a fun reason (besides dandruff) to scratch my head, I think the idea / question is actually perfectly compatible with concern for the environment of Hawaii. Consider: what would Madame Pele think of all the trash that is accumulating around Hawaii as it is? Would She actually be offended by the opportunity to ‘vaporize’ this threat to the spirit of the islands, when doing so would be child’s play for Her? Or would She laugh at human foolishness for allowing ourselves to be half buried by the nonsense we consume unnecessarily, and breathe it away with a snort of fire?

I will not presume to speak for Madame ... but, for myself, I wish the issue was so simple. Breaking my silence on whether the concept is viable: I am sure it is not. But I like the idea that cleaning up the Islands could be so perfectly connected to their spirit: -- letting the fire consume our pointless excesses

Well, enough of that. I am in my mainland half of my year ... and a certain peach tree is so prolific it is breaking branches under the weight of my postponed harvest.Time to pick and peel, slice and freeze all I can't gorge myself on in the short term. Good news: the peelings and pits don't need a landfill ... they just go into the compost and create more great soil. We should all be so lucky in Hawaii to have our garbage turn into new land.

[PacificFlights]

Well, the garbage is on Oahu. That means you have to ship it to Hawaii. To container it would cost a lot of money so i think it will be wrapped in bales on trailers. Wonder how much spillage there will be on the water and street routes. You get to Hilo by barge and have to truck it to the volcano. I dont think they can drive to the vents so that will take helicopters picking up the bales and dropping it into the vent. That will be a pretty sight to residents and tourist.

If they decide to drop it in front of a lava flow, it could cause a dam with the thousand of cubic yards that need to be disposed of. Some may burn and some will remain. Just like landfill, you have the plastic wrap burn away and some gets blowing in the wind. Now you have Oahu trash all over Hawaii/ As the flow moves, they will need to find the path to dump it and pick up what was not burnt so it do not turn the entire lava flow fields into an open landfill. Don't sound like a pretty picture of that area and the routes from Hilo to the lava. Caravans of garbage trucks from hilo to lava.

Isn't much of the land with the flows really private property since (from the air) it looks like the lava is outside the federal park.?

Cost to bale in Oahu, barge to Hawaii, truck to volcano, get it from truck to lava with no guarantee it will be consumed by the lava or stick around until the lava gets to it, sounds like there has to be a better way. This was tried in other places and beside the social problems, it didn't work. Lava does not alwys do what peope want and if you dump garbage in it and it doesn't get destroyed, you have garbage sitting in a place you may not be able to remove it.

[Sweetbeet]

This brings to mind another idea (OK, now y'all can flame me instead of the fellow who started this all with an interesting idea) - we are all for harnessing the natural energy of the sun and the wind, and I believe there are even ways to use the natural energy of the waves out at sea to make energy (practical difficulties have made it infeasible (unfeasible?) to this point, but I think folks are working on it). So, is there any way we can use the natural thermal energy of the earth - possibly easier to tap here, where the hot lava pours up right to us, than almost anywhere else - to create electricity? Could the heat be used to create steam that could power a generator, or something (Dammit, Jim, I'm a lawyer, not an engineer!)? You'd think someone would think of a way...

Not that would help us much up here on Kauai, but the BI could benefit!

Oh, and on the trash thing, I agree with whoever said we should recycle more and reduce our waste. Just by composting, reusing what we can and reducing our purchasing, we have gotten to the point where a household of 6 puts out only one can per week. I'm sure we could do better - for example, it's a shame that only aluminum cans are recycled, not the 'tin' ones; in NY they were all recyclable. Likewise for higher-numbered plastics. But we're making progress.

[mdand3boys]

Originally Posted by Sweetbeet

... So, is there any way we can use the natural thermal energy of the earth - possibly easier to tap here, where the hot lava pours up right to us, than almost anywhere else - to create electricity? Could the heat be used to create steam that could power a generator, or something (Dammit, Jim, I'm a lawyer, not an engineer!)? You'd think someone would think of a way...

I think we call that geothermal energy and we are already producing it on the Big Island....

Hawaii Renewable & Alternative Energy - Geothermal Hawaii

.

[Sweetbeet]

Cool!

And over here on Kauai we're burning propane (or something equally nasty) to make electricity...

[Balad1]

Originally Posted by Sweetbeet

Cool!

And over here on Kauai we're burning propane (or something equally nasty) to make electricity...

Actually it's bunker and diesel oil with no pollution controls that I know of. Getting downwind of the plant in Eleele will knock you down.

[Calico Salsa]

Nice discussion, kudos to everyone for maintaining a good attitude.

While I can see that Oahu may be producing a large quantity of the rubbish, I don't think we'll find a solution via separatism - that is, we need to address this as a state-wide problem, and find something that works for us all.

Oahu may produce more rubbish than Maui, but we've got a growing pile over here and maybe don't have the resources to deal with "our portion". That is, if the recyclables are going to end up going off island, or if a recycling plant is going to get built, chances are that some of that will filter through or be located on Oahu. That means Maui and Oahu have to work together and use collective cost and payoff calcs.

This all makes me think I need to rethink composting at home. We'd given it a try, but weren't successful. I don't think we can compost the amount of green waste we generate, but maybe we can make some dent in our own. While we already recycle, use cloth bags, and combine trips to town with neighbors shopping lists...there's always more we can do.