Re(2): World Dumping Toxic Waste in African Union
Posted on October 29, 2003 at 18:04:33 by PM
> I still wondering why dumping all the waste at other countries, while
> they(developed countries) are claiming flying to outer space of earth? Why
> they use their so-called tech to dump the waste outside earth?
That's an interesting question. Let's see. I did a Google search and found a
number of citations for cost-per-pound, all agreeing on the following.
It currently costs $10,000 per pound to move something from earth to low earth
orbit, which is 200-500 miles up. Objects in LEO may fall to earth after a
time, burning up in the atmosphere. Geosynchronous orbit is 22,300 miles up.
To get there costs $60,000 per pound, but objects there are as likely to fall
up as down.
But if we put our trash there, we couldn't see the stars.
We could launch even higher, and so set the trash on an escape orbit, perhaps
to the Sun, which could probably absorb anything we could throw at it,
forever.
Let's say we could reduce costs, and get $10,000 per pound to the Sun. Then,
the 29 million tonnes of toxic waste that the US is trying to dump on Africa
would cost ($00,000 * 2204.6 pounds/tonne * 29,000,000) $639,334,000,000,000,
(639 Quadrillion dollars) or put another way, given that the world's economy
is estimated at $50 Trillion, that's about 12 thousand times the total amount
of money on Earth. Wow.
Moving it to Africa, on the other hand, costs about $10 per tonne (very
approximately, based on yet more Googling), or $290,000,000. While not
cheap, that's less than what it costs to pay the local African governments to
take it. It's also probably less than what other countries are charging..
meaning it probably goes to the cheapest place.
That's probably why this is happening. And that's the problem that has to be
solved to fix it, if indeed it can be.
My opinion is that we all are going to have to deal with trash for many years.
We simply can't stop making it. So, until we change to a better way of
production (that yields less waste, or generates non-waste), there will be a
market for it, and that market will do the grim job of taking care of a real
problem. Hmm.. even that doesn't seem fair. I guess we could say that toxic
sludge shouldn't be marketed... you make it, you keep it. Is that the
solution we're imagining?
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