Waste disposal, and more to the point, where to put it, has been a pressing issue for some time with the need for sustainable solutions standing tall as one of many top priorities for our future. The truth is, the planet simply cannot cope with the sheer volume of waste produced every year. While a number of major policy changes and legislative measures are in progress or planned, we thought we’d put our two pence in and explore some imaginative ideas for where our rubbish could go.
Earlier this year, we considered creating a custom conveyor belt to funnel rubbish directly into one of the 1,500 volcanoes around the world. Simple yet highly effective, right? Wrong! When we did the math, it quickly became clear that 1,500 volcanoes sounds like a lot but when multiplied against 8.1 billion people producing waste every day, it’s barely a drop in the ocean. Add in a few other technical hurdles, and volcanoes were off the list. Click here to find out more.
So, with volcanoes crossed off our shortlist, what about sending our waste into space? Let’s dive in.
Some stats from 2020, according to .gov, show that the UK generated 191.2 million tonnes of total waste, including household, commercial, and industrial waste. Globally, municipal waste stands at 2.01 billion tonnes. Additionally, there was 53.6 million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste), projected to rise to 74 million tonnes by 2030, and food waste at approximately 1.6 billion tonnes, which amounts to about one-third of all food produced.
With numbers like these, launching rubbish into space does start to sound appealing.
The Pro’s:
- An infinite amount of it and with that, easy to adopt an out of site out of mind attitude.
- No more rubbish polluting our oceans, taking up land or compromising our air quality
- Sending waste directly to the sun would incinerate waste completely leaving no trace
- No more land contamination from hazardous waste types
- A potential innovative solutions sparking interest in space, therefore could lead to advanced technology within waste management
In theory, space seems like the perfect location for waste which would also solve problems with contaminated food, plastic pollution and atmospheric pollution.
The Con’s
- Logistics and cost, rockets currently cost thousands to build
- Rockets burn huge amounts of fuel, with countless rockets needed to transport the billions of tonnes of waste to space could lead to the potential undoing of any environmental benefit
- Sometimes rockets simply don’t make it to space, and explode on launch or before reaching its destination, if a this was to happen to a rocket packed to the brim of toxic waste, it would scatter all its contents back over Earth. On average it is calculated only 6% of rockets fail in someway to take off or land at its destination, although this only seems small that’s a small guarantee that out of every 1000 tonnes of waste sent to space, 60 tonnes wont make it there!
- Waste sent to space would result in literal obstacles for astronauts and satellites
And that’s just scratching the surface, there are easily another hundred reasons why this wouldn’t work.
Sending waste into space might sound like a futuristic solution, but aside from cost and logistics, it highlights the core issue: we produce too much waste. Instead of sticking a plaster on a sinking ship, the real solution lies in addressing the root causes: stop overproduction, curb overconsumption, and improve recycling.
And, above all else… the aliens probably wouldn’t like it!
