When archeologists want to understand old civilizations, they start by going to the dump. Hundreds of years from now, when the Indiana Joneses of tomorrow sift through our garbage, they’re going to have an awful lot to catalog.
Today, every single American generates about 5 pounds of trash a day. Think about it, five pounds per person per day. And thanks to tough environmental rules, landfills have become more expensive. And so there are fewer being built, and the ones that are being created, are huge. Many of these “mega-fills”, as they’re known, are popping up in poor communities, where residents need the money to build new schools, ball fields, and buy new fire trucks. Talking trash: the economics and ethics of megafills.
Guests:
Travis Windham. Councilman from Lee County, South Carolina
Richard Porter, Professor Emeritus of Economics,University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the author of “The Economics of Waste”
Frank Ackerman, environmental economist and Research Director, Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, and the author, “Why Do We Recycle?, Markets, Values and Public Policy”