QUORA: What will a landfill look like in two thousand years? by Spencer McDaniel, B.A. in Classical Studies & History, IU Bloomington (Expected 2022), Updated April 13
The Roman Empire ceased to exist as a discrete political entity many centuries ago. At least 99% of all literary texts produced in the Roman Empire have not survived to the present day for various reasons. Nearly all the works of Roman art that were most greatly admired in antiquity have been lost or destroyed. The vast majority of ancient Roman public buildings have either been completely destroyed or deteriorated into ruins.
But we still have a literal mountain of ancient Roman trash.
Now, as it happens, Monte Testaccio is useful to archaeo- logists because it provides a literal mountain of info about the ancient Roman olive oil trade. Many of the broken amphorae that make up the mountain bear tituli picti (i.e., commercial inscriptions describing what the vessel originally contained, where it came from, and where it was headed). Since we don?t have detailed records of the Roman olive oil trade, these amphorae and the inscriptions they bear are quite helpful.
All the same, the disappointing reality is that trash is perhaps the most durable legacy of any civilization because every civilization leaves behind more trash than perhaps anything else. Most people don?t think about how, when they throw away a disposable plastic fork, a plastic bag, or a plastic bottle, they are really putting it in the ground or in the ocean to be preserved for thousands of years to come.
The difference between Monte Testaccio & modern landfills
The crucial difference between ancient Roman waste & modern waste is that modern waste production is much, much more prolific. New York City alone produces approximately
33,000,000 tons of trash each year. We don?t know exactly how much trash the city of Rome produced when the Roman Empire was at its height, but it was certainly not even a tiny fraction of that amount.
Most of the waste modern people produce will still exist in 2000 years. Our trash will almost certainly survive far longer than any of our political structures and will most likely survive longer than most of our great works of literature, art, and architecture.
Unfortunately, much of the present discourse around trash focuses on individual consumer responsibility, with consumers being exhorted to avoid buying things with plastic packaging if possible, recycle plastic if possible, and reuse plastic if possible. This approach is extremely wrong-headed in my opinion.
Nearly everything that consumers need to buy in order to live comes in plastic packaging of some kind. Even if you just want food from the grocery store, it almost invariably comes in disposable plastic packaging. It is therefore impossible for ordinary people to avoid purchasing things in plastic packaging.
Moreover, the vast majority of this plastic packaging can?t actually be recycled or reused. Most recycling plants can only recycle plastic types one and two and, even then, they can only do it if those plastics have never been in contact with food. Even if a consumer tries to put non-recyclable plastic into the recycling, the recycling company has to sort it out and put it in a landfill. Putting non-recyclable materials in the recycling can also contaminate plastics that would otherwise be recyclable, thereby preventing them from actually being recycled.
It?s also much cheaper for companies to make products out of new plastic made fresh from petroleum than it is for them to make products out of recycled plastic, so a lot of plastic that could in theory be recycled doesn?t actually get recycled because there simply isn?t enough demand for recycled plastic.
Even the plastic that does get recycled can?t be recycled indefinitely. Once it has been recycled once, it usually can?t be recycled again, meaning it almost inevitably ends up eventually going into a landfill somewhere.
The real problem here is not with consumers, but rather with the companies that produce so much non-recyclable, non-reusable, non-biodegradable plastic in the first place. Companies put things in new, non-recyclable, non- biodegradable plastic packaging because it is cheaper and more convenient to use this kind of material than to use other materials that can actually be recycled or that can actually break down in landfills. As long as they can get away with using these kinds of packaging, companies will obviously continue to do so.
I know that a lot of people in the US instinctively hate the very concept of govt regulation with a burning passion, but, if we want to solve the current problem of so much plastic waste, the most realistic solution is for the government to step in and regulate corporate production of plastic more heavily.
One measure the govt could take is to enforce targeted bans against certain types of unnecessary, non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, single-use plastic products, such as polystyrene foam cups, plastic straws, & plastic shopping bags. This would force companies to use more environmen- tally friendly alternatives, such as paper cups, paper straws, and paper bags, which are biodegradable.
Another measure would be to enforce extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws that would make plastic manu- facturers financially responsible for the costs of the disposal or recycling of their own plastics. This would force companies to either reduce the amount of plastics they produce or find economically viable ways to recycle their own plastics.
Neither of these measures would completely eliminate non- biodegradable plastic, but they could potentially reduce the amount that we are producing & throwing away, thereby perhaps making our modern Monte Testaccios a bit smaller.