Trash, garbage, rubbish - whatever you call it, a natural consequence of a consumer society, and stuff that no one wants anything to do with after use, just to get rid of it. And there’s a lot of it, particularly with over-elaborate packaging now prevalent, adding to the bulk.  The upsurge in home delivery services adds yet more - everything comes in some form of wrapping.

 

Efforts to recycle are commendable, but suffer from economic and logistical realties at any significant scale. The sorting and segregation of materials, their storage, collection and transport, the facilities needed for reprocessing - it’s all a lot more involved than the materials are basically worth. Putrescible wastes such as food leftovers and sanitary disposables pose extra complications.

 

Plastics are now viewed as a pestilence, though the material is being vilified for no fault of its own. They’re very effective in what they were designed for, which wasn’t fish food. The fault lies with the careless side of human nature, not bothering to bin them after use: it's a disposal problem, not a material problem.

 

The most pragmatic solution is to make immediate disposal easy and ready to hand, with a practical incentive in the useful capture of the energy contained in all organic wastes. This is what the IUS does, taking the rubbish as it comes then rendering it down to energy for heating services and ash; 'Energy from Wastes' (EfW) directly on-site.

 

The exceptions are metal and glass containers, if no alternatives available, though these materials are both readily and usefully recycled; not so bulky, easily segreregated and they don't 'go off' while accumulating.