The Smelly, Oozy, Sometimes Explode-y Science of Garbage
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- Опубліковано 8 сер 2024
- You ever think about where your trash goes? How long it takes to decompose? And whether your garbage can become ... dangerous? You should! Hank explains the science of trash, how we've dealt with it (or not) over the ages, and both the risks and the potential it holds for the future.
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Sources for this episode:
www.environmentalistseveryday....
www.theatlantic.com/technology...
www.cnn.com/2012/04/26/us/la-t...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/mu...
ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/0137....
ohioline.osu.edu/cd-fact/0139....
www.biomasspackaging.com/educa...
www.regionaldistrict.com/servi...
www.lostmag.com/issue22/garbag...
articles.chicagotribune.com/20...
www.health.ny.gov/environmenta...
scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/avai...
www.crd.bc.ca/waste/hartland/d...
www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/deta...
www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/sci...
news.nationalgeographic.com/ne...
www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municip...
www.wastebusinessjournal.com/n...
www.wm.com/thinkgreen/pdfs/bio...
As a garbage truck driver I am VERY familliar with the landfills in and around the Salt Lake valley. We do have 1 burn plant, 2 construction only non-lined landfills, 1 standard lined landfill, 4 construction recycling facilities and even 1 landfill that captures the methane gas for power and heating gas. Utah is quite the environmental underdog when it comes to waste disposal.
This is fascinating! Thank you for sharing!!
I imagine all of the efforts there are due to the fact that the Salt Lake and Utah valleys have absolutely horrific pollution in the winter due to strong inversion layers that form a lid over the top of the valleys that trap all the pollution inside. In fact, during the winter it's not surprising for Utah to have some of the worst pollution in the entire country.
So the last thing you want is the gas created from the waste of several million people building up in nature's equivalent of a sealed bottle.
Thank you for taking care of all the crap we throw out!
hey SciSchow!! big fan here, i've watched you guys for a long time. there actually are landfill gas to energy power plants! i know because i work at one. there are miles of piping in our local landfill and it is all run back to my power plant. we take in about 1800 to 2000 SCFM of methane along with oxygen and other balance gases and burn them in special Caterpillar engines that are hooked up to generators. currently the facility that i work at has 5 such engines, three 16 cylinder engines hooked to 800KW generators, and two 20 cylinder engines hooked to 1600KW engines. i have been at this job for a little over a year, so i'm still fairly green. but i would love to try answering any questions you might have :) the process is really interesting, and i think the community here would definitely benefit from another video explaining this.
+clayton bourne Explain EVERYTHING! I need more knowledge.
No doubt. At least up here in the Northeast MOST landfills burn their gas in some way for useable energy.
is their a way to take the ash from burning the thrash mass and use it as fertilizer for the ground plants?
Hell yea👍
@@blandantey They don't burn the trash in the model he's talking about. Instead, they take all biodegradable trash (food, plant matter, liquids, and sewage) and put it into a huge pit and the methane it releases is harvested for power. After a time, the degraded garbage can be used as a non-smelly fertilizer.
Things that have been burned cannot be used as fertilizer.
The way he says "Delicious" at 7:14 is the most amazing thing ever. I literally burst out laughing.
Mr.chang cooler laughing so hard omg
Also "trash hole explosions"
Also "trash hole explosions"
Also turbine. He says "Tur-bin"
"delisyus"
Sometimes i get drunk and watch these videos, and then i dont pay any attention to what he says.
Its soothing for me.
weird ... or understandable?
Weird and understandable
I'd like to see more episodes about waste management. I love the space stuff, but waste is really interesting too.
Landfills: The environmentalist nightmare and future archaeologist's wet dream.
Landfills are actually good for the environment. Better to put all the trash in one spot than have it spread out all over the place.
@@joegillian314 Yeah but not when they're everywhere and not when they leach into groundwater
@@littlebitwonky grape in the mouth?
Brilliant lol.
Now we put our trash on MTV
it is spilling over to quite a few other channels too
wades623 like Fox News
There's a huge leak of it onto MSNBC.
Here in France there are WTE facilities in every medium sized towns I've been to. But what isn't good is that although mentalities have changed (in most countries of Europe at least) and more and more people recycle their garbage (plastics, glass), not all materials use the same recycling process. So when the recycled garbage is collected, if there's one type of plastic that isn't suitable for recycling, the whole recycling skip is thrown in the WTE site. So basically people are recycling for nothing... The recycling process is more expensive than what the WTE facilities can produce and sell to manufacturers. The greed for money is the problem at the end of the day
It seems like what you said was that people were ignorantly putting their stuff in the wrong barrel. How does that translate to greed?
@@alexanderscott2456 From the WTE's perspective. Even though recycling is the right thing to do, it has a cost and sometimes that cost is considered too high
you deserve a show on television
Television is dead
Bruh
@Giuseppe Cordero i'll get back to you in 7 years
Oh look, a science video about me!
Neko tato You aren't high enough quality trash to be included in the word trash when used by Hank.
WTE facilities are such an important part of building our sustainable future :D I'm so glad it's really starting to catch on.
I read WTF facilities
tutracrafty lol
tutracrafty LO)LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
I really doubt that burning trash is and using the ash as raw materials for making new shit is going to require less energy inputs than reduce, reuse, repair, repurpose, recycle....
In Copenhagen they have begun makeing a WTE plant that u can skie on and puffs rings of smoke... thats a wtf plant.
Great video!
It's nice to be *President of Space* :)
Kudos!
Now that you've become President, what are your plans for space?
Wraithguard92 To take over the universe of course!! :)
How do I always end up reading something in the comments at the exact same time it's being said in the video?
I for one welcome you as our new exalted leader!
Over the past few weeks I've suddenly become very interested in waste disposal, so this video was right on time. I didn't know that the US had WTE sites, nor that they were all so old. Learn something new every day :) Thank you Hank and thanks SciShow crew!
I remember some documentary mentioning mushrooms and fungus in general being able to break down trash very well, and thanks to breaking it all down, quickly makes it survivable for other plants like grass, and then attract things like insects thanks to the grass. They did some experiment with two piles of trash by seeding one, and the mushroom-seeded trash decomposed in a month or so to the point of being able to be used in gardens.
Would something like that be applicable to more hazardous trash, factoring in the leachate and such? Since I'm all for quickly-populating things like mushrooms and ants being used everywhere. (I assume it's somewhat deadly, though the video mentions leachate having a small amount of nitrogen which is a common nutrient for mushrooms, so, well).
One thing you didn't cover is how incredible of an impact bio-waste (such as food) has on climate change. Dumps produce methane which is, as you said, way more potent than Co2. It also has much more of an impact on the climate because of its chemical structure. This is important because bio waste, besides taking a very long time to decompose in dumps, also produces methane there, instead of the co2 it would produce elsewhere. So it's actually better for the enviro,net to drop that rotting banana on the floor than throw it away.
Really? I had no idea that food waste was any type of problem in a landfill. I need to go do some reading on this. Thanks for sharing!
No problem. It is quite an interesting topic. The conditions in a landfill are suitable for a different type of bacteria than normal.
That's a lot better, but since composts are still large piles of stuff, it's less than ideal conditions
As others have already told you guys: you all deserve for this to be a TV show. I'm sure such a change would involve some overhauling (and possible loss of full creative control) but I would keep the thought up there (or just take it as a compliment, which it really is).
I've been keeping up with you guys for quite some time now and realized why you guys are so appealing. For a good part, it has to do with Hank's personality and speech, but I think that in a deeper way it really has to do with the passion you guys have to share your love of science with others.
That passion is so damned inspiring. I, with all the honestly in my heart, feel that passion for knowledge, in all its aspects, so I started uploading videos of my own to share this love of mine. I am new to it, and I am always learning, but if you are interested feel free to give it a chance. All I can promise is to do my best but I need your feedback and support. That is all, my friends.
"Guys, there's poop in the street. We've got to do something about the poop in the street."
camramaster extra credits? That episode about the sewers?
Moritz Gaßan
Exactly.
You know nothing, Jon Snow!
I feel like the US is always behind on things
Because it is. US citizens don't care about progress, they only care about themselves. Europe and Asia (the rich countries like Japan and South Korea) are often much more advanced in many aspects.
I just want to say this to the entire DFTBA enterprise (right term?), and many of their suggested channels:
Thank you so very much for what you guys do. It is refreshing, enlightening, and reminds that learning something new every day keeps my brain sharp. If I had the additional funds, I would be giving to Subabble (sp?) like crazy.
Now back to not reading the comments on the Internet...
"All that delicious trash juice". Laughter ensued :D
seriously so glad this video is here! watched some other episodes like 2 weeks ago and thought to my self "I wanna know about garbage". low and behold I come back this morning and here it is!
Thank you, Hank and the scishow team for, unlike Vsauce and your brother, keeping on making videos for us who are not partying our heads off.
wait wtf does this mean?
@@AnarchoCatBoyEthan the video was uploaded between christmas time and new years and i probably commented around new years, when everyone was partying
It is amazing how much I learned about waste management by playing various sim city games.
Also would like to point out that around a third of our landfills are filled with construction waste, if you have ever been to a construction site you would be sick at the amount of waste. Same goes for a lot of industry and commerce, when it isn't your money going in the trash people throw out a lot more stuff. End consumers produce relatively little waste.
You rock Hank! I got a WWSD poster from DFTBA.com for xmas and it makes me so happy ^^
Please don't stop doing this for a while!
Hank and Co., you're doing such a great job with this project! Thank you! Happy 2014!
I live in Albuquerque, NM. Every home in the city was given a big blue recycling bin the same size as our trash bins. My family has been recycling for years, but now its a lot more apparent that about 2/3 of our waste is recyclable. We only need to have our trash bin emptied every other week, but our recycling bin fills up every time they come to take it away.
3:12 Wow Hank, you look way too happy when you say that!
4:31
15 year old hotdog in a 20 year old bun??
Lol that guy was in no hurry
Is it just me, or did the "Sometimes Expload-y" thing catch you eye?
America doesn't recycle as much as it could though. Four years ago I traveled from Canada to St. Louis for a conference. In the airport before getting onto my plane to return home I bought a meal that included a bottled drink. After finishing the drink I went in search of a place to recycle it. In Canada there is a recycling bin next to almost every garbage bin in public places. (In my work place we have six different bins for waste in the break room. One for garbage and five for various types of recyclables) In the St. Louis airport I searched for quite some time for a recycling bin. I found one for paper, but none for bottles or other things. I started to ask around to see if anyone knew where one might be. I tried a janitor and he told me that he thought they had "one" somewhere, but he didn't know where it was. I asked a pilot thinking that he might have been in the airport a lot and could have seen one. He hadn't seen one, but told me he thought it was a cool idea. No one knew where one was. I almost gave up and thought about leaving the bottle on top of a garbage can or paper recycling bin, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I get annoyed with hippies and obsessive environmentalists where I'm from, but I just couldn't throw away the bottle. So I put it in my bag and kept it until I arrived back in Canada and found a recycling bin within a minute in the airport. America needs more recycling bins in public places.
president of space XD
thouroughly enjoyed this episode, these are always super entertaining and informative
Reminds you of Vsause anyone?
4:10 "Trash hole explosions"
I blame my kids, or my wife, or the dog, or my co-workers, or my friends for all of my trash hole explosions.
This is awesome! thank you!
The president of space. That had me in tears. Good one Hank.
I LOVE THIS CHANNEL. Thank you for all the information Scishow.
this is how you get smart, superman!
We can use this information to dispose of our garbage more efficiently with less pollution.
Superman00221 why dont u just bring all the garbage into space u are after all superman
lagging lim Bit it might land on a survivor of krypton
lagging lim Jordan Le If I brought all the garbage to space, that would be taking some of Earth's finite resources off of the planet, those resources CAN be recycled somehow and someway depending on the "garbage".
Ok that is so cool! The picture you showed to illustrate the WTE facilities is from one in sweden! I have even been there, with a project we did in school - it is super awesome, does not even smell that bad in there!
Awesome episode Hank & Co.! I recall seeing an article about bacteria that eat plastics and their possible role in reducing plastic wastes. If possible, I'd like to see an episode or a segment about that.
I worked for a company in Louisiana called CPL that took landfill gas and sent it to plants' boilers to be fired.
That was over 5 years ago, so that technology is in practice and isn't that new.
Interestingly one project we worked on was reducing the amount of water content in leachate to reduce its volume and in turn the shipping cost of the landfill.
Have a Trash to Steam plant kinda close here. When the wind is blowing the right way and it is humid can get a whiff of it.
I love scishow thanks for making it! I will give you money soon I promise.
HAHA I get the back to the future reference. I remember doc brown’s mr fusion on the delorean. The mr fusion thing creates power from trash, lol.
I like what Arthur says "Solid waste are raw materials we're too stupid to use"
Love how excited he gets when he talks about the explosions.
"Trash juice" and "trash hole" are my new favorite phrases.
Billings Montana's landfill captures the gasses excaping the ground and uses it for power already. Surprised it was not mentioned here! LOVE SCISHOW!!!!
Interesting...... Keep these vids coming :)
Here in Columbus, OH they have built a public golf course over an old landfill complete with power generators that capture and use some of the escaping methane
Here in the Netherlands, we recycle more and more. Paper, plastic, glass and plant-based waste (Groente-, Fruit- en Tuinafval; literally vegetable, fruit and garden waste) can all be easily collected separately. With a little extra effort there are waste disposal facilities where waste can be separated even finer: things like wood and appliances like fridges and tvs are separate, as well as chemical waste like batteries, videotapes and engine oil.
A good idea for a video is explaining the concept of calories and what exactly they are. Great vid hope to see more :)
1:20 typo with degree*
I don't think anything other than this video has made me excited to get rid of trash.
I burst out laughing at "delicious" 😂
I have a WTE place a few miles from me. Only smells a little bit, really interesting to hear more about it here.
Is it just me or did he get super excited when he first mentioned gas explosions?
I went on a field trip to a landfill recently in Southern Oregon. They are already capturing the methane and running generators off it, producing up to 300 megawatts.
im working my thesis on this subject, and this video was very helpfull to make think again my topic is relevant. ja, its easy to think your works stinks when you work a whole year on it ):
Honestly, it is not like the US to miss an opportunity. All our rubbish is sorted for recycling at robotic plants with only a the minimum being dumped. The plants all run a profit when markets permit. Overall it's a very profitable industry but I'm guessing the raw material suppliers won't allow anything to come in to competition with established monopolies.
Nice to see the city where I live get mentioned in a video, although it was for landfill gas house explosions...
You are awesome Hank.
Interesting tidbit: a friend of mine was developing a plasma furnace for waste breakdown. Just as it sounds, this furnace would heat everything up to a plasma, then cool and all the different elements could be removed individually. They perfected the design in 2007, just before the recession hit. When they tried to sell it to counties, they were declined due to cost. My friend then retired. Perhaps one day, we will see a resurgence of this technology in recycling and reusing our waste, rather than leaving everything to rot.
You should do an episode on exploding casket syndrome. Its very interesting how people expect to completely seal a body in a casket and not have it turn into body soup.
In some Australian landfills they do have methane retrieval processes where they collect the gas and run a small electricity plant using the methane collected.
Oh, the WTE plant on the picture is the one in my town, Malmö, Sweden! It's used for central heating.I went there with a course at university, it's quite cool. Sweden have even built too many of those plants, so no we import garbage to burn. Norway pay Swedish companies to take care of some of their garbage.
Since trash releases so much methane (leache, thing i think) can't we convert it into energy like they are thinking of doing to manure?
Funnily enough, I learned about the problem of flammable gas build up in dumps through a bible study. I was told that Gehenna became synonymous with hell because it was a dump that occasionally had fiery eruptions, just outside of Jerusalem. In my tiny amount of research sparked by making sure I spelt it right, I've learned that this reasoning for its association with hell is not only debatable but not very likely. Still, it was entertaining to learn about scientific problems with garbage during a bible study.
You are awesome, my man
I'm confused. I saw something a couple months ago where they doing just as you were hoping. Biodegradable material was placed in a landfill "shell" composed of polyurethane and what-not. When filled, the shell was capped off and covered in dirt. They then showed how they were harvesting the natural gas that was generated from the decomposing material. They even built a park on top of the area after they were finished.
Was that the Penne & Teller episode on Recycling? Because they showed the same thing on that show.
I'm always amazed by the "mountains" outside of Chicago
I never used to recycle and didn't care where my trash was going. Only recently this year I started sorting my garbage and trying to recycle what my local center would accept and switched to reusable grocery bags. Sadly about 70% of my households trash still ends up in the county landfill. And its typical to have my dumpster full if not overflowing every week before pick up. Obviously we need a new offensive on all fronts from the average consumer to government and industry to really turn things around.
I absolutely love learning about space! Hank could you please talk about the planet HD 106906 b? It was found in early December and I would love if you talked about it!!! Thanks!! :)
From Hobart, Australia, our city land fill has a methane power station onsite! Only small but produces about a MW
I think pretty much all waste that isn't recycled in Sweden is burned to produce heat. But I still feel like burning waste is a bit ehh maybe not the best. Like it's great to have a warm house, especially now during winter but I still try to produce as little waste as possible, especially like plastic waste, I always wash and re-use plastic bags.
Just get reusable grocery bags. Less effort...
Diana Peña Just remember that you need to use the reusable bag hundreds of times before it's environmental impact per use is the same as a plastic bag that is used once or twice and then used as garbage bag. This assuming that the plastic bag is recycled or combusted under controlled circumstances.
Diana Peña
No but I mean like, plastic bags that I use to store bread in, like I get a plastic bag when I buy something in a shop, like carrots or something, but when the carrots are finished I wash out the bag, and then I might use it to store bread or frozen berries or whatever in.
Petitesser
Ah.
In my home town (Kitchener, Ontario), there was an old landfill that had been covered over in dirt as the city grew past it. I was told the methane gases it produced were being used to power the plaza they built across the street from it.
It was a pretty tall pile of trash, so when it became open to the public, it quickly turned into a favorite local tobogganing hill. It was also unofficially dubbed "Mt. Trashmore", and Canada's first Krispy Kreme tried and failed to exist on it.
same in Australia! Sunday isn't complete without a scrounge through the dump to find freebies.
As I’m listening to Hank talking about methane seeping up into basements, I’m like “yeah, like the house down the street that blew up when I was a kid in… ROCHESTER HILLS MICHIGAN!!!” So funny to hear such a seemingly unknown event from my childhood backyard talked about by Hank Green.
Here in michigan we have a few dumps that we are piping the methane gases to burn/make power from and to fertilize some test farms
Very good!!!!
This is actually fascinating.
I am a simple man.
I see "SciShow" and "explode" in a video title, I watch the video.
Good Job, Very nice video. Could you also put the economic factor into the video, such as how does it economically compare with the traditional methods.
hey! next video idea, what would happen if you could fly a transparent indestructible spaceship through the sun? what exactly would you see, feel, etc?
Thank you
Speaking as a first year archaeologist, holes in the ground have been used as waste dumps for a long time. Like, a really long time. You can tell a lot from one, since people just throw all kinds of things into them.
I had no idea how old this video was until I scrolled down into the comments but wow.
Is there a system in the US to separate various types of garbage or does it all get thrown in one big bin?
Side note on bio gas. Here in Sweden i work in a company named Gothenburg Energy (Göteborg Energi in swedish). There they have a factory producing bio gas out of wood, named GoBiGas (stands for Gothenburg bio gas). I don't work at this plant but i think you would find the chemistry in there pretty interesting.
My parents spent a few months in Linköping, and coming from America were consistently amazed (and delighted) at just how little waste there was. The idea of burning trash to have heated, snow-free bike paths in the winter is fantastic and something that I wish we would utilize in our colder cities here.
ToastAndJellyfish Fun to hear that you have visited Sweden! I myself is quite impressed by this as well, it's not easy to build up the infrastructure required to have these systems. I'm happy that you liked it here. I only wish sometimes that Sweden was a bit less protective of the nature and knew more about scientific developments. Because we really need more nuclear powerplants. And since the development in that area have come far since chynobyl it would be pretty safe :). That's something we could learn from Americans in the energy area.
Why dont we use tdp thermaldepolymerization to change our waste into clean oil ?
Furthermore: what isn't immediately recycled gets burned, and extra heat is used to generate electricity or transported to places where heat is needed (for example homes or factories that need heat, like oil refineries). Magnets are then used to filter metals from the ashes, to recycle them.
Of course, there is a lot of improvement possible, but I think we're doing quite well.
"Trash hole explosions" *choked giggle*
This was awesome, do an episode on sewage please!
3:15 Yeah every time we Drive by Rochester Hills my Father usually says how polluted that area is for being a "Supposedly" nice area to live in.
I hope a Subbable person suggests doing a video about the problems of freezing time.
Stopping time is simple: just launch yourself into orbit right at the event horizon of a black hole and try not to get any closer to it xD
I worked on Landfill in the UK for a while as an environmental monitoring technician. Thank you for doing this video Hank people really need to know how bad a solution it is. Leachate is disgusting stuff part of my job was to draw off samples of it. One particular sites leachate had such strong chemical and biological reactions going on in it that it was constantly hot and had the consistency and colour of thick pea soup.
That's spooky! I attend school in Rochester, MI and there is a massive landfill a couple miles down the road. I didn't know it has caused explosions. :S
I suggested a WTE plant in my town , the council members looked at me like I had three heads. I've seen them the size of a tractor trailer & up to 20 acres. I look to gasfier gennys, so simple.
4:30 Wait... Who would make a hotdog with a 5 year old bun?
Should do a followup about garbage island and what is being done to remove garbage from the ocean if anything is being done at all.
I once had a Twinkie during a hostess worker's strike. My Dad told me if the myth no new Twinkies had been made in the last 30 years anyways. In the words of Apu: "You cannot destroy a Twinkie!"
Please, I have a quastion and I couldnt find yours video about it, so:
Why some smells stick to things (fabric, skin etc) and others dont?
I feel like more garbage comes from Justin Biebers recording studio.
the win of this. easily over 9,000.
I thought it was pretty funny...
Heh, me too.
SmartassInc. Damn that burn though 😂😂
Nice burn dude.