All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk. Ronald Reagan
I wasted time and now doth time waste me. William Shakespeare, The Hollow Crown: Richard II starring Ben Whishaw & Rory Kinnear & Patrick Stewart & David Suchet & David Morrissey & Lindsay Duncan & Tom Hughes & James Purefoy & Clemence Poesy & Ferdinand Kinsley et al, director Rupert Goold, Richard II, BBC 2012
Waste not, want not. Late 18th century proverb
I could be the catalyst that sparks the revolution.
I could be an inmate in a long term institution
I could lean to wild extremes I could do or die,
I could yawn and be withdrawn and watch them gallop by,
What a waste, what a waste, what a waste, what a waste. Ian Dury, title of song 1978
If you fill your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library. Tony Benn
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Matthew 7:6
To what purpose is this waste? Matthew 26:8
Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are. Kurt Cobain
You are now in a place where we have borrowed something from you to protect you and we have taken great pain to be sure that you are protected. We also want you to know that this place should not be disturbed. And we want you to know that this is not a place for you to live in. You should stay away from this place and then you will be safe. Into Eternity, 2010
Onkalo must last 100,000 years. ibid.
Q. How much [nuclear] waste exists in the world today?
A. … Between 200,000 and 300,000 tons. ibid.
So we are storing the waste today the background in water pools … We can’t keep this waste for ever in water pools. ibid.
We will fill the chambers of Onkolo with the nuclear waste from Finland … never to be opened again. ibid.
I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. Theodore Roosevelt
Our seas are being overwhelmed with plastic rubbish and it is estimated that UK landfill sites will be full by 2022. Recycling: Is It a Con? s1e3, Channel 5 2019
Over half of our rubbish doesn’t go anywhere near a recycling plant. ibid.
Hong Kong: This is absolutely astonishing. I never thought we would see this. It’s sitting here doing nothing … People have put this in their recycling bins; they thought it was going to be recycled and yet it’s just stuck in this log-jam. Dirty Business: What Really Happens to Your Recycling, Sky News 2018
We produce twenty times more plastic today than we did fifty years ago. ibid.
A system that pushes the problem off our shores. The end result: plastic piling up and it isn’t going away. ibid.
China: whole villages grew dedicated to sorting through the world’s dirty plastic. ibid.
In July 2017 China rocked the recycling world by announcing it would impose tough restrictions on the import of foreign waste. They called it National Sword. ibid.
Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America. A waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources. The New York Times
cf.
The Solid Waste Dilemma: An Agenda For Action ... Recycling is absolutely vital. United States Environmental Protection Agency
We’ve got to get rid of that plutonium oxide in Hull … Storing nuclear waste was going to be a growth industry, you said. The New Statesman s1e4: Waste Not, Want Not, ITV 1987
Great British Institutions: ICI.A a company producing massive amounts of ozone-destroying chemicals in Europe, the largest British employer operating in South Africa, and the UK’s biggest licensed dumper of waste into the north sea. ICI: world problems, expensive solutions, big profits. Spitting Image s8e1, ITV 1990
Coal-fired power plants produce the most incredibly damaging waste we know that’s changing the nature of our atmosphere. Professor Tim Flannery, chairman Copenhagen Climate Council
The soft drinks industry produces 470 billion plastic bottles every year designed to be used just once and then thrown away. A quarter of them are made by one company – Coca-Cola. Nearly half of Coke’s bottles end up burnt, dumped or littered. Panorama: Coca-Cola’s 100 Billion Bottle Problem, BBC 2021
Every year millions of tons of waste are dumped in landfill sites. For people living near landfills it can be a nightmare. There are calls for the environment agency to get a tighter grip. We are concerned about new homes being built near old landfills. And we reveal new evidence of the impact they can have on the environment. Panorama: Landfill: Britain’s Toxic Secrets, BBC 2023
Silverdale: More than 7,000 complaints. ibid.
There are 555 landfill sites in the UK. In England they are regulated by the environment agency … Hydrogen sulphide levels had repeatedly breached WHO odour annoyance guidelines. ibid.
My father, who didn’t like being called dad, only Maurice, photographed the beauty and might of post-war industrial Britain. Maurice showed the triumphs of British industry before it was destroyed and whole communities laid to waste. Nick Broomfield, Arena: My Father and Me, BBC 2021
When I was a little girl I remember driving on the I-44 with my mom past the desolate remains of what used to be Times beach. The street sat empty save for the dark windowless husks of decaying abandoned houses. And she would always tell me the story about how that was where everyone had to be evacuated because of toxic waste contamination. The Cover Up at Times Beach, Truthstream Media 2017
The by-product of Agent Orange was manufactured … Times beach was disincorporated, evacuated and quarantined save for one elderly couple who refused to leave. ibid.
The largest civilian dioxin exposure in US history. ibid.
A suspected dioxin dump site. ibid.
Bliss [haulage company] subsequently testified from a Monsanto research lab. ibid.
They [resident family] didn’t just lose their house … They had been exposed to all these harmful chemicals and hazardous toxic waste. ibid.
The discovery of PCBs in the town. ibid.
‘Every member of my family was ill with something different.’ ibid. resident
Russell Bliss [haulage] was never convicted of any crime. ibid.
In the 1982 the DOJ … withheld documents from a Congressional investigation on the Times beach clean-up … They cite executive privilege. ibid.
If manufacturers are so sure there is nothing wrong with genetically modified foods, pesticides and cloned meats, they should have no problems labeling them as such. After all, cancer will kill one in every two men and one in every three women now alive, reports Samuel Epstein, chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. Like our ancestors, we act in ways that will bemuse future societies. The military-industrial complex lubricates the mass-agriculture system with fossil fuels. Tons of heavy metals and other hazardous, even radioactive, waste is sprayed on American agricultural soil. Adam Leith Gollne, ‘The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession’
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day the world changed. And in the rush to fund the War on Terrorism, the War on Waste seems to have been forgotten. More money for the Pentagon when its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25% of what it already spends. The Ultimate Con, Documentary Heaven
Meanwhile, in order to punish the population of Gaza for voting ‘the wrong way’, the Israeli army are not allowing past the checkpoints any replacements for the pipes and cement needed to keep the sewage system working. The result? Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing ‘a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions’.
So how did it come to this? How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago with a promise to be ‘a light unto the nations’ end up flinging its filth at a cowering Palestinian population? Ian R Crane, Israel is Suppressing a Secret it Must Face: How Did a Jewish State Founded 60 Years Ago End Up Throwing Filth at Cowering Palestinians?
Secrecy is the Word to Remember. Atomic Homefront, sign over entrance, Sky Documentaries 2022
North St Louis County, Missouri: Elevated levels of radioactivity. ibid.
In 1942 the US Government chose St Louis, Missouri, as a processing centre of uranium for the first atomic bombs. Over the next 25 years, the radioactive waste from this processing was moved to sites throughout the northern suburbs of St Louis. The radioactive waste was then dumped into a landfill in Northern St Louis County. ibid. captions
It’s stinking. That’s how it is down here. ibid. resident
The Bridgeton side of the landfill contains an underground fire known as a Subsurface Smouldering Event or SSE. ibid. caption