Just because people might not like the concept of piling up trash doesn't mean it's an inherently bad idea.
Overall waste and recycling is low on the threats to our planet so I think doing nothing is ok (if by doing nothing you mean incinerating trash to generate electricity or responsibly burying it). The primary issue is reducing meat/dairy consumption and the next is transportation.
Incinerators have well known carcinogenic effects.
Landfills can easily pollute the nearby fields and water aquifers. And in most of Europe and Japan there is no more space for them.
All that remains at the end is ash that contains various metals and syngas that is produced in the process. Which can be used for generating electric power.
I hope plasma arc gasification becomes the standard for managing and disposing municipal solid waste. It really works. But you do need a certain scale (enough waste) for it to be effective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/print/volume-...
In 2015 "incinerator" means classic burners. Plasma gasification is practically unused: there are less that 10 plasma gasification facilities in the world.
According to the most recent land ministry survey conducted in 2013, there are 8.2 million vacant residences in Japan, 39 percent of which are designated as “abandoned,” meaning they are not for sale or rent. The portion of abandoned houses found in the previous survey, conducted in 2008, was 35 percent, and since 200,000 houses are demolished every year in Japan, the increase in the number is actually steeper than the percentage difference would indicate.
Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill.
But he seems to deliberately confuse what is meant by "more expensive" (using carbon per airplane travel as a unit of measure, for example). Part of the reason why advocates support subsidizing recycling is that it addresses external costs that are not being captured in traditional waste management costs.
Tierney brings up the question of environmental externalities later and points out, for example, "Worst of all is yard waste: it takes 20 tons of it to save a single ton of carbon dioxide." But does that 20 tons of yard waste not have economic value in excess of its value dumped in a landfill? And if it does, what does it matter if its saving only 1 ton of carbon dioxide? If it's saving 1 iota of carbon dioxide, it's still a net positive both economically and environmentally.
My take away from this is that: yes, perhaps recycling is not as economical and environmentally beneficial as most people believe, and there may be merit in a simpler recycling regime. But recycling is far from wasteful as the articles seems to want to argue.
Now that we're all recycle happy, I'd love to iterate.
Perhaps simplify, to reduce the kinds of plastics used, to simplify sorting and separating.
Packaging and shipping could be greatly reduced. I regularly receive a box within another box. Why not just send me the original box?
Why are products shipped to me (vs bought retail) still using theft (shop lifting) deterring plastics cases?
Why are over the counter drugs still triple sealed? There are no children in my house, why are bottles still childproof? Why are 30 tiny pills sold in a big glass jar? Why not just use ziplock baggies for everything?
Etc.
Edit: Good grief. Climate change "skeptic". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tierney_(journalist) Lesson relearned: google the author first.
There's the assumption that my regular trash goes to a landfill (it does not) and even if it did, maybe my goal is not to save money but to have fewer stupid landfills. I'm not really interested in how much open space is available to pile up trash, I just plain don't want it to pile up.
It then makes some odd argument about offsetting the carbon of airplane travel when I'm really just concerned about the carbon embodied in the plastic bottle.
Complaints about the annoyance of composting facilities seems plenty absurd just after talking about the abundance of open space to dump trash.
There's other bits and pieces strewn about the article but the whole thing reaks of "Nirvana Fallacy": the current solution isn't good enough so let's sit on our hands until we think of a better one.