Trash burning is still pretty common in some parts of the world.

It's incredibly bad when plastics and disposable batteries start getting burnt, as is inevitable when burning is the primary trash disposal strategy.

Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.

Uncontrolled burning of trash is much worse than a proper landfill. Modern landfills are constructed with water barriers and do not poison ground water. Old trash dumps were a problem but that is not what is happening in developed nations.

Of course, in some areas of the world, both uncontrolled trash burning and unregulated trash dumps are used.

I think you're talking about two different things.

I think the other post may be talking about people who burn their trash at home, instead of at an industrial scale? It seems like a neighborhood of people burning their batteries and plastics would not be great, compared to an industrial incinerator.

Or maybe I'm way off base.

Don't think this is what was meant by trash burning.

Tell that to the methed out assholes burning their trash in our neighborhood.

Burning trash is bad. Incinerating properly is crucial.

I assume they just threw the trash into the bin and probably kept it outside.

My neighbor is in his 80s and we live in what used to be a rural area before urbanization caught up. He told me there wasn't any garbage collection, they put rubish in a small bin and just dumped everything in a hole in the garden when the bin was full. They didn't use any plastic so everything would just decompose. When the hole was full they'd dig another one and that was it.

In rural areas they commonly composted the organic garbage and burned much of the rest. Food scraps were also fed to animals so there was generally very little food waste.

My uncle used to pick up all the food scraps from a local restaurant and feed those to his pigs. It made a mess in his pickup truck, but it was a lot cheaper than commercial pig food.

We still do it. Every kitchen waste goes to the chickens, everything that's compostable goes to a pile in the back of the garden. With two adults we have about three bags going in the recycling bin and one bag in the garbage bin per month. We still have a bit of progress to do by buying less packaged items.

You had a trash can/bin/bucket at home and you'd empty it into a dumpster or garbage chute.

Before wide availability of plastic bags, reusable bins/buckets were used for trash. It's not even that historic, for example, 1980s USSR did it that way if I recall it correctly.

New Orleans does it in streetside garbage cans.

Throw trash in the bin without a bag. Dump trash in your big trash can outside (that still doesn't have a trash bag). That can gets dumped into the garbage truck (truck also does not have a huge trash bag). Wash bin when it gets too dirty/stinky.

Trash bags are just a great time saver and more sanitary. I sure like them.

I'm an old enough gen-Xer to remember using paper grocery bags as a kid. There is a "standard" rectangular kitchen trash can size that used to fit grocery paper bags perfectly. Toss the bag in the galvanized steel trash can and the can is dumped out once a week.

Its a little more labor intensive, you can't dump liquids in a paper bag at least without paper towels, etc.

Exactly. But, you left out lifting your kid into the galvanized can to stomp down those paper bags and make space towards the end of the week...

I was born in the 80s and plenty of people were still just throwing it 'over the hill' or 'in a hole'. There are still remnants of it lying around if you know where to look. About 10 years ago when China was buying lots of scrap iron and steel, the scavengers dragged away all of the metal that was in these places which at least made them look better. You can still spot some old tires now and then.

Burn it and dump it into pits. Of course while that is not really a problem when 95% of your trash is organic with a bit of random iron scrap and most people live on low density farms, it is a problem with modern materials like plastics and other hydrocarbon products and increasing population densities.