I'm saying that "Simply throw your waste into a bin in your back-yard, wait 3 months and you have fresh earth" doesn't work. Size isn't isn't the only difference between "a bin in your back-yard" and "industrial size anaerobic digesters".

Take a walk in the woods. You'll see plenty of "not fresh earth" that has been dead for more than 3 months. As I discovered when I used composing to get out of some yard-waste disposal work, composting requires actual work. (I've actually done this a couple of times, the most recent with worms.)

I'm a big fan of "actually earth friendly" as opposed to feel-good. If you cherry-pick the easy stuff (mostly large metal objects), it's actually quite hard to do significantly better than a landfill. And, in a couple of decades, landfills will be a great place to find resources. (We're already harvesting methane from them and it's viable to harvest other things now.)

The US has a waste disposal "crisis" because it created one. Do the arithmetic - the total amount of trash generated in the US over decades could fit in a small corner of Nevada and no one would even notice.

Of course too much waste is produced. And of course, when I said throw it in a bin the back-yard, I left out the details of how manage a compost heap - but do you tell people to put gas in the car before starting it? I am unsure how large metal objects generate methane in a landfill. Generating methane from organic waste is not a particularly efficient form of energy production.

Reducing consumption would be a good first step. Proper product design for maximal recycling and bio-degreadable components would be a good second step. Apartment buildings could easily have digesters. You could easily have them spread out throughout a city. Until we have electric trucks with a clean electricity grid (not very common in the US), you still have a transportation issue.

> And of course, when I said throw it in a bin the back-yard, I left out the details of how manage a compost heap - but do you tell people to put gas in the car before starting it?

Actually, you said that there were no such details. I'll quote again "Simply throw your waste into a bin in your back-yard, wait 3 months and you have fresh earth".

> I am unsure how large metal objects generate methane in a landfill.

It's unclear why you would raise that question. The discussion is about waste disposal. Few metals "compost" and since metal is often useful....

> Generating methane from organic waste is not a particularly efficient form of energy production.

Didn't say that it was, but it can be "free" energy, as can burning. Meanwhile, backyard composting simply wastes this energy.

Me - I think that recycling/reusing energy is important too.

As to the rest, you don't get to ignore costs on things that you like and ignore benefits on things that you don't like. (Refuse transportation isn't a big issue.)