Contrarian: landfills are better than you think

[Undertoad]

What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong via archive.org link to avoid paywall... or, if you prefer,

What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong via the original medium.com link if you don't mind paywalls

A well-researched and sourced piece. His nine points are:

1. We aren’t anywhere near running out of space for landfill.
2. Properly run landfill doesn’t hurt the environment in itself.
3. Even really well operated landfills are a very cheap way to dispose of our waste.
4. The main downside of sending something to landfill is we miss the chance to benefit from recycling it — but recycling is only sometimes cheaper or better for the environment.
5. The problem of rubbish polluting the sea, rivers and land can be most cheaply addressed by improving rubbish collection and making sure everything gets to landfill.
6. Incinerating waste and generating electricity from it is an alternative form of rubbish disposal that is good for the environment and solves the problem permanently, but expensive to operate up front.
7. Sending things to landfill isn’t as ‘unsustainable’ as you might think.
8. Reusable straws and bags are often more resource intensive than single-use ones.
9. If we don’t use materials in the first place, we save resources and don’t have to worry about any of the above.