Hey guys what's up it's Charlie here and today we're going to be looking at what
if we done tower trash into volcanoes we clearly have a big problem on this
planet with waste each year the USA alone makes around 300 million tons of
trash but the question is where to put it if we put it in landfill then this
takes up a lot of space so wouldn't it be convenient just to dump it all in a
big volcano to incinerate it well today we're going to look at if we could do
that or not but first why not subscribe and turn on the notification bell - if
we wanted to dump our trash into volcanoes the first hurdle we'd come to
is transportation first off in the whole world there are only 1500 active
volcanoes he would need the volcano to be active as otherwise there'd be no
lava to incinerate our trash now obviously these 1,500 volcanoes are
pretty big this means they were technically fit all of the trash we
create but one issue is how would you get the trash to the volcanoes each
person generates around four and a half pounds of trash per day so that means
we'd need to find an active volcano it near to our trash not many people live
near active volcanoes so this means it would take a ton of time at fuel and
money simply to transport our trash to the volcanoes but technically through
the use of planes boats and trucks it would be possible but now for the main
problem with dumping our trash into volcanoes and that is simply how
dangerous it would be when you imagine dumping trash into a volcano you likely
imagine throwing garbage into a hole in a cone but unfortunately real volcanoes
are nowhere near as neat as this in reality there's actually a gigantic
crater most volcanoes are actually classified as stratovolcanoes that's
because they have occasional lava flows and also because of the hot gases and
magma built up inside them they do sometimes have small explosions these
small explosions fire a lava up into the air and then down into the surrounding
areas so if you were a garbage man then your job just got a hundred times more
dangerous Paul so you couldn't simply drive a
garbage truck onto this volcano most volcanoes do not have a neat path to
their crater so it would be very difficult to throw trash into an
explosive volcano obviously volcano is very spontaneous and unproductive so you
never know when they're going to explode or erupted most volcanoes bubble at
their surface and spew out bits of molten rock ash and gases if you were to
stand anywhere near this then you would not be alive for very long but let's say
we don't use a garbage truck or a garbage man to dump our trash into
volcanoes maybe we use a different device like a crane for example and no I
don't mean the bird I mean at the giant mechanical construction well
unfortunately we would still have an issue with eruptions when something cold
hits a massive lava this can result in a massive explosion and even an eruption
believe it or not in 2002 researchers in Ethiopia actually tried this they dumped
a bunch of cold material into a volcano but this resulted in a ginormous
eruption of that volcano but that was just a small bit of trash let's imagine
a 66 pound bag of trash this would be the average weekly trash bag of a family
of four well if you dump this into a volcano it could send lava around 300
feet up into the air this would obviously fall down around the
surrounding areas so anyone who lived anywhere near these volcanoes would need
to move and if they didn't then they wouldn't have much choice has their
house would be destroyed by falling lava obviously one big downside to things
like landfill is the pollution it causes landfill contaminates the soilless
barrier in producing methane methane is a greenhouse gas 21 times more powerful
than co2 and these greenhouse gases go on to cause a lot of global warming but
sadly dumping our trash into volcanoes would be just as bad if not worse for
the environment trash incinerators we use today have a
lot of regulations that's to prevent it being too bad for the environment the
incinerators try their best to make sure minimal amounts of smoke go into our air
but obviously you can't really govern or regulate a volcano this means dumping
things into volcanoes will cause a lot of smoke to go into the atmosphere and
because you can't use technology on a volcano it can't filter out things like
carbon monoxide or sulphur dioxide this means all of
this stuff will be going up into the air and polluting our world even more so
even if we could dump our trash into volcanoes it may be more convenient but
it would be way worse for the environment so we can't throw general
trash into volcanoes too bad but what about specialized waste for example
medical waste or nuclear waste these things tend to be very dangerous and are
very hard to get rid of well unfortunately volcanoes although they
seem very powerful and not more powerful than nuclear fuel volcanoes simply are
not hot enough to sterilize things like medical waste and they're also not hot
enough to melt down nuclear fuel the temperature of an average volcano is
around 2100 degrees Fahrenheit of course that is very hot but not hot enough to
melt down nucular fuel or sterilize medical waste and for those six reasons
we cannot dump our trash into volcanoes it would be a logistical nightmare to do
it would be dangerous for the people doing it it would cause lots of
eruptions and gas explosions it would cause a lot of air pollution and make
our world even more polluted and finally we couldn't even get rid of things like
nuclear waste or medical waste anyway so sorry volcanoes fight you just not that
useful at least not for getting rid of trash so well dumping trash may seem
like an ideal idea in a cartoon world unfortunately it isn't but some people
still say we should try it out so now based on what you know you vote in the
poll in the top right corner should we try dumping trash into
volcanoes or not if you guys want some more amazing videos then why not check
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