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g71 4/22 pp. 11-12What Is Happening to the Land That Grows Your Food? One way in which the land is being fouled is by the avalanche of garbage being dumped on it, particularly around cities. The refuse pile for 1969 in the United States totaled about 250,000,000 tons, more than a ton for each person. Of this, about 60 million tons were not even collected. It was added to the nation's highways, streets, recreational areas and fields as filth.
Consider this partial list of what was thrown away in just one recent year in this one country:
- 7,000,000 automobiles
- 20,000,000 tons of paper
- 26,000,000,000 bottles and jars
- 48,000,000,000 cans
The problem is complicated by the fact that so much of the trash is not the kind that decays easily. Of the containers of glass, tin, aluminum, plastic and paper, only the paper and tin disintegrate fairly readily. The rest, especially the plastics, are largely "nonbiodegradable." That is, they are not easily assimilated into the earth's natural cycles that restore materials to their basic elements by decay or corrosion. So, they remain, making man's environment look like a garbage dump........man has devastated the land by deforestation, strip-mining and overcultivation. Scientists calculate that it takes some five hundred years of vegetable and animal decay to produce just one inch of fertile topsoil. Yet man's carelessness has caused millions of tons of topsoil to be stripped off and blown away or washed into rivers and seas. Should we not instead show appreciation for this priceless heritage-and respect for the One who provided it?
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g76 11/22 pp. 20-22 What Has Happened to the Rhine? By "Awake!" correspondent in West Germany
And what about the daily disposal of tens of thousands of tons of chemical wastes that cannot be biologically decomposed? Certain detergents are especially troublesome. They cause mountains of foam that sit atop the waters for long periods of time. And though the foam eventually disappears, the detergents remain as poisonous pollutants. Oil, too, is an offender. Once it gets into a body of water, oil is difficult to remove. Sometimes it seeps into drinking water, making it unusable.
Because of high costs and other problems, many feel that the best approach to reducing the Rhine's pollution is to cut down on the amount of pollutants dumped into it. But there is little hope of significant progress from this direction. Why? Because it would require many to lower their standard of living. Unfortunately, most individuals would rather endure polluted water than give up the modern conveniences that industry provides. Moreover, merchants who view commercial profit as the all-important goal in life are sure to oppose efforts to cut back on industrial output.
Pollution of the Rhine is just another evidence of human selfishness and greed.The solution to this and other world woes can come only by the hand of Almighty God, when he ‘brings to ruin those ruining the earth.'-Rev. 11:18.
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g83 9/22 p. 11 Toxic Wastes and Organized Crime For much of 1980, residents of Pittston, a town in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., watched trucks pull up behind a filling station along Highway 81, pause there briefly and then move on.
About the same time, there began appearing in the waters of the nearby Susquehanna River a powerful mixture of "carcinogenics, mutagenics and teratogens" (that is, chemicals causing cancer, mutations and gross developmental deformities). Once discovered, according to a report in the California newspaper Star-News, the deadly contamination was halted with difficulty just 25 miles (40 km) from the fishing grounds in Chesapeake Bay.
Where did the poisons come from? They were traced to a stream near an abandoned mine. In the mine was a pipe that came out of the ground behind the garage where all those trucks had been stopping. Seemingly, the trucking firm had been collecting dangerous chemicals from reputable firms, charging up to $1,000 a load to cover such things as fees for approved toxic-waste dumps, then illegally dumping the lethal chemicals into the pipe, where they drained into the mine, then into the stream, then into the Susquehanna River and almost into the Chesapeake Bay fishing area.
Who would do such a thing? Reports linked the operation to an organized crime group. According to reports submitted to Senate subcommittees, this is but one of "dozens of examples in which criminals have stepped in to earn large fees by illegally disposing of modern industrial wastes," said the Star-News.
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g90 9/22 p. 5 The Garbage Glut-Will It Bury Us? In recent years, developing countries have become the dumping ground for thousands of tons of unwanted waste. Some of it had simply been dumped in open fields by unscrupulous men. "Europeans and Americans are discovering that protecting their environment can mean polluting other people's lands," wrote the magazine World Press Review.
The German Tribune of October 1988 reported that Zurich, Switzerland, was exporting its surplus garbage to France and that Canada, the United States, Japan, and Australia had found dumping grounds in the "backyard" of Eastern Europe.
And so it goes. "The garbage crisis is unlike any other we've faced," said one U.S. official. "If there's a drought, people cut back on water. But in this crisis, we simply produce more garbage."
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g95 11/22 pp. 4-5 Poor Nations Become Garbage Dumps for Rich Ones Little wonder these companies find dumping the waste tempting! The cost can be cut tremendously if the right location is used. An example of this is the cruise ship United States, at one time the proud flagship of the American passenger fleet. It was purchased in 1992 to be refurbished for luxury cruising. It probably contained more asbestos than any other ship afloat. Asbestos removal would have cost $100 million in the United States. The ship was towed to Turkey, where it could be done for $2 million. But the Turkish government declined-too dangerous to allow the more than 500,000 square feet [46,000 sq m] of carcinogenic asbestos fiber to be stripped in their country. The ship was finally hauled to another country's port, where environmental standards are less strict.
