March 30, 2010

Fragrance cannons will be deployed to overpower the stink of Beijing's so-called Seventh Ring - a vast circle of garbage dumps and overflowing landfills.

The people of Beijing rejected incineration as a solution. Yet New Jersey has built a massive trash to steam plant in Camden to supplement it's own ring of landfills, and Super Fund sites. As mentioned, there ARE health consequences, but I'm wondering if fragrance cannons might not also cause health problems on such a massive scale

posted by Dan Folkus 14 years ago
  • Forget the cannons; most shots in the video had recyclables showing. It won't affect the smell but even a small effort to recycle would have a dramatic impact on the volume.
  • Not that the US is any great shakes at it, so I probably shouldn't be criticizing, but if we/they'd just do as Hoser mentioned, and recycle it would benefit all of us enormously. Then sort out the organics that could produce methane, which is a source of CLEAN power, clean burn what would be appropriate (again using it for power) then get rid of the toxic stuff in appropriate ways... China's great at motivating/controlling its population--when it wants to. If garbage sorting and control began at the grass roots, eventually it could pervade the society. It's not like there aren't people begging for jobs--to sort, to produce methane slurry tanks, to work on new ways of controlling garbage production and elimination. But heck no, let's do something absolutely USELESS. You can't hide stank. Stank is always there. What a waste of money. Com'on China. Lead the way!! We need to move away from plastics. Useless plastic packaging and non-recyclable items are going to make this planet unlivable. Oh yeah, and the mega-corps and their damn advertising? Fuck 'em. They're evil. I'm talking to you, McD, KFC, and all the rest.
  • We in the rich west can't really begrudge China's improving standard of living, given our own long run of relative prosperity. One would hope however that they'd have the wisdom to learn from our pitiful environmental legacy and realize that a good standard of living includes clean water and breathable air, not just more bling and Starbucks coffee from throwaway cups.
  • "The Fragrance Cannon" would have been a great nickname for a guy I went to college with.