You can find this trash series backstory in Free, the Backstory. This article addresses the engineering of meaningful, valuable, significant, durable stuff you can do today with trash currently in your trash bin.
“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” – Jonathon Swift
“Engineering,” and related concepts and disciplines, form the heart of everything involved in trash “conversion.” Converting trash into building materials, for instance, is not synonymous with building something from trash.
Bob Taylor (of Taylor Guitars) made a beautiful guitar from a shipping pallet. It resides in a museum, a testimonial to his skill and knowledge. Jim Bob made a hog pen and gate from shipping pallets and barbed wire. That could be a successful cottage industry. Think it through. Match your junk with your ambition, and most importantly, remember that people often throw away silk purses. They make nice finds, but not the stuff of trash conversion.
Traditional recycling is a fool’s errand. At an inflated nickel per can (5¢) a case of cans is worth $1.20. That makes it potentially worth holding on to them until you run low on beer or soda, but nobody benefits. Melting the cans is also useless, especially since the slightest impurities reduce aluminum’s value to around 30–40¢ per pound. That means even less than a nickel per can, less than the heat to melt them.
In the simplest of terms, stuff you can pull out of the trash and use, in any quantity, without a substantial conversion cost, is good trash. Ready to dig in?
The final goal of trash is municipal reclamation and conversion. We get the idea of compost, for instance. Many of us practice turning our garbage and trash back into soil. Grass cuttings, garden waste, autumn leaves and mulched limbs, kitchen scraps, vacuum litter, pet hair, newspapers, etc., more or less, push up kohlrabi and daisies across the country. The practice seems substantial, but in truth it hardly captures anything for a few reasons. Lawn chemicals and tree diseases can play havoc, and we generally do not want to participate in group programs like separating our leaves and putting them, alone, in special collection bags. As a friend, Ray, would say, “Wow! That’s a great idea! but I’m not doing it.“
Yes, it is another consumer problem.
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