Why don’t we throw trash in volcanoes?

Introduction

Humans produce a significant amount of waste, and we are yet to find a perfect solution for its disposal. One idea that often comes up is the concept of throwing our garbage into volcanoes. However, as appealing as incinerating our trash into oblivion might sound, there are several reasons why this is not a viable solution.

The Cost of Volcano Disposal

Firstly, transporting all our trash to the nearest active volcano could be prohibitively expensive. Many locations are thousands of kilometers away from a volcano, while most cities only send their trash tens or hundreds of kilometers to landfills. Some cities also incinerate a lot of their trash in incineration plants and use the heat to generate electricity. Therefore, electric bills could potentially increase if we started using volcanoes instead.

The Practicality of Volcano Disposal

However, even for cities near volcanoes, using them as large flaming trash piles is not a practical solution. Contrary to popular belief, volcanoes are not usually the bubbling pits of exposed lava that you see in movies and cartoons. Many volcanoes resemble mountains or hills with a crater near the top, and if the craters are filled with anything, it’s more likely to be liquid water than a lava lake. Therefore, to dispose of trash, you would have to wait for these kinds of volcanoes to erupt, which is incredibly dangerous due to the potential for violent eruptions.

The Risks of Volcano Disposal

Another option would be to drill down into a volcano’s magma chamber, where the molten rock sits under high pressure until eruption. However, given the unpredictability of what exactly will trigger a volcano’s eruption, drilling down into that super pressurized chamber or shooting trash into the magma are not advisable. Some volcanoes, like Kilauea in Hawaii, have pretty constant calm lava flows. But even though slow-moving lava might seem like a safer and easier way to get rid of garbage, there is another significant issue. Clumps of organic matter like food scraps don’t just burn when they hit lava, they explode.

The Science Behind Volcano Disposal

While there is little research into why these explosions happen, there are plenty of experiments and YouTube videos that clearly demonstrate that they do. The most likely explanation is that any water in the trash immediately boils when it hits the thousand-degree molten lava. This steam expands, forcing the trash and lava out of the way to create an explosive fountain of molten rock. However, the exact reason is still unknown and requires further scientific investigation.

The Environmental Impact of Volcano Disposal

With the average American generating a couple of kilograms of trash a day, that would result in a lot of exploding lava. Furthermore, materials that probably wouldn’t explode, like plastic, tend to emit dangerous fumes when burned, which presents another significant problem. Therefore, even if you live near an active volcano and even if there’s lava at the surface, it’s not advisable to use it as your garbage disposal. While a controlled science experiment or two may be fine, tons of trash creating noxious lava fountains is not.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the idea of disposing of our trash in volcanoes may seem appealing, it is neither practical nor safe. It’s important to continue exploring more sustainable and less harmful methods of waste disposal.