Societies tend to swing between careful scavenging and lavish discarding, driven mainly by economic conditions rather than values. At their height, civilizations throw things away freely, even making single-use containers. As resources tighten toward the end, they turn back to reusing and recycling materials.
Waste expands to fill whatever space is offered to hold it, so handing out large bins automatically produces more garbage. Charging people by the volume of trash they can't recycle works better. No single fix solves the problem; landfills, recycling, burning and making less in the first place each have a role.
The items the public blames for overflowing dumps are usually the visible, symbolic ones, not the ones that fill the space. Measured in a compacted landfill, plastic is about 16 percent of volume and disposable diapers about 3 percent, while ordinary paper takes up over 40 percent. Policy aimed at the villain misses the real load and can fuel misguided efforts.
Efforts to make people save or dispose carefully can backfire on the waste they produce. When food is in short supply, households hoard and end up throwing more of it out. Special collection days for toxic waste can likewise send more hazardous material into the ordinary landfill.