Present. Rubbish treatment.

Landfill enlargement barely keeps up with growing waste disposal needs. A waste-to-energy plant has not resolved things, and has led to more maintenance needed for roads, because of more loaded traffic to the waste area.

There’s concern that the growing landfill is seeping toxic effluents to the ground water and nearby river; there’s informal employment eeking out income from pecking over the dump trucks coming in, but there’s fierce competition among the collectors, leading to disorganised scrounging—ultimately spilling waste over areas where the scrounging happens.

Limited recycling is happening, but the population doesn’t take it seriously; “What’s in in for me?” is the question people ask about waste-reduction initiatives.

Dystopia. Rubbish treatment.

Tires are in huge heaps, and are getting dumped in the ocean. Different types of wastewaters come down the rivers, from storm drains, and from industrial and port sites. Streams and storm drains spill plastic and other refuse over the shoreline, in rafts of plastic that cover swathes of the sea.

The river is practically an open sewer of plastic, especially near its exit, as it collects refuse to the ocean.

Rubbish is collected, but public services can’t keep up, and people looking through the waste are active at the dump and in the street, at piles of uncollected rubbish. There are fires at the landfill, and larger numbers of people are scrounging through the rubbish, living nearby in precarious conditions.

The air has smog and the sun is opaque. Buildings are dirty with soot; few birds are flying.

Eutopia. Rubbish treatment.

There is minimal dumping to the old landfill, and a methane reclamation facility there assists in powering the nearby reception-for-recycling activities.

There’s an orderly arrangement to the sequential value chains, and connection to the port is important, as regionally there’s a network of recycling zones. We even see R&D activity around the local recycling and upcycling activities, as part of the circularity of manufactured goods; this extends even to mining the old landfill for metals.

No waste is sent to rivers without treatment, and agricultural wastes are processed to retain nutrients and re-use water. Likewise, municipal wastewater is treated before reaching natural streams and the ocean.

There is production emanating from the waste activities.

The air is clear, with birds and life.