Tarq57 has nailed the essence of the problem. We are filling landfills at an exponential rate, with Chinese junk, that we are being taught, can be disposed of, at an ever-increasing rate. It's not sustainable.
Has any one of you ever worked in a landfill? I have! Nearly a decade and half ago, when I was truly desperate for a dollar, after a nasty period of severe personal losses... I was forced to work in a landfill operation for 2 mths until I could raise some $$'s again.
EVERYONE should be made to work in a landfill operation for 2 mmths, just to see what goes on!
Our Depression-era parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, would be spinning in their graves, at the waste!
Perfectly good bicycles are buried, because new ones have been purchased! Electrical goods with minor flaws (noisy fan) are turfed out and buried, because owners can't be bothered fixing anything... and most people don't even have the knowledge on how to fix it, anyway!
We were constantly running out of room in the "industrial" waste side of the landfill (as compared to the "household waste" section). The majority of the material buried was Chinese.
We were burying, at my best estimate, $3000-$5000 worth of immediately-recyclable metals, a week! Iron, aluminium, copper... it wasn't worth gathering up, said the landfill bosses!
We will pay for this waste in more ways than one, eventually. Electrical waste disposal is a huge problem. Waste plastics are everywhere, and only a small % is recycled.
Councils are being overwhelmed, and take the easy, less-costly options... build more landfills, further out of town.
If products were built with better quality, and made repairable, then our landfill problem would be minimal. It can be done, but manufacturers such as the Chinese have no interest in doing so... and neither do our retailers, politicians, and regulatory authorities.
We have a Govt intent on a Carbon Capture tax... yet those same pollies are blind to the manufacturing quality/waste problem, that will overwhelm our children.
The Chinese don't care, they are exporting the problem, and getting rich, on doing so.