My  HOA has been dealing with the small trash pickup problem with our contractor.

This made me realize that a true SHTF situation I'm probably going to need some type of concrete plan to deal with the buildup of trash..... Both my own and my neighbors.

As far as my neighbors go I'm concerned about rats/raccoons etc. I'm buying some more rat taps and already have raccoon traps from a previous "visitor".  I'm also planning on a new pellet gun. The one I have is old and not accurate. I'll consider poison as a last resort...mostly because I figure I can use the rats and raccoons as dog food....seriously.

My own plan is going to have to include a burn barrel. Don't feel like storing a 55 gallon drum so I'll try and get one if the SHTF. As far as burning goes I'm also concerned about fire hazzards. I plan on burning in a barrel AWAY from the house. Doesn't mean a dumbass neighbor does. So for general fire hazzards....either from accidents or looters...I'm trying to devise a plan for fighting a fire. I'm on a lake and also have a pool. I figure my best best is a 2HP pump or greater hooked to a generator and pulling from my pool or lake. Obviously a fully engulfed house is beyond my control, but a small fire may be able to be contained.


Thoughts on a garbage plan?  I saw first hand in Iraq what lack of sanitation services look like. In a economic downfall that will be one of the first things to go....and with that comes spreading disease.

Well I would be composting so that solves most of the critter issue.  The parts not useable for composting could be used as bait for hunting small game.  Cardboard would be used for various things as it's pretty versatile.  Plastics and foams could be burned.   If you are smart there will be little left to throwaway.

Agreed.

My "garbage plan" concerns have more to do with my neighbors than me.

If you do some research on home made trash burners or home made wood stoves you will find some various ways to improve upon the barrel of burning rubbish concept.



I expect everyone to mostly recycle.  Paper and cardboard will burn.  Metal will be washed clean and saved for repairing stuff.  Anything that will rot can go in the mulch pile or the garden compost pile or whatever.  



I still expect problems out of vermin and bugs and what not, lots of reusable traps are a good thing.  Some people plan to run a mini trap line.  



Now I am sure some people will still be tossing their metal cans that had food in them, gonna have bugs and animals getting into that.  Having kids collect and clean stuff up might work, might not.  I have a big yard so the bugs and vermin a couple hundred yards away are not a concern of mine for the most part.



Now in the burbs, that would be an issue.



I could see some plastic not burning well and not being reused for some stuff, like meat out of the freezer or something where the plastic has done its job and does not have a lot of life left in it.



I kind of stick garbage and human waste in the same section.  if they are going to be be neat with one they will probably be neat with the other.  Gonna be messy with one, gonna be nasty with the other.

Biggest waste problem is going to be of a more human nature.... Especially in the burbs.

The "buy, use, discard" cycle will break down at the "buy" side.  The HOA problem is people still bringing things IN to the neighborhood without efficient removal FROM the neighborhood.

You'd think there'd be nothing to throw away......


Now, go ask the guys who have served overseas just how much is thrown away.....and how it builds up.

Trust me, there will be plenty of built up garbage

You will only be throwing away what you already have. If you aren't getting new stuff, you won't be throwing it away later.

I once lived on a farm that would burn garbage. The farmer would dig a 10' circular hole maybe 4-5 feet deep. Garbage would get piled out there and burned about once a week. It wasn't a great solution, but it worked.

The world will not stop spinning. Commerce as we know it may stop, but commerce as a whole will continue.

Barter, trades, black market will continue. There will still be supply lines of some nature. The people in Iraq didn't have a pot to piss in so to speak but still engaged in commerce and still generated trash.

People during the Great Depression still generated trash.

Burn barrel or find a big gulley to dump it in near by.

I compost:  meat scraps, chicken bones, small scrap paper, yard trimmings, shredded stuff, pizza boxes.  Recycle:  paper cardboard bottles, cans, scrap metal etc...

My garbage consists of the stinky Styrofoam meat trays and small bits of plastic.  If the shtf for real I wouldn't imagine I would have any garbage.  Poop would be the biggest disposal issue.

I saw this in Indonesia. Of course the gully was also the location of the river they got their drinking water from

I think the OP's concerns are quite valid, garbage disposal will be a problem in urban areas during medium/long-term disruptions. Just google "garbage collector strike" to see how quickly garbage can pile up in the city.

Here in the country most everyone has a burn pile, mostly for scrap wood, old cardboard, and the like, but plastic garbage could be added if the garbage trucks stop running or they close the transfer stations.

State geologists here in Oregon estimate that a big earthquake could disrupt the transportation and fuel distribution systems for months, possibly up to a year. Can you imagine no garbage (or sewer) service in the city for 6 months? Glad I live in the country....

This is a valid topic. Thanks OP.

To me, I think burning anything
is going to be huge liability. It will
transmit that you have stuff to
others for long distances. This
will include burning garbage,
firewood for heat, and cooking.

I plan to burn as little as possible,
which means I will need to bury or
dump my garbage.

Later!

John

HA!!!!  you live under a HOA... ...

Most municipal sewer systems are entirely gravity operated.  Granted there may not be anyone at the other end to treat the waste, but by filling the tank in your toilet with a bucket (assuming there is no water pressure) you can make your waste Someone Else's Problem.

I'm fairly certain that many people will be burning stuff if SHTF - wood for heat and cooking, and garbage for disposal.  If that's the case, your stuff won't stand out.  That would be my plan A - after reusing or composting what I could.

Actually, the opposite. Many sanitation systems utilize a series of pump stations. During the hurricanes down here they have gone out. One of my fears is the sewers backing up and overflowing inside the homes. It has happened before down here.

Have you considered putting in a backflow prevention valve?

http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1627-20490-2015/how2007_sewer_4_11.pdf

List what all needs to be disposed of.  





Beer company sending in cases of water in aluminum cans, empty cans get squished and put in bag to be recycled later when times are ok.





Plastic bottles from umpteen cases of water, squish bottle flat if you don't need the container and bag it up as well.





I buy garbage bags by the case in several sizes and would not have an issue piling up bags of water cans or water bottles for a while.





Food in messy plastic or something like that would go in the galvanized garbage can.  Got a few of those.  If I can spare the water and wash the mess off then I would do that so the trash would not attract as many bugs and mice.  But I don't really have an issue having a messy garbage area away from my house and no I won't put it on the corner closest to the neighbors house.





Bathroom facilities will be an issue.  Living rural makes it less of an issue but still going to be a problem.





On a septic so not worried about sewers backing up.  If I was on a sewer system I would learn all about it and have one of those valves mentioned in the system just because that sort of mess will cause you a problem regardless of how bad things are outside your house.





I am not a fan of burning plastic or styrofoam so I would not be burning it myself.  Wash if possable and store till times are better.





Depending on what happened and what I think I need I would repurpose the aluminum cans and plastic bottles for projects before considering them trash.





I am not a fan of burning everything in a pile and I am not a fan of dumping it in a ravine or creek or anything else.





I guess as a single guy I pay attention to what I haul to the dump and I keep the waste to a minimum.





During bad times I won't be going to the store for luxuries.  Luxuries are where most of my waste comes from.

 

I failed to take into account your location.  In my area there are pump stations, but they are rare.  In fact, engineers go to great lengths to avoid putting them in.  The takeaway being - what works for me won't necessarily work for you, so know your AO.

I grew up on a farm in rural Oklahoma.  Garbage pickup didn't exist then, we had to deal with it ourselves.  Granted we didn't generate near as much garbage even 40 years ago as we do today, but this is how we did it.  Household trash was burnt in a barrel.  When the barrel was about 1/2 full of ash it got hauled to a large garbage pit and emptied.  The top of an old washing machine was used over the barrel to keep embers from starting fires and also keep water out of the barrel when it rained.  Larger items or items that wouldn't burn were hauled to the garbage pit or to a gully to help prevent wash out.

the mil has a log chain, in shtf you wont, even barter items wont generate a huge amount of trash.





not even a close comparison.



go out in the boonies and see how much trash a frugal singal family farm generates-hardly any





 

still done that way



 

Some things to consider....

Garbage generally falls into three categories.  Food waste.  paper. And packaging.  Food wastes are compostable.  We've composted for years.  It is a low-impact way to get rid of food wastes -  which are usually the smelly side of garbage.  And as an added bonus, the resulting compost is great for the garden.  If you compost, much of your garbage problem is 'done'.

Paper.  In all honesty, I think 3/4ths of our trash is paper.   Junk mail. Ads.  Flyers.    Store it and use it as tinder. or barrel burn it.

Packaging:  A trip to any third world country shows one thing quick:  Plastic is everywhere. Its all packaging.  One thing does come to mind.  If its a SHTF event, you likely aren't going to be buying more stuff, therefore the amount of packaging waste on hand is minimal.  It's unlikely most of us are going to be able to generate more juice jugs, milk containers, and cheetoes wrappers when the stores have closed and are bought out. You can easily burn cardboard or paper packing, but don't burn plastics.  The smells are worse, and far more harmful, than any rotting garbage smell.  The toxins are pretty nasty.

So, take a layered approach.   Compost the food scraps (or recycle them into Fido Food).  Burn the paper/cardboard.  And squash and store the plastic packing.  It won't stink, and its not a health hazard, and you likely only have a limited supply on hand.  How many mountain house foil packs can any one person really have???  You can stuff a LOT of these into one or two plastic leaf bags...

If you have a baby, and use disposeable diapers, all bets are off.  You have real problems in this regard.  If the SHTF is hurricane/flood or similar, trash will be of a different sort:  Tree limbs.  Mud.  Shingles.  Torn siding.  This stuff (except flood sediments) may be really  ugly, but tree limbs and some broker plastic furniture aren't health hazards.  Stack it, make shift zombie fencing style, at the curb..........

Human wastes are fairly easy to deal with.    Use a bucket and sawdust for ladies and solid wastes and then compost.  Or dig a pit and bury.  One solution is a open-top drum, with bottom cut out and lots of holes drilled in sides,  buried with only a couple inches and the drum top exposed.  Use buckets in the house.  When full, lift drum lid, deposit, and reseal drum lid.  Top keeps flies out and prevents insect borne disease spread.


Fro

I wasn't talking about GI's.....I was talking about the general population

The neighborhood issue is really the problem.  I would try and identify an empty lot or an area away from most homes that could be designated as a "garbage dump".  As mentioned, the human waste is where it gets scary as disease vectors thrive in that type of waste.  Also, fencing in the area would help mitigate dogs, cats, ratcoons and bears from dragging crap all over the place.

If your neighborhood could organize a little after the SHTF, lessons on composting, consolidated burn pit and solid waste dumping area could be established.  If you were really influential, their are some good designs on pre-fabricated latrines that could be constructed quickly and service several people...keeping human waste isolated and far enoug from water sources or gardens.

ROCK6

If there is an empty lot or good place for the stuff to go this is the sort of thing where I could see using the quad and trailer and donating time since keeping disease and vermin down would be a good thing.  Not gonna do weekly pickup but could easily see having a day and time where everyone is ready to get rid of their trash and the quad would not use much fuel to do it.



This is considering a suburb should be a place you can feel safe doing this sort of thing and what not.



I have posted in the past that I want to get everyone working together and things up and running as quickly as possable.  I don't expect it to be normal by any means, but having townhall type meetings would allow those with immediate problems to ask for help on a solution and those with concerns to speak up about them.



I am rural and don't see hauling my stuff off the property but I could see where some of the more compact housing lots might need help with their trash, they need it now but I consider it their choice to live like that.



Before everyone starts digging latrines and outhouses you should consider reading up on distance from well and also for florida I guess there is not always a lot of distance until you get to ground water.



I keep living on decently high ground.  Not the highest ground by any means, but high enough things flowing from uphill will flow past me.



Having a way to deal with major nasty stuff flowing past is a concern.



While I have never had a garbage compactor I could see creating one for plastic bottles and other stuff that won't compact very well.  I don't worry about space very much but I could still see having some container setup to take the force of a vehicle driving over it or sitting on it or something and when the vehicles move they drive over what needs compacted down.  



Just googling pictures up of the floating trash pile make me sit and wonder about stuff like this.



Even now I don't produce much garbage overall, and what I have been producing lately is just cardboard shipping boxes bringing me stuff or packaging for autoparts and what not.



Good question, I can't think of the last time I actually had 3 posts in one thread so close together.



If in the burbs or especially a city I would rig up a 5 gallon mouse trap setup but I sure don't know what I would do with so many dead mice.

Dog food.  Seriously....I plan on using them as dog food.

What little garbage you have will be burned in your wood stove (or whatever) for warmth.