What are your thoughts about the garbage we'll have after TSHTF

[GAMom]

This has been on my mind for awhile now & I thought maybe you-all had come up with some inventive ways to get rid of the evidence of our stock of foodstuffs during a long term emergency. There has been a lot of talk about how, what & when to store food. Now what about how do we get rid of the garbage we'll generate? You know those #10 cans and stuff? I know that I usually take both ends off my used cans and step on them to flatten those suckers, but then I just put them into the recycling bin. When there is no garbage pick up what then? There will be lots of other garbage that will need to be disposed of as well. I can't quite see myself out in the dark trying to bury the stuff! Any good ideas out there?

[Earthling]

Wow - I had never thought of that! I will burn whatever I can and the rest I don't know. Looking forward to everyone's answers.

[Noahs ARK]

Good question!

I'll keep some of mine for different reasons ~ baked bread, steamed bread, put out on the deck to grow something in it, catch rainwater, alcohol candles.

The rest I guess I'll bury in our woods after I fill it with other garbage that I don't want anyone to see.

[LEVE]

Make a homemade forge and "recycle" your steel products into stuff more useful.

[JuneGem]

That is such an interesting question that urban and suburban people will definitely have to consider! Luckily, we are rural. Burying and burning are no problem here.

Maybe a barbque pit for burning the labels; crush the cans and bring them to a recycling facility. Perhaps setting up a community type collection facility that will then bring the metal items to a recycling facility, so that there are no individuals identified.

[phylm]

What kind of emergency situation do you have in mind? Somehow, a recycling facility doesn't fit into my vision of a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

If an EMP or any of several other potentials disasters should dump us back into the 1700s, I would keep any containers with lids to store the foods I'd be raising and dehydrating, save any paper for fire starter material, show my less prepared neighbors how to make charcoal in #10 cans, how to make stoves of them, and share my cans with them, and feed food scraps, vegetable peels, etc., to my chickens and animals. I don't anticipate much "garbage" to dispose of. Back in the dark ages of my youth of "use it up, fix it up, make it do, or do without," we had very little garbage to deal with.

[Julie]

We always had a barrel in the back yard that we put our garbage in when I was growing up. When it got full, my dad set it on fire and when it finally filled up with ashes we took it to the dump. The dump was a place along the creek that needed some help to keep the bank stable.