What If We Dumped Our Trash into Volcanoes?

A volcano is one of the most unforgiving natural phenomena on Earth. If you were to fall into its magma-filled center, your body would quickly bubble up and disappear without a trace. So, if they're so good at getting rid of things, has anyone ever tried using them for waste disposal? How would we transport all our trash to them, and what dangers would this entail? This is a deep dive into the hypothetical scenario of dumping our trash into volcanoes.

Americans alone generate about 254 million tons of trash per year. Although dumping it into volcanoes might seem like the perfect way to get rid of it, the reality is far more complicated. Volcanoes might appear to be nature's garbage incinerators, but they are actually much more dangerous and unstable than they seem, not to mention a lot harder to access. Would overcoming these obstacles be worth it, or would dumping our trash into volcanoes just cause even more harm to our planet?

The first challenge in our quest for volcanic garbage disposal is finding an active volcano that can handle the job. There are only about 1,500 potentially active volcanoes worldwide, and most are located far from human habitation for obvious reasons. This means that transporting our trash to an active volcano could turn out to be prohibitively expensive. And once we get there, we might find out it's not even the right kind of active volcano.

The type of volcano we would need is called a shield volcano. These slow-erupting volcanoes contain the iconic lava lakes that gradually spew out onto the earth. Unfortunately, shield volcanoes are not very common. You're more likely to encounter their more explosive cousins, known as stratovolcanoes. Stratovolcanoes are known for their violent eruptions caused by the buildup of pressure from hot gases and magma. In other words, they are probably not the safest places for a waste dump.

Let’s assume we're fortunate enough to find a suitable shield volcano. Before we even consider the logistics of transporting our trash there, it's important to understand what you would face as a waste collector working at a volcano's vent. The environment around a volcano's vent is treacherous, filled with poisonous gases, lava splatter, and projectile rocks. Things would only get worse once you start throwing trash inside.

In 2002, a group of Ethiopian researchers threw a 30-kilogram bag of trash into a volcano, and the results were explosive. Lava lakes are unstable, so introducing something cold, like trash, can trigger a chain reaction of explosions involving pressurized and acidic steam. Imagine the scale of these explosions if an entire nation’s worth of trash were to be dumped into a volcano. To put it into perspective, rock falls into lava lakes in Hawaii have sent lava 85 meters into the air, so it would likely be something on that scale.

Even if you could somehow manage to safely deposit your trash into the volcano, you'd still face significant issues with air pollution caused by burning waste without proper filters. Plus, not all materials completely break down in lava, which means that polluting remnants could erupt out and contaminate the surrounding landscape. This would be particularly problematic if you were trying to incinerate hazardous materials like nuclear waste.

The environmental impacts, combined with the increased carbon footprint from shipping trash to volcanoes, make this approach seem like a terrible idea. If we’re going to burn our trash, we might as well do it in a way that allows us to harness the heat released through incineration to create new sources of energy. Alternatively, we could consider sending our garbage into space—although that’s another topic for a future "What If."

In summary, while it might sound appealing to use volcanoes as a waste disposal method, the practical challenges and environmental risks make it a highly impractical and potentially disastrous solution.

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