I disagree. Landfills are not free either, and take up land, and usually cannot be built on top of, and face NIMBY objections at every turn. The whole business of landfills requires just as much trucking around as recyclables.
Instead we need materials science to put more R&D into expanding the ways recycled plastics can be turned into useful products - creating new markets for the supply of once used plastics.
In Japan, they turned landfills into ski slopes. Of course, that was 50 years ago.
Oh Brother.
Yo could put 100 years of the all the US trash in a landfill 250 square miles in size and 400 feet deep. Thats a tiny area in a country of 3.8 MILLION square miles.
Seesh, the solution is at hand, even coming from what is probably a true scientist, and then someone wants to through a wrench in the works.
Actually rotting garbage produces methane. Put in a few power plants.
They can be converted into nice parks once filled up.