Bulletin Special Supplement Nov 1974

In addition to industrial waste water, there is the uncontrollable amount of urban sewerage to pollute the water bodies . N e w Y o r k d o ne pours into the Hu d s on River 36 m i l l i on tons of sewerage every day, g i v i ng the astronomical figure of 129.6 b i l l i on tons of sewerage a year. Long Island So u nd has been a pleasant recreational place in the vicinity of N ew Y o rk city. I still remember that in 1942 I often went out there in a little boat to fish, and I wo u ld catch over 6.0 flounders i n - single mo r n i n g. I n 1962, 20 years later, I went out there to fish again for old times sake, but I could only gaze at the water all day w i t h o ut a single catch. I found later that 179 municipalities on the two shores had continually poured sewer waste into the Sound d u r i ng the intervening 20 years ， and this had eliminated all the fish. Lake Erie ， one of the rive Great Lakes of the Un i t ed States and comparable to T a i H u of China, has lost its fish the recent decade ， and the fishing industry wh i ch once prospered on tha t lake has also come to an end. I n the vicinities of all industrial cities, not only fish mee t disaster in the rivers and lakes, b ut s w i mm i ng and other water sports also becom e threatened. A l o ng a twelve-mile stretch of the Potomac River outside of Washington, D . C., the capital of a great nation, the bacteria count exceeded by 100 times the safety point for s w i mm i n g. Wh i le air and water pollution is not always visible, pollution of the land i s fully visible to the eye. Polluting the land are the frightening quantities of solid waste, in other words, garbage. We will disregar d the mountains of industrial waste wh i ch fill many valleys around industrial cities, and consider only mu n i c i p al garbage as an illustration of the problem. T he United State s discards 360 m i l l i on tons of garbage each year, filling 5,000,000 large trailer trucks which, if put end to end, w i ll gird the earth twice. Y o u may call this the great w a l l of garbage b r o u g ht on by the industrial age. F i gu r ed in another way, this garbage averages ten pounds per person per day , and it gives us the staggering figure of 18,250 pounds a year fo r a family of live persons, more than what an average house can hold. Wh e re d id all thi s garbage come from ？ T h e obvious answer: mass consumption as p r omp t ed by mass production and the profit motivation. I n 1970, some 212 m i l l i on Americans drove 100 m i l l i on automobiles. Each year the United States throws out seven m i l l i on automobiles, seven million six h u n d r ed thousand television sets and countless other articles including discarded refrigerators and washing machines. A n d it is an extremely k n o t ty p r o b l em to collect and to dispose of these mountains of affluent garbage. T o collect this 360 m i l l i on tons of garbag e each year, the U n i t ed States spends four billion dollars, employing all kinds of mechanical devices, such as garbage compacting machines, shredding machines, and garbage trucks that p e r f o rm compacting, transporting and other simultaneous functions. T h is is a part of the so-called collection technology. A f t er collection, there is still th e disposal problem. A n d so there is the development of disposal technology. T h ey b u rn it, b u r y it, d ump it into land fills and shore fills, pour it oil to the open sea, sink it to the ocean bottoms, even contemplate shooting radiation contaminated wastes into space by rockets. But none of these methods have proved totally adequate for the preservation o f the healthy environment. T a ke for example the disposal p r o b l e m of waste packaging. I n traditional times, the disposal of waste packaging was never a problem. I n H o n g K o n g markets, we tie up fish, meat and other foods w i t h a piece of straw and p ut it in a shopping basket, and - 1 1 -