(5 of 6)
U.S. city incinerators now destroy about 3,000,000 metric tons of other valuable metals a year; magnetic extractors could save the metal and reduce incineration by 10%. The packaging industry could do a profound service by switching to materials that rot—fast. The perfect container for mankind is the edible ice-cream cone. How about a beer container that is something like a pretzel? Or the soft-drink bottle that, when placed in the refrigerator, turns into a kind of tasty artificial ice? Soft drinks could also come in frozen form, as popsicles with edible sticks.
To cut air pollution, a Japanese process can be used to convert fly ash into cinder blocks. Since the market is too small for commercial success, public subsidies would make sense; recovering waste at the source is almost always cheaper than cleanup later. There are some real prospects of profit in reconstituting other waste. Take sulfur, for example, which is in short supply around the world. While 26 million tons are mined a year, smokestacks belch 28 million tons of wasted sulfur dioxide, which could easily be trapped in the stack and converted to sulfuric acid or even fertilizer. Standard Oil of California is already profitably recovering the refinery sulfur waste that pollutes streams.
To reduce smog over cities, one of the most visible and worst forms of pollution, smog-causing power plants might be eliminated from densely populated areas. Why not generate electricity at the fuel source—distant oil or coal fields—and then wire it to cities? On the other hand, industrialization must not be taken to distant places that can be better used for other purposes. Industrializing Appalachia, for example, would smogify a naturally hazy region that settlers aptly named the Smokies. The right business for Appalachia is recreation; federal money could spur a really sizable tourist industry.
Sometimes pollution can even help recreation. In flat northeastern Illinois, for instance, the handsomest recreation area will soon be Du Page County's fast-rising 118-ft. hill and 65-acre lake—artfully built on garbage fill. One form of pollution could even enhance—rather than spoil—water sports. Much of the nation's coastline is too cold for swimming; if marine life can be protected, why not use nuclear plant heat to warm the water? Or even create underwater national parks for scuba campers?
In Harmony with Nature
Ideally, every city should be a closed loop, like a space capsule in which astronauts reconstitute even their own waste. This concept is at the base of the federally aided "Experimental City" being planned by Geophysicist Athelstan Spilhaus, president of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, who dreams of solving the pollution problem by dispersing millions of Americans into brand-new cities limited to perhaps 250,000 people on 2,500 acres of now vacant land. The pilot city, to be built by a quasi-public corporation, will try everything from reusable buildings to underground factories and horizontal elevators to eliminate air-burning cars and buses. The goal is a completely recycled, noise-free, pureair city surrounded by as many as 40,000 acres of insulating open countryside. "We need urban dispersal," says Spilhaus, "not urban renewal."