Should you really burn plastic garbage on a rural homestead? 🐐

Certainly plenty do if you spend any time around homesteader and off-grid groups, especially people who live in more wide-open rural states.

It is really difficult to get away from having trash service, taking your garbage to a landfill or transfer station every few weeks unless you are willing to burn plastic packaging. Even if you are careful on how much packaging you buy, choosing mostly unpackaged, whole foods, there is always some trash that isn’t paper or compost that you either have to burn or bury. Everything these days seems to come packaged in plastic, from food to livestock feed to tools. Plastic is everywhere, and it kind of sucks.

By being willing to burn plastic packaging trash, you greatly cut back on the amount of materials you have to haul off the homestead for landfill or fake plastic recycling. Fortunately, with the decline of PVC plastics, most plastics now are fairly non-toxic to burn, even if they do contain plasticizers and other noxious chemicals you don’t want to be breathing in. You should keep your burn barrel down-wind, and it’s good not to have neighbors nearby who very much may not enjoy the wift of toxic plastic smoke. Having enough land is key and staying up wind.

There have been many years in my life where I go to the transfer station once a year, primarily will tin cans and glass bottles, but also milk bottles and other recycables I accumulate in winter when I don’t have so many fires up in woods. However, I do see the advantage of having a burn barrel or other “safer” incinerator to burn burnables, including paper and plastics, to greatly reduce my reliance on off-site disposal. Indeed, if I had a trash pit that I would be willing to fill with debris and cover, like many remote homesteads and farms have, I could be completely independent of the landfilling industry and those ever growing mounds of garbage on the outskirts of the city.

Not saying I endorse stinky trash fires or making pollution. Burn the shit hot! But you got to do something with the garbage, and if you can take care of it yourself, the better.