There's 50 miles of worthless, unarable land between my town and Interstate 10. We could be the county's landfill for the next 100 years with no problem. California, Hawaii, the northeastern US, Europe, Japan, and a few other places are different, though.

My county gave up on recycling after Hurricane Michael, because the company that processed the material had their building destroyed by the hurricane, and because the county's broke. It cost the county $150/ton to recycle: $100/ton paid to the processing company, and $50 in lost tipping fee revenue at the county landfill.

I "smuggle" my recyclables into the next county. Doing this, we (two adults) generally only generate two 13-gallon kitchen trash bags of landfill garbage weekly.

We can have economic growth and an increased standard of living through technology advances. Frau Putzer's 4200 pound, 255 h.p., AWD, 2018 SUV gets better MPG than my 1900 pound, 70 h.p. 1976 VW Rabbit did. It also produces a fraction of the emissions, and will last longer. It's also more comfortable and crashworthy.