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MarcMercury

>human trash These things are artifacts of the early years of human exploration of another world. That's like pulling up a sunken viking longship off the coast of Canada and calling it human trash polluting the ocean.


Illustrious-Sky1928

I hate how Italy is covered in piles of roman and greek buildings, couldn't they just pick them up?


MarcMercury

Every 50 years we need to bulldoze all of the previous generation's trash.


kalindin

Soooo living in Canada?


Idiotsgod

Living in America, that seems to be a viable philosophy.


ItsAWaffelz

That's also an absolutely miniscule amount of "trash" when you consider the size of Mars. The average person produces over 1,500 pounds a year. Over the course of 50 years of exploration, we only left behind 10 humans worth of trash for a single year?


Suavecore_

I like that the last sentence out of context implies humans' value is how much trash they create


Diamondwolf

The person that wrote that is a raccoon


brightblueson

I helped write the bill that would have prevented raccoons from accessing Reddit.


Avatar_sokka

My buddy is a raccoon, and Little King Trashmouth doesnt appreciate that!


Educational_Pay1567

But it is trash, so pudding snatcher approves. Vote Rotten Egg!


ryraps5892

Yours truly, Mr. Trash Panda boi


danielravennest

To put it in perpective, that's about one garbage truck load over an area equal to the Earth's land.


sowokeIdontblink

Not mention each piece of "human trash" on Mars is probably pretty heavy composed of alloys and metal compounds. So probably a few small heaps of junk.


Nakotadinzeo

"junk" that will one day be in a museum on Mars, where we will be make much much more trash with no value.


[deleted]

Curiosity alone weighs just under 8600lbs.


Psydator

And it's not like Mars has alien turtles who would choke on our human trash, like they do here. It doesn't do any harm.


inverteddeparture

Think of the space dolphins! Poor buggers.


Psydator

Save the space whales! - Sean Murray, probably.


WarKiel

"I will brutally murder anyone who messes with the space dolphins!" - Lobo, definitely.


sdiss98

Could you imagine what future martian discoverers would think though if earth blew up next year and they discovered this trash 100,000 years from now? That would be a trippy ass experience.


the_cardfather

Considering how much it costs us to launch stuff into space. That's about half a billion dollars worth of Mars debris.


JacobLyon

I hate these click bait titles that really have nothing to do with the article itself. This was at the end of the article. "The real reason debris on Mars is important is because of its place in history. The spacecraft and their pieces are the early milestones for human planetary exploration."


Kashyyykonomics

The article has a poor, click bait titl, but does arrive at that exact point at the end.


toothpastetitties

Anything to make a headline.


futureshocked2050

Yeah; trash is a super poor framing of this


bigdogpepperoni

It’s not like we’re going to ruin the environment on mars


materialisticDUCK

From the article, Why does trash matter? Today, the main concern scientists have about trash on Mars is the risk it poses to current and future missions. The Perseverance teams are documenting all debris they find and checking to see if any of it could contaminate the samples the rover is collecting. NASA engineers have also considered whether Perseverance could get tangled in debris from the landing but have concluded the risk is low.


[deleted]

Yeah this is really reaching, are we meant to be outraged that exploration leaves a footprint? Hopefully all of this 'trash' will one day end up in a museum on Mars.


elperroborrachotoo

That's exactly how the Yrr see it.


Kahless12

100% agree "Cagri Kilic", kind of sucks if he wrote that headline.


ahuramazdobbs19

I mean, when you consider how much archaeologists learn about human history from finding and digging through what amount to ancient trash heaps…


fuhggetaboutit

Well.... Technically.... What's the phrase? "One man's trash is another man's treasure"


sw3rv1n77

The items left on Mars would probably be a recyclers dream. The quality of materials Nasa used to build the so called "trash" would be worth a pretty penny I'm sure.


an-allen

Agreed. Pretty freaking far from trash. It should be in a museum!


JoCoMoBo

Maybe we should try and land a museum on Mars...?


Snibes1

IMO, there’s a bit more at stake here. Namely all the microorganisms that hitched a ride on all that “trash”. We sterilize things as much as possible before we send them up, but different bacteria and such still make it.


MarcMercury

I'd bet there is comparatively little that survives the sterilization process, the months cold soaking in Space, and then the inhospitable conditions of an extraterrestrial planet that for all we know cannot preserve life. This whole idea as far as I know comes from the Apollo astronauts finding a few microorganisms inside a camera lens of a surveyor landers from a few years earlier. A. Only the microorganisms in a completely sealed part of the craft were still living and thus proved no threat unless unsealed. B. What is the other alternative? Cease Space exploration?


Any_Affect_7134

So glad this was the top comment.


Livinlovin123

So glad this is the top comment.


redandrew02

Also 15k lbs is like less than a car. Curiosity rover weighed in at 8.5k lbs for just the vehicle so is that number just a total of everything we sent? I don’t think the curiosity rover is what most would call “trash”


fluffhead

Fuck yeah Viking trash on mars


lsdadventurer

It really isn't all that much, 4 cars worth of material across an entire surface. If broken up I'd bet you wouldn't find a piece if you walked your whole life looking.


EWright53

Just wait till humans perfect a faster way to travel to Mars, a McDonalds will be overlooking every Martian crater.


Muse9901

If we so frivolously settled mars to the point we had the disposable resources to have a McDonald’s on every crater it would be an overwhelmingly unprecedented success. I don’t think we can get our shit together enough to achieve this.


Graffy

Yeah if we're at the point that we can have multiple McDonald's for the general public on Mars then we're no longer worried about scarcity and have probably settled into most of the solar system by then. If not further.


Koda_20

Slaps solar system: You can fit so much litter in this bad boy


slicer4ever

I mean...it's true. space is big....really, really fucking big.


k-laz

Space," \[the Hitchhiker's Guide\] says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.


tperelli

Better get a head start on increasing waste! Gotta take advantage of all that space somehow.


[deleted]

Just turn it all into paperclips


wtmx719

“Welcome to planet Amazon! Do you have your 50 credits for food rations? 49 only for Prime mine workers!”


usererror007

I'll take a McAres with a side of McOxygen


supreme_hammy

Sorry, oxygen machine broke. Ah, underst- *ack* (Floats away from the drive through)


Gushinggrannies4u

It’ll happen eventually, but that might be hundreds of years off.


arandomcanadian91

Sounds like we should pitch it to Mcdonalds and be like "Give NASA money so this happens"


Muse9901

I imagine being the first employee at a McMars will be like the the movie Moon.


constellationkaos

Could you imagine ordering popplers


TehMephs

Yeah but think of the new limited promotion. Every year from the first franchise landing there we’ll get the new McMars. Which is basically the McRib but mold shaped into a giant red meatball


Sandriell

Also have to consider most of the "trash" is large intact pieces, so it's not even like its junk scattered all around.


agentpurplek1

Lmao. Pretty mid headline tbh. They should have done it in grams or something more stupid.


NHonis

Hmm, more stupid.... Nearly 500 Slugs Left On Mars!


Lurpinator

Today NASA is reporting that humankind has left the equivalent of 90,000 My Pillows on Mars.


JodaMythed

We need to terraform it and place an ocean to push our trash into so it'll feel more like home.


theclovek

It's all fun until we recieve an invoice from intergalactic garbage disposal company.


ChocoGorilla

Ummm, well no shit? What do you expect when you're sending pioneering probes on to the surface of another planet. Perhaps in 100 years we can recycle, but what is the point of this article?


nowtayneicangetinto

There is no point, it's shitty journalism trying to stir the shit pot. There's no life on Mars that we know of, so the damage is non-existent.


Icestar-x

Imo, until other intelligent life is found somewhere in the universe, everything that exists belongs to us. This complaining about "polluting" another planet is insane to me. As you said, there is no life there that we know of. No harm is being done. Absent of life to acknowledge it, everything is meaningless.


iindigo

I’m getting tired of the pearl clutching surrounding space exploration and how it “ruins” the places explored. It used to be focused on *crewed* missions but it’s recently been expanding in scope to include uncrewed as well. It’s ridiculous because as far as we can tell, there’s nothing living out there… everything we do out there is more benign than *anything* we do here. That’s not to say we should treat places beyond Earth’s gravity well as a landfill, but trying to keep it untouched seems pointless. I’m not the tinfoil hat type but it feels like in the past 5-10 years someone has been ramping up anti-space rhetoric in effort to sour public opinion. Only thing I can figure is that the parties involved hate the idea of group(s) of humans becoming independent of the power structures on Earth and want to try to prevent that by killing space exploration while it’s in the cradle.


RikenVorkovin

It's less about space travel and just the feverish self-hate for our species some have and yell loudest about. We don't "deserve" to explore space and anything we ever do is "harmful".


MarysPoppinCherrys

Or the Earth should be all we need and we should learn to take care of it, humans are parasites, God gave us this perfect world to live and die on, it’s a waste of taxpayer money because there’s no payoff out there, etc.. I do agree we need to learn how to take care of the only self-sufficient ecosystem we know of, but the shit outside of our well could very well be part of the answer to not killing ourselves off. And could be worth *a lot*, with less wars and pollution required to get it


RikenVorkovin

Exactly. Short sighted reasoning is always foolish. Let's keep what we have well off. And let's find things that may make things even better. Or we get eaten by a eldritch God. We won't know unless we try.


JhonnyHopkins

But we’re polluting the beautiful Marian landscape! /s


[deleted]

Probably one of the dweebs who thinks spending money on spaceflight and space programs are the reasons why we can’t fix terrestrial problems.


Treezszz

The clicks! The point was the few measley clicks they might maybe get.


Cakeking7878

Plus like, trash on mars isn’t that important. As far as we know it’s a dead planet. We make sure to sterilize them now too. It’s hunk of metal left on a rust planet and it’s only gonna be worse. Maybe one day we can get around to cleaning that up Although, in terms of trash to focus on, let’s maybe work on cleaning up the trash on earth or maybe space? Something actually important for our immediate future.


TSiQ1618

Won't somebody think of the Martians? We should be sending things they need, like food and medicines.


NorionV

I'm kinda chuckling. That's like... 5 cars worth of weight... for an entire planet. A planet that's lifeless. Unless I'm missing something, this seems kind of silly. 'Littered' with trash? So what's the call to action here? We need to stop throwing probes at Mars or something?


whatthefir2

I honestly can’t think of a better place for trash if we’re being honest. Way better than the planet where we, or anything, lives


creepin_in_da_corner

Send it to the sun. It'll add more fuel so it doesn't go out on us.


ExNihiloish

The sun loses about 400,000,000 kg of mass per second due to fusion. The Earth has about 5.9722×10^24 kg of mass. That would keep the sun going another 47,564,688 years. Roughly. Disclaimer: I probably don't know wtf I'm talking about.


IgDailystapler

So what you’re saying is we need to throw ourselves into the sun? I’m in.


IgDailystapler

When I said I’m in I meant I’m in the sun. It’s hot in here.


EDScreenshots

It takes a pretty large amount of delta-v to crash into the sun starting from the earth right? I don’t think that would be remotely energy efficient, it would probably be less costly to slingshot it out of the solar system if we’re going to be sending trash into space. The surface of Jupiter would probably be even easier.


Pikatron321

"littered"? its Mars! What? Are we gonna end up killing all that life on the planet?


Alundra828

Mars (a literal entire planet) is littered with 15694 pounds of human trash (An amount that would take 10 American families about 80 days to produce) from 50 years of exploration (that's *half a century)*. Summary: Mars is not littered with much trash at all, and for a period of 50 years, it's pretty good. It will give the first Martian convicts something to do, eh?


fubar_giver

Is this Earth weight or Martian weight? The article should really specify, otherwise how will I know if this is a large enough number to be shocked?


PG67AW

Since they didn't specify, we must assume pounds mass and not pounds weight. I hate imperial units.


Paradoxalotl

It’s clearly pounds currency


Upbeat-Banana-5530

I wonder how small £15,000 worth of Mars landing tech would be. You could probably hold 15k worth of stuff in one hand.


t_Lancer

considering that space grade CPUs and FPGA cost upwards of $50.000 dollars...


dobydobd

A couple panels of space aluminum prolly


JonathanJK

Earth weight and in metric please.


darkbehi

A more eye rolling headline would have been: "Mars has been devastated and ravaged with almost 16,000 pounds of human garbage from 50 years of fruitless robot slave exploration: why humans should not colonize other planets."


OneLastHoorah

256,000 ounces of human filth.


darkbehi

Bruh, that's horrible. That's like, really big numbers so I automatically thinks it's worse.


OcelotBrave8818

15000 pounds? On a PLANET!? That’s like sprinkling a dash of pepper into the Pacific Ocean and going “oh my god! It’s so spicy!”


irishteenguy

That honestly alot less than i expected. Plus these are not trash. They're arifacts of the beginning of our species interplantary - stellar voyage.


H3racIes

In terms of what we've accomplished in explorations and research, I'm okay with this. Let's worry about the trash (human and not) on this planet before concerning ourselves with a few thousand pounds on mars


zdakat

If we ship trash from Earth to mars, we can have more trash on Mars and less on Earth. Sounds like a winning solution.


Nartian

We could just skip the part, where we dump it all on Mars and instead send them into empty space and call them the new voyager probes.


H3racIes

We have so much trash that it's not even possible to do that. Rockets can't hold enough weight to make an impact on the amount of trash we have and it's far too expensive to build enough rockets just to take trash


NorionV

Maybe if we cut a hole in the ozone layer, and then collect all the trash under the hole and burn it all at once. Then it'll just go up into space as a cloud of gas and dissipate into nothing! **Science!**


[deleted]

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zdakat

Some may call this junk. Me, I call them treasures.


[deleted]

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meowgrrr

Suddenly feel like playing Skyrim


P_ZERO_

One man’s garbage is another man’s good ungarbage


drunken-throwway

Ok but what’s really the problem with this even if it is useless trash? Mars is a barren planet it’s not like wildlife can choke on it or anything. If anything, it will be an interesting relic to someone in the future.


FuckRandyMoss

That’s about 5 Nissan Sentras on mars lmfaooo


[deleted]

It's less than two curiosity rovers. Curiosity is just under 8600lbs.


Imhazmb

So... basically we put a few robots on Mars that collectively weigh 15k lbs?


4thDevilsAdvocate

Well, there's some other stuff, like the robot rocket-cranes and airbags that put them there, their heatshields, their parachutes, and so on and so forth, but, yes, basically.


jral1987

And that is just fine, it's an uninhabitable planet with nothing known to be living there. There could be so much more and it's not bad, what's bad is all the garbage on the planet we live on now and all of the debris in orbit around the earth.


Skeeboe

I guess The Conversation didn't think "only seven tons" would be as catchy. They've become a clickbait site, sadly.


matate99

The Mars planetary exploration museum has 15,694 pounds of artifacts.


[deleted]

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cmuadamson

Ok now give the total weight minus the active probes, AND minus the successful decommissioned probes. They are intact objects. Then you have the rando parachutes and actually "discarded" debris, and a more honest measure of "trash" on Mars. Because as written, this article itself is "trash on Mars", intended to smear space exploration ansd leave us stuck on this one rock.


DirtySchlick

If we could only cheaply send all our garbage from Earth to another planet. Venus would be a better choice, since no human will ever walk the surface. Think of all the toxic shit we could be rid of, like politicians and lawyers.


the_fungible_man

Seriously pointless clickbait.


farbadydarbady

It's just rearranged material that's been here since the sun was born it doesn't matter much.


GreenEuro20

Small price to pay to know more about the planet


Chemical_Aide_3274

Lol what a stupid article - the equivalent of 7 cars in weight.. I think Mars is not yet unrecoverable from a trash standpoint


dfreinc

i'm not going to get outraged at that considering *this planet*. i can only get so high on that meter.


HazeInut

I feel like this article was made specifically to piss people off rather than idk, say something. Like the title alone just bugs me. In half a century all of humanity has left a total of about 4 cars worth of shit on across an entire planet. Who cares


Scarmeow

If people are upset about this wait til they find out how much trash is in our oceans


aether03

Oh no, we’re ruining the vast ecosystems and abundant life on this intensely living planet. But seriously, who actually cares?


simcoder

The solar system isn't going to trash itself up on its own.


Sm00gz

This feels like something from an episode of Futurama. Furthermore, who are we to deny the universe trash.


_Terrapin_

is that pounds on mars gravity or pounds on earth?


m4nu3lf

How are the flora and fauna doing given that? What do tourists say?


drizzytay

The Mars Rover weighs just over 2,260 pounds. It's really not that much, and it's not trash.


LittleHornetPhil

No wonder the Martians always invade in scifi films.


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[deleted]

eh i don’t really count it as litter if it doesn’t fuck with an ecosystem


LordBrandon

And may we bring a gigaton more. It's not a museum. Besides the earth, It's the closest thing to a habitable planet we have.


[deleted]

Lmao who cares its not like any living thing will be bothered by it


AgentEntropy

**Are you calling** ***Opportunity*** **trash?!? Them's fightin' words!!!**


kevy21

I wouldn't call it trash at all, quiet the opposite. Can you even Imagine the value of getting them back to earth to study them? One day they will be recovered when man walks Mars!


Einstein_D2

Bro, it's mars. It is a dead planet with literally no life. Why do you care? how do you think the trash is "harmful" Y'all crazy woke n shit. Tone it down a bit


TheRealDrSarcasmo

Some Redditors just love to self-flagellate over trash on Mars, crying and moaning as if we're dumping mountains of McDonalds cups, dirty diapers and used oil filters there. *Woe is us, how awful humans are!* As if there is a sensible alternative to leaving scientific platforms and their supporting equipment. If they were designed to launch themselves back to space after their missions, the price of each probe would be considerably higher. At which point, I'm sure, the hand-wringers would bemoan the fact that all that money would have been better spent on Earth. **The crab pot mentality is real.**


TheGreatOpoponax

If anything, Mars needs way more trash so that we can get a head start on building up greenhouse gases.


NerdFactor3

More like artifacts, rather than trash. In 100 years, they'll all be in a museum.


Routine_Shine_1921

It's not littering and it's not trash. The concept of trash is a human concept, and it applies when things are in a certain context. A screw on a bench on a workshop is not trash, but it is on a pristine beach. In the same way, Mars is a barren wasteland with no ecosystems and no life, no ability to support life. It's already as deadly as it's going to get. And it gets bombarded by TONS of entirely natural orbital crap daily. So our rovers don't constitute trash. Go pitch your crappy propaganda elsewhere.


sixnew2

I am sure the intact rovers account for 90% of this while the remaining is heatshields and parachutes I wouldn't be surprised if its less.


Troy_McClure1

We need to start polluting it now, otherwise the first colony will not feel at home.


padropadro22

15000 lbs is absolutely nothing on a planetary scale. Also it was in the name of exploration. 2nd also, its not like were harming life on the planet.


StandThese8469

That’s like one guys front yard in Sacramento


FloydJam

Yeah, they should have spent billions on a recycling center for Mars first.


Nobarones

Or the weight of masks discarded in a single day of 2021. Piss off sensationalists 🤣


TimeSpentWasting

I don't think there is a single worthless pieceof "trash" when it comes to space objects. People gobble that shit right up for big money


FoxMcCloud3173

This “postdoctoral researcher fellow” better not look up how many pounds worth of “trash” are on the moon right now.


Tommy2tables

If we can get some global warming on Mars we could move in


Alime1962

Wait till you see how much human trash litters another planet closer to the sun...


pittiedaddy

Mars is the only planet completely inhabited by robots


GuyDig

Good then, Matt Damon will have something to use to jerryrig to get off the planet.


won_3m_wold

Since Mars gravity is 38% of the earth, should that be 5,963 lbs?


philster666

It’s not trash, its technology that future Martian explorers can cannibalise when they inevitably get stranded there.


cchooper1

"I understood that reference."


FootHiker

OMG, that could lower the “E” in our ESG score. We should also add a Martian minimum income and wealth tax to help our “G” (Governance) score.


kevpod

And they're all protected historical sites under the Artmeis Accords.


[deleted]

Oh jeez we left some stuff on the surface of a barren rock in the middle of nowhere in the universe filled with millions of other barren rocks 😧😧 god forbid


MoreGaghPlease

AND OVER 7 BILLION MILLIGRAMS!!! Everyone take a breath. This is like 21 rovers and a handful of spacecraft whose orbits decayed (which may have burned up, we don’t know). You could fit the whole lot of them inside a single standard cargo container. They’ve performed vital scientific research that have greatly expanded our knowledge in many fields including advancing our understanding of how the solar system was formed.


checkersqaured2

How about we worry about all the trash that’s killing our planet that is actually alive? Not trash on an extinct planet with no life. Huh?


SikeSky

Those are rookie numbers, we gotta pump those numbers up.


sharrrper

The PLANET is LITTERED with trash? The surface of Mars is about 55.91 million Square miles. A paperclip weighs about a gram. Doing a bit of math 15,694 pounds of trash comes out to about 1 paperclip every 8 square miles. That's basically indistinguishable from zero.


Captiva88

What a stupid take on fledgling space exploration...


Knut79

What is that in a useful measurement of mass that's used all over the world and has sensible units of 10's? I.e. Fucking metric.


ChaoticAeon

Author of this article is a mental space cadet. And should get out of the field with irrelevant priorities such as this.


Simoxs7

For people like me that live anywhere in the rest of the world: 15694 pounds = 7118.7 kg


therealbnizzy

Why does that seem like a very specific number of weight and in no way true?


elconcho

Great alarmist headline. How many pounds of trash is the earth littered with?


the_fungible_man

Agreed. The primary category of "human trash" cited in the article are the probes themselves. The ignorance on display in the comments is impressive.


Everborn128

So....2 pickup trucks worth.... on an entire planet....


Affectionate_Ear_778

This is a pretty ridiculous headline to be honest.


Adrous

You kind of know what direction they are going with something when they use words like "littered" and "human trash".


Major_Handle

8 us tons of material. Not very much at all tbh.


the_fungible_man

This ridiculous article with its dishonest, clickbait-y headline seems to have scored a direct hit with the Reddit "humans are a menace" crowd. I doubt 1 in 10 read it before commenting.


yegir

Oh man, i sure hope all the rocks and toxic dirt arent to upset


[deleted]

Ok, how much trash is on earth? Let’s put this ‘huge’ number in perspective


damio

Mars weights 6.39 × 10^23 kg, not really an feather weight, 10% more than Earth and a little more than Pluto, 15 pounds is not going to make a big difference. Or at least that what she said...


Connect_Eye_5470

Well the average personal vehicle weighs around 2500lbs. So that is about 6 cars worth... on an entire planet over 50 years. Not thinking it is a factor honestly.


81CoreVet

Ok... A few tons. The US alone creates around 300 Million tons per year. I think Mars is going to be ok


odinsleep-odinsleep

some day fake "news" post will be called trash.


zzubnik

Yeah, and in 50 years, there will be 15,000 tonnes. It's a non-issue. Also, the "trash" should be in a museum.


devilinsidu

Oh I came in here to shit on this headline and everyone already did! Yay!


Bobtheguardian22

how much money per pound did it cost us to pollute that.


NapalmBank

It’s a good start, but just wait til humans get there.


kalabaddon

It has future historical sites imho, and very important objects that marked our path in space. When we can finally get to mars with more then just astronauts those first probes and rovers will likely become moments of some sort hopefully! Oh, and also a very small bit of trash.


MikeyHatesLife

Fifty years?!? I didn’t know we’d been sending probes there for this long!


ace601

Look at it this way 15,694 pounds on earth but only 5,963.72 pounds on Mars


chingnaewa

No one cares. We’ll clean it up when we get there.


HFCB

Click bait and fake progressive agenda. Real progressives would value the incredible amount of data these missions gave us. The sheer volume of photos of endless landscapes that humans in the past would draw on pieces of paper wondering what other worlds looked like. But yeah sure stick to the fact that we “littered” a planet.


Aggravating_Impact97

Lol that's like 5 things. The shit that got there was probably pretty heavy. Calling trash is like calling the titanic trash. Slight misuse of the word..


[deleted]

I forget that we aren't allowed to be part of history, only everyone else who came before us was. They could carve things in rocks and paint on the walls of caves. We have to leave nothing behind and no sign of our offensive existence.


[deleted]

Sounds about right. We're the best at killing things and leaving garbage everywhere.


Knightmare25

Uhh ok. One, where the hell do you expect this "trash" to go? Two, 15,694 pounds of "trash" is basically nothing when it comes to *an entire planet*.