a good number of you wanted me to talk about why we're not just throwing all our trash in a volcano.

I've traveled to Mount Saint Noggins, a volcano I made my animator build me, just for this video to explain it further.

Queue the intro!

Hey, there, welcome to Life Noggin!

You humans sure do generate a lot of trash; why not just burn it away?

You know, just throw it all away in a volcano like Triangle Bob is doing to all of his non-holographic blockemon cards.

Well, I looked into it, and it turns out that while some of the world's trash is incinerated,

there's a pretty good reason why all of it isn't burned.

Each year, over 2 billion tons of solid waste is created around the world.

This includes food, paper, plastic, metals, and glass, among other things.

Most of it is put into an open dump or some form of a landfill, where it is left to sit or decompose over time.

About 11% of it is incinerated.

This can either happen openly in burn piles or at a trash incineration facility, some of which are used to make energy.

But no matter how you do it, burning trash has serious health effects and environmental consequences.

That's because burning these items releases dangerous chemicals into the air.

Some of these, like dioxins, particulate matter, and ash, can negatively affect affect your health.

While others, like nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, harm the environment and contribute to global warming.

A study on Europe's waste-to-energy strategy found that the incineration of 131 million tons of waste produced about 95 million tons of carbon dioxide,

which was about 2% of their total greenhouse gas emissions.

Even newer, highly-efficient incinerators made to reduce emissions produce some amount of pollutants.

So, burning over 2 billion tons of waste each year would definitely have a large and terrible impact on the environment.

And I know you humans care about the environment, right?

Please take care of the planet; I want to live a long time!

I live in a computer and I need it to stay on and the world is burning and I don't⏤

Sorry; I'll make sure Triangle Bob cuts all of that out in the edit.

But what about that volcano idea?

While a volcano with temperatures reaching over 1,000 degrees Celsius may seem like the most efficient disposal system of all, there are some issues.

Like other burning methods, they're not hot enough to melt most metals.

For instance, some types of steel require at least 1,500 degrees Celsius to melt.

Volcanoes would also release the same harmful chemicals into the air.

And, unlike burn piles and incinerators, dumping trash into active volcanoes

would break the crust on top the lava lake, disrupt the hot lava underneath, and cause an eruption.

That's why we don't do it, because lava equals bad.

So, unless you want to live in a world where it rains molten garbage, you should always remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

OK, animator, I'm done with the volcano asset.

You can throw it into the bigger volcano I had you build for this specific purpose.

So, do you have any wild questions about the environment that you want me to answer?

Let me know in the comments section below, and it could become a future Life Noggin episode.

I know you humans get frustrated sometimes because you want to help the environment but don't know where to start.

My friend Wren and I have got you covered.

Our sponsor of this video, Wren.co, is a simple and effective way to make a difference in the climate crisis.

Wren.co is a website that makes it easy to calculate and offset your carbon footprint just by answering a few questions about your lifestyle!

They've sent over one million dollars in funding to projects planting trees, protecting rainforests, and, otherwise, fighting the climate crisis.

You can even make a monthly contribution to offset your carbon footprint by funding carbon reduction.

And⏤this is my favorite part⏤you'll receive monthly updates from the projects that you support.

You'll get photos and details on every tree planted, every acre reforested, and every ton of carbon offset!

You really feel like you're a part of something big, because with Wren, you are.

I love their Clean Air Task Force project in Boston,

because we need more people pushing for policy change that includes breakthrough technology like carbon capture.

So, offset your carbon footprint on Wren.

The first one hundred people to sign up using the first link in the description will have 10 extra trees planted in their name.

Click here to watch this video we did on why humanoid robots are so creepy, or click here to watch this video.

Click subscribe, hit the bell, and like this video; it really helps the channel grow.

You're amazing; thank you.

You can also check out the team at Lifespan that powers Life Noggin down in the description.

As always, my name is Blocko, this has been Life Noggin; don't forget to keep on thinking.