ABSTRACT
The Brent Spar disposal issue has opened a Pandora’s Box, bringing into focus some of the gargantuan problems of waste management that will face mankind as its population doubles in the next 50 years or so. Lifestyles in industrially developed countries are very wasteful. But even if the amount of waste we produce can be reduced, it can never be completely eliminated. More should be recycled, but recycling demands energy and often has its own inherent environmental problems. In Britain, our customary solution has been to bury it in land-fill, but this also causes problems. So why not use the oceans deeper than 2000 m, which cover 65% of the earth’s surface, for waste disposal?
