Space - the ultimate landfill [closed]

The year is 2060. Plastic waste and other types of solid waste have filled up the planet's landfills. A solution is proposed: load up more than 95% of solid waste on Earth on to a space shuttle and then send into space. Obviously, this will be an unmanned expedition, as this shuttle will exit the solar system in about 3 years and will never return to Earth. Politicians and ecologists both love the idea because we're getting rid of solid waste in a seemingly easy method. For the sake of this question, assume that this kind of technology and funding is ready. Also assume that all of the solid waste has already been collected from every corner of the globe and is ready to be loaded.

However, to pass 97 out of the current 193 (a simple majority) UN members must vote to send the shuttle off. Does the vote pass and thus launch the shuttle? Are there any possible obstacles/reasons any government would object to this? Also assume that no government has to pay any money for the shuttle.

Edit: Assume that some higher power is paying for the shuttle, so the costs of the shuttle are taken care of. Also assume that this is more of a one time thing, so trash is sent up to space once, you won't be seeing the shuttle or the trash ever again.

closed as too broad by Bryan McClure, James♦, bowlturner, Hohmannfan, FrostfyreMar 10 '16 at 19:53

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• @XandarTheZenon sorry for the sarcasm. I know you mean well :) – fi12 Feb 28 '16 at 3:36
• I'll just say that this seems a little bit unlikely, although it will make for a good story. If I was given a similar prompt, I'd probably engineer a super bacteria to rid us of the trash, then make it go horribly wrong... :) – Xandar The Zenon Feb 28 '16 at 3:37
• Please calculate the amount of trash vs the capacity of one vehicle. – JDługosz Feb 28 '16 at 9:30
• Yeah I agree with JD, the volume of garbage makes this completely implausible. You could launch a rocket with modern tech fully loaded with trash every day for 1000 years and the pile of garbage would actually get bigger, the launches wouldn't even be a noticeable blip on a graph of overall garbage volume – James Mar 10 '16 at 17:00

Sending things into space is extravagantly expensive. From our sister site, it costs roughly \$16,000 per kilogram to send something into space (on a Proton-M. Other launch vehicles cost more per kilogram). The space shuttle clocked in at roughly \$18,000. Without a major improvement in efficiency of launch vehicles beyond Space-X's wildest dreams, it just won't be cost effective (and Space-X dreams big). We collect 1,200,000kg of trash every day in the US, meaning every day's trash is \$21 billion worth of rocketeering. A year's worth of US trash would be$5.5 trillion to launch, one third of the entire national debt.