Hurricane cleanup

As I'm watching all the non-stop coverage of the hurrincane disasters on the American new channels, there is a huge factor that is being overlooked by most of the media - the so called "garbage" that needs to be cleaned up. The debris from all the houses, buildings and other man-made structures that will eventually make their way into landfills. I had a conversation about this with someone I know recently and we were talking about restaurant and home re-modelling, everytime someone remodels a home or restaurant or office space, a lot of the material just gets thrown out, most likely a good percentage of the material is still in good condition but the colour/style may no longer be current enough to warrant continued usage.

A news channel estimated in New Orleans alone, debris enough to fill 17 Superdomes will be sent to landfills. Now I don't think we should recycle/re-use everything, I mean some things just aren't salvageable but building materials that are still intact such as doors, brick, windows and other materials should be put through a recyling/re-use program at least to assist in temporary housing or non-profit housing. Not only will they save money but it will reduce the amount of payload sent out to the landfills. Everytime something made out of metal/plastic/wood in usable condition is sent to the landfill, the intrinsic value of that object is lost forever.

For example if you throw away a TV that still works, then all the minerals mined to make the wires, the chemicals used to mold the plastic etc etc are forever taken from earth and have been used for a very brief time (in perspective to the age of earth) and discarded to a landfil. The idea that we can continue mining more minerals and keep doing this forever is outright insane.