Landfill trash

Most of the debris collected on land is placed in landfill operations. Modern landfills are well designed and engineered facilities that are operated and monitored to meet federal regulations. The landfills are designed to accept solid debris and prevent contamination of the land and groundwater from the solid debris. 

In the United States, 1908 MSW landfills were in operation during 2008. A total of 289.5 million tons of solid debris were collected and buried in landfill, recycled, or composted. Approximately, 69% of the solid debris was buried in landfill, 24% was recycled and composted, and 7% was combusted via waste-to-energy. Table 2.7 lists the regional disposal of MSW at landfills during 2008 (van Haaren et al. 2010). 

FIGURE 2.12 Cross-sectional view of cap-and-seal landfill. 

Region Landfills (%) Recycling/composting (%) Waste-to-energy (%) 

At the end of the service life, plastic products can be either collected for recycling or thrown away with the trash. Waste disposal companies usually collect the plastics with other recycled products. Plastics, metals, and glass are sorted from the refuse and sent to recyclers. The solid waste can be recycled or sent to an incinerator or landfill. 

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When the population was small, there was a modest amount of trash relative to the amount of remote vacant land available for its disposal. In this circumstance, landfill-trash-disposal could be tolerated. With the growth of cities, today there is little unused, unappreciated vacant land. With the current level of waste generation and limited available land, many severe problems have developed. 

LLDPE can be disposed of by landfill or incineration. In landfill, the material is completely inert, degrades very slowly, does not produce gas, and does not leach any pollutants into ground water. When incinerated in commercial or municipal faciHties, LLDPE produces a large amount of heat (the same as heating fuel) and should constitute less than 10% of the total trash. 

Fig. 6. An iategrated approach to the management of municipal soHd waste (MSW), advocated by the U.S. EPA, that links source segregation, recycling, waste-to-energy (WTE), and landfilling ia a single system. Source segregation refers to the separation of compostable and recyclable components from the balance of the trash at the poiat where MSW is collected. In source reduction (not shown), another action to reduce waste to landfills, changes are made ia...

Every year the U.S. generates about 320 billion lb of what is called municipal solid waste, or postconsumer waste. About 85% of this trash is currently disposed of in landfills. Yet as the amount of solid waste increases—and the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that it will reach 380 billion lb by 2000—a third of the landfills are expected to close in the next five years. Many people are concerned that efforts to deal with the growing quantity of garbage are not moving fast enough. 

Purge resin generated by thermal processing equipment clean-out is a nonhazardous material that is either reentered into the production process or sold to plastics recyclers. However, small quantities of this material do end up in a facility s routine trash and ultimately ends up in a solid waste landfill. 

One of the biggest concerns people have is that the bottles and cans they throw away today will either accumulate in unsightly, unsanitary landfills or go up in smoke from an incinerator. But the fact of the matter is that new waste treatment facilities in nearby counties soon will eliminate most of the need for landfills and incinerators. By compacting unsorted trash into blocks comparable in hardness to concrete, the new facilities make it available for use in building foundations, dikes, and road construction. This form of recycling — not part of the present proposal — doesn t require us to collect the garbage in any new way because it doesn t matter whether the content is coffee grounds or juice bottles. 

Containers that have been correctly triple-rinsed or pressure-rinsed usually may be disposed of as regular trash in a sanitary landfill, unless prohibited by... 

There is growing concern about the dangers of cadmium in the environment. Some rechargeable batteries are made with cadmium and nickel. Cadmium can escape from landfills (where trash is buried) and get into the ground and groundwater. From there, it can become part of the food and water that humans and other animals ingest. 

Before about 1950, landfill effects were ignored. When attention was first directed to the problem 20 or 30 years ago it was thought that in most places landfills caused little damage. Today it is known most landfills have had a dreadfully effect on soil and water quality. Rain percolates down through the decaying layers and carries toxic materials into the water table. This can cause serious ground water pollution when the waste consists of only domestic trash. When industrial trash, with a broad spectrum of materials, is included along with the domestic waste the problem becomes worse. 

Incineration of waste offers an advantage. Less land is ruined in disposal of the solid ash left after incineration. In some cases, the heat from incineration has been used to generate electricity. Despite advantages over landfills, simple incineration with or without electrical generation has not proven to be a quality method of solid waste disposal. Trash is a poor fuel so it does not produce a hot fire when it... 

Imagine that you arrive home thirsty from a soccer game. You reach into the refrigerator and pull out an ice-cold bottle of apple juice. In seconds, the empty bottle is all that remains. But what about the law of conservation of matter Because of this law, the bottle lingers on—as trash. Worse yet, unless the bottle is recycled, its matter will be conserved in a landfill. 

You finish off the last of the milk. What are you going to do with the empty bottle If you toss it into the trash, it will almost certainly go into a landfill, taking up space and serving no useful purpose. If you put it in the recycle bin, it s likely to be melted down to produce something new. 

People may think that a problem they can not see is not real, as in the case of global warming or depletion of the ozone layer. They may also give no thought to what happens to their trash after they put it at the curb to be collected or what happens after they flush the toilet. Landfills, incinerators, and wastewater treatment plants have all been big problems for some communities. Some Superfund sites are former landfills. 

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