Landfills Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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A Landfill is any low area to be filled in for road building or for storing waste. More commonly, a landfill is a waste disposal site designed and constructed to accommodate municipal solid waste and hazardous waste while protecting against environmental and public health hazards.

One of the earliest forms of waste management was reported in 5th century B.C.E. in Greece where individuals were responsible for collecting garbage and transporting it to a dump site. Standard waste practices for centuries included land and water dumping of ashes, rubbish, and garbage, and household organic waste was often consumed by hogs. Such practices drew increased criticism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, generating a new class of waste engineers and sanitarians that looked to a variety of alternatives to dispose of municipal solid wastes.

Efficient trash management in controlled landfills did not arise until the 1930s. The Fresno Municipal Sanitary Landfill, located three miles southwest of the City of Fresno, California, and which opened in 1937, is considered to have been the first modern, sanitary landfill. New techniques of trenching, compacting, and the daily covering of trash with soil were used on the Fresno site.

Cities with populations of more than 100,000 adopted some form of organized refuse collection and disposal in the United States during the 1930s. Still, even into the 1970s, open and uncontrolled dumps were used to dispose of solid wastes, which increasingly consisted of discarded packaging materials associated with disposable household and industrial items. Often wastes of all types were burned on site. Open dumping caused a variety of environmental impacts, mainly through noxious odors, noise, birds, and smoke, and occasionally uncontrolled combustion occurred.

Most landfills today are regulated by environmental agencies to protect public health during waste disposal activities. Landfills are carefully designed and built into the ground to isolate trash from the surrounding environment. The purpose is to avoid any water-related connection between the waste and the surrounding environment, particularly groundwater. Landfills generally require at least one containment liner, generally made of compacted clay or a synthetic flexible membrane, to avoid leachate seepages into the surrounding soils and groundwater. Daily coverings of soil layers reduce environmental and health problems. Capping systems also avoid precipitation into the landfill and gas emissions into the atmosphere. A landfill siting plan and on-site environmental monitoring systems provide additional safeguards.

Continued problems with landfills include groundwater contamination from leakages, high operative and transport costs, and greenhouse gas emissions. Recent years have seen a shift from smaller to much bigger landfill sites, or mega-fills, some of which have disposal capacity equivalent to 1,000 football fields. Not only has urban waste amplified, its composition has changed from dense and almost completely organic to bulky and increasingly nonbiodegradable.

Changes in lifestyle patterns play a major role in waste generation, which is significantly higher in more affluent regions. Today’s trash or garbage consists of everyday items such as product packaging, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, bottles, food scraps, newspapers, appliances, paint, and batteries. Besides household waste, landfills can also receive nonhazardous sludge, industrial solid waste, and construction and demolition debris. Even computers are being dumped in landfills.

On the positive side, the number of landfills in the United States has decreased from 8,000 in 1988 to about 1,767 in 2002. Increased knowledge of the biological, chemical, and physical processes in landfills has also led to improved technologies and more efficient waste utilization. For instance, over 25 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent are being generated annually from Canadian landfills, which is equivalent to approximately 5.5 million cars on the road. By 2001, 41 landfills in Canada captured this harmful emission, resulting in an annual reduction of over seven megatons per year of carbon dioxide emissions. Such practices also generate green power, offsetting the need to consume fossil fuels to provide an equivalent amount of energy.

Disposal of solid wastes is still by far the most common method in use today to contain generated waste. Still, alternative solutions that focus on the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) are currently promoting waste diversion from landfills. For example, recycling diverted over 72 million tons of material away from landfills and incinerators in 2003, up from 34 million tons in 1990-doubling in just 10 years. Cities and municipalities all over the world are aiming for high waste diversion rates from landfills.

The focus of traditional landfill activities is also shifting. A landfill can no longer be seen as a “dry tomb” where strict liner systems ensure that emissions will occur for decades or centuries. The idea of not leaving behind a landfill body to subsequent generations has led to technologies that stabilize waste in a shorter period of time while concentrating on landfill gas collection and utilization. Separation of waste at the source (consumer) and separate collection activities have made it possible to treat the organic portion of generated waste for soil fertilizer and to generate biogas, which then can be turned into electrical and thermal energy. Where landfill space is extremely limited-for example, in Sweden, Norway, and Germany-thermal treatment of waste is key.

Humans will likely always produce waste, but only time will tell whether landfills will be needed in the future. Waste is increasingly becoming a viable source of energy.

Bibliography:

Edward A. McBean, Frank A. Rovers, and Grahame Farquhar, Solid Waste Landfill Engineering and Design (Prentice Hall, 1995);
Heather Rogers, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage (New Press, 2005);
George Tchobanoglous, Hilary Theisen, and Rolf Eliassen, Solid Wastes: Engineering Principles and Management Issues (McGraw-Hill, 1977);