The Model Pile of Garbage Isn't Good Enough

"If you're like most of us -- most Americans -- you're making seven pounds of trash a day. Across a lifetime that adds up to 102 tons of trash per person," says Edward Humes, author Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash. 102 tons of trash. That’s 204 thousand pounds of garbage produced by each and every one of us during our lifetime. Where does all of that go? This and many other questions were answered in the CNN article Trash City: Inside America’s Largest Landfill Site by Thelma Gutierrez and George Webster.

Of those 204,000 lbs. of garbage, 1/3 is recycled, 1/6 is incinerated to produce electricity, and the remaining 50 percent is sent to landfills across the country. A landfill is essentially what its name implies, a pile of garbage that buried in the ground so it biodegrades quicker.

But all that garbage piles up quickly in populated areas, which they know firsthand in Los Angeles County, California, which houses the world’s largest landfill, Puente Hills. Since its opening in 1957, garbage has risen 150 meters out of the ground, just under 1/10 of a mile.

Despite its appearance, Puente Hills Landfill is a state of the art facility. Garbage is meticulously placed into layers separated by a plastic membrane to prevent the leakage of noxious chemicals into the ground. Also, methane produced by the decomposition of trash is filtered through pipes, and then burned to generate electricity.

But the concept of a landfill has problems. The US Environmental Protection Agency has determined that incinerating trash to produce electricity emits 35 percent less greenhouse gases and 1000 percent more electricity than burning methane gas. So why even have the landfill in the first place? "Quite simply, it's the most cost-effective option across most of the U.S.," says Peter Borkey, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Waste Division.

The article presents an interesting view on the use of landfills in American society. It presents the pros of having them, as described by using Puente Hills Landfill in Los Angeles County as a convincing example. Puente Hills is the model landfill, but many other landfills don’t take the precautions used by them, which causes disastrous environmental effects, affecting everyone and everything in the region. The cons of landfills presented by the article include the fact that this kind of pollution can be absorbed by the plants in the region, which will carry over into the animals that eat it. I saw this firsthand at the landfill in my old town. The houses near there were probably the cheapest in the entire county. Can you guess why?

Progressive minds such as Tom Freyberg, chief editor of industry publication Waste Management World believe that the whole concept of waste needs to be redefined so that is seen as a reusable energy source, not something to just throw in a trash can and watch disappear off your curb each week. If we could stop using landfills, and instead send all of our trash either to recycling plants or incinerators, not only would our environment be cleaner, but our electricity would be cheaper. This is a fairly controversial subject, and one that will hopefully see a lot of debate when the politicians look out their window and see nothing but a pile of trash.

I personally think this article does a good job of balancing the two sides of the debate, and I can see where each side is coming from just from personal experience. I personally agree with people like Freyberg, and think that we need to find more efficient, 21^st-Century-esque ways to deal with our growing environmental threats.

"The Nation’s Largest Landfill Beckons Tourists | Matthew Brunwasser Journalist." The Nation’s Largest Landfill Beckons Tourists. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2012. <http://matthewbrunwasser.com/index.php/2008/08/the-nations-largest-landfill-beckons-tourists/>.