Landfills, A Modern Barbarism

Today is Monday, and the streets of my neighborhood are strewn with trash. Last night, my neighbors and I set our bags of garbage along the sidewalk in expectation of the morning pickup. In the hours between then and now, poor people looking to make a bit of money tore through our trash bags in search of recyclables like plastic bottles or cardboard boxes. As I went for a stroll this morning, I found myself disgusted by the piles of garbage that littered the sidewalk. “But what’s the difference,” I suddenly asked myself, “between throwing our trash in the street and throwing it in a landfill?” “Aside from the obvious hygienic benefits,” I mentally replied, “one is just further away from the other.” And as I continued to consider this thought, I began to wonder whether if, by throwing our garbage into landfills, we weren’t throwing it onto the streets of our future generations.

My curiosity led me to research modern waste disposal, and, as you would expect, what I discovered was somewhat disheartening. The waste that you and I generate in our daily lives is commonly known as Municipal Solid Waste, or MSW, which, according to the Center for Sustainable Systems, consists of “common household waste, as well as office and retail wastes, but excludes industrial, hazardous, and construction wastes.” The Center for Sustainable Systems goes on to state that the “[t]otal annual MSW generation in the U.S. has increased more than 67% since 1980, to the current level of 254 million tons per year,” and that, “[i]n 2007, 54% of MSW generated in the U.S. was disposed of in 1,754 landfills.” The EPA echoes this statement, and adds that in the U.S. “33.8% [of MSW] is recovered and recycled or composted, [and] 11.9% is burned at combustion facilities.” While one may like to think that depositing MSW in landfills at least distances the problem from us, the Center for Sustainable Systems deflates this conceit, stating that, “[e]nvironmental implications of landfill disposal include the loss of land area resources, potential leaching of hazardous materials to ground water (proper design limits this possibility), and emissions of methane (CH4, a greenhouse gas) to the atmosphere.” And the technique of incinerating waste is also painted in a grim light; “[t]he incineration of MSW generates a variety of pollutants (such as CO2, heavy metals, dioxins and particulates) that contribute to environmental and human health impacts, such as climate change, smog, acidification, asthma, and heart and nervous system damage.”

Click to read more ...