Approximately half of the million tons of yearly waste will meet its fate in one of the more than 2, active landfills across the country — and you probably live, work or socialize closer to one than you may think. The United States is home to thousands of inactive landfills — and some have found new life and purpose as public parks. But most are out of sight, out of mind. The West Coast is practically overflowing with landfills: There are a dozen in the Los Angeles area alone, though most are now closed.
Landfills linger in the heart of Miami and West Palm Beach, though they pale in comparison to the dump deluge in Tennessee and the Carolinas. Landfills have a long and relatively unsorted history.
Before the first municipal dumps appeared on the map in the 20th century, humans either burned their garbage or buried it on the outskirts of town to avoid disease. The circa Fresno Municipal Sanitary Landfill is considered the first modern, sanitary landfill of its kind, and future landfills followed suit.
They were environmental disasters , leaching contaminated liquid into the soil and groundwater, and releasing overwhelming amounts of methane into the air. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act changed all of that.
Las Vegas may be the city of sin, but its home state Nevada is the land of garbage, with a whopping Idaho, North Dakota, and Connecticut are the only three states in the country with less than 10 tons of landfill waste per person — putting Pennsylvania, Colorado, and California to shame, with their average of 35 tons of landfill garbage per person.
Ohio, for example, is famous for accepting as much as 3. Landfill gas is a dangerous, virtually invisible concoction generated in the most natural way possible : the bacterial decomposition of organic material. The result is half methane and half carbon dioxide and water vapor, with trace amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and nonmethane organic compounds, or NMOCs, which can cause smog if uncontrolled.
In the past, environmentalists have been more concerned by carbon dioxide emissions, but now, they are worrying about methane. For the first 20 years after it meets the atmosphere, methane is 84 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The population-heavy states of California and Texas are currently facing the greatest problem with landfill-produced methane, but the repercussions of this problem could eventually affect the entire world.
It can be hard to wrap our minds around the impact of our waste in terms of landfill gas and metrics that stretch into the billions. Your 4. The waste tally for a family of four is even grimmer. That yearly haul weighs as much as an Asian elephant and stacks up to the height of the Golden Gate Bridge. The annual weight of trash for the entire country equals million tons, or 1.
Not all hope is lost, though. Keep reading to learn about how you can cut back on your waste. Now, more than ever, Americans are hopping on the recycling bandwagon. Last year marked the all-time high for recycling: Landfills are located, designed, operated and monitored to ensure compliance with federal regulations. They are also designed to protect the environment from contaminants, which may be present in the waste stream.
Landfills cannot be built in environmentally-sensitive areas, and they are placed using on-site environmental monitoring systems. These monitoring systems check for any sign of groundwater contamination and for landfill gas, as well as provide additional safeguards. Disposing waste in landfills is one part of an integrated waste management system. EPA encourages communities to consider the waste management hierarchy - favoring source reduction to reduce both the volume and toxicity of waste and to increase the useful life of manufactured products - when designing waste management systems.
Subtitle D focuses on state and local governments as the primary planning, regulating and implementing entities for the management of nonhazardous solid waste, such as household garbage and nonhazardous industrial solid waste. Subtitle D landfills include the following:. Subtitle C establishes a federal program to manage hazardous wastes from cradle to grave.
The objective of the Subtitle C program is to ensure that hazardous waste is handled in a manner that protects human health and the environment. To this end, there are Subtitle C regulations for the generation, transportation and treatment, storage or disposal of hazardous wastes. Subtitle C landfills including the following:. Skip to main content. Related Topics: Landfills.
0コメント