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The Engineering of Landfills

practical.engineering

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Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#11

Post by blitzar »

cm2012 wrote: post #9

So many people misunderstand landfills. All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side. That is, landfills take a trivial amount of space. Putting stuff in a landfill is way better for global warming since its not burned, the carbon is buried. Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural en…

The plastic pollution in the ocean is from our soda bottles we shipped to developing countries.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#13

Post by dhosek »

There’s some parkland adjacent to the La Puente Landfill (assuming I’m remembering the correct landfill along the 60). I remember going on a hiking trip in the foothills nearby back in the 90s and seeing (and smelling) the landfill in operation there. It occurs to me that I’ve not had that many cases where I’ve been able to directly observe a landfill. The only other instance I can think of was visiting a retired former teacher in Florida and he pointed out a hill a few miles away from his condo and explaining that the hill was actually a pile of trash.

I think that at least some in the Chicago area are former quarries.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#15

Post by newsclues »

bko wrote: post #2

I found this interesting: > Another option is to put it to beneficial use to create heat or even electricity. The Puente Hills landfill I showed earlier has a gas-to-energy facility that’s been running since 1987, and even though the landfill is now closed, it currently provides enough electricity to power around 70,000 homes. And towards the end > Landfills seem like an environmental blight, but really, properly des…

[flagged]

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#16

Post by the_gipsy »

cm2012 wrote: post #9

So many people misunderstand landfills. All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side. That is, landfills take a trivial amount of space. Putting stuff in a landfill is way better for global warming since its not burned, the carbon is buried. Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural en…

I'd guess that it's cheaper to ship a lot of garbage to developing countries.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#17

Post by aziaziazi »

blitzar wrote: post #11
cm2012 wrote: post #9

So many people misunderstand landfills. All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side. That is, landfills take a trivial amount of space. Putting stuff in a landfill is way better for global warming since its not burned, the carbon is buried. Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural en…

The plastic pollution in the ocean is from our soda bottles we shipped to developing countries.

IIRC, ~30%[0] of ocean plastic came from fishing nests. They are huge, break often and it’s easier and cheaper to throw aboard an old one than bring it onshore for recycling. (edit) 0: 46% https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-...

Totally unrelated but since it’s from seashepherd I can’t help adding Paul Watson trial from extradition in Japan is tomorrow.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#18

Post by bluGill »

trallnag wrote: post #3

Why are landfills like this still a thing? Why not burn everything and only dump what's left?

People are not careful about what they throw away. Batteries, lead, and so on end up in trash. When you burn it those get released to the atmosphere, sometimes in a form that is even worse chemically than what we started with.

We do burn trash, but as the other reply said, it is expensive because you have to somehow account for all that.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#19

Post by jamil7 »

newsclues wrote: post #15
bko wrote: post #2

I found this interesting: > Another option is to put it to beneficial use to create heat or even electricity. The Puente Hills landfill I showed earlier has a gas-to-energy facility that’s been running since 1987, and even though the landfill is now closed, it currently provides enough electricity to power around 70,000 homes. And towards the end > Landfills seem like an environmental blight, but really, properly des…

[flagged]

Where's "here"? What activists and what plastic bags? There's a bunch of context missing here.

Re: The Engineering of Landfills

#20

Post by FredPret »

I googled global waste per year. Looks like it's on the order of 2 billion tons per year. Leaving room for 100% growth, and assuming a density of 1 (less dense = more space required = worse), we'll need 4 billion cubic meters of landfill per year.

That's a cubic mile of garbage!

But that doesn't seem all that catastrophic either - if you spread it out to a hole 1m deep, it'll be 63 km on a side. 5m deep = 28km on a side. That's a lot, but it doesn't seem like the highest ecological priority. If it's practical to compress before dumping, it will be even less terrible.

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