Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Landfills - imby

Imby = in my back yard.

When we lived in Carrollton there was a large Waste Management landfill within a couple miles of our home as the crow flies (or as stink drifts).

At the time I was heading up our improvement projects in the neighborhood for our association. It became apparent that there might be monies available from Waste Management for improvements to our neighborhood to offset the very occasional (if ever) stink.

To negotiate that, we all took a tour of the landfill facility which included a new one being built. It was fascinating for me...I loved seeing under the covers of this much maligned industry.

What was apparent to me was these guys are under a significant amount of regulation on air quality, adjacent water quality, seepage etc. The new landfill being built allowed us to see what they go through just to keep the pile from leeching. They basically build a giant slope sided swimming pool and line it with these thick geotextile fabrics and rubber. Then they cover that with dirt and start dumping. As they go they also have methane capture systems to in theory, capture the gas produced (stink).

They burned the methane to run a large generator to supply the facility with all of its electricity. (Pretty cool for 1995 or so...) The rest however either went into the air or was burnt off with flares. (Not so cool). Methane is 20 times worse than CO2 as a global warming gas.

As the pile grows higher they are usually limited on the height by local regulation. Either for aesthetic reasons or they don't want planes running into it. It's interesting to note they know exactly how much they add a day and the life of the landfill before its topped out. We do know our collective capacity for garbage before more land must be acquired for another swimming pool.

I have been to Dallas's landfill a number of times. (No wonder Paula married me...I'm so...wordly). You just get in line with all these huge trucks and make your way up the mountain. Giant compactors and bulldozers work the pile right next to where you are dumping your remodeling stuff. And it stinks. Not unbearably, but close.

It's then that it hits you...we waste a HUGE amount of stuff. The scale is massive! The amount of trucks burning fuel, emitting CO2, the methane, the landscape changing mound, the seagulls, (don't ask me - they are like air rats), it's all a bit overwhelming.

Bottom Line - Everything we put into the landfill is not reclaimable. It's too late to do anything useful with it. And, our Earth is a closed system, everything we are ever going to have on this earth is already here. If we use it and then discard it, it's gone. Sure you can get caught up in the environmental issues with landfills, but the bigger picture is more important. We will run out of stuff, your daughter's daughter maybe, but we will run out unless we change how we do this.

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