Home > Politics, News & Issues > Environmental Issues > Environmental Awareness
Do landfills work?
Results so far:
| Yes | 42% | 22 votes | Total: 53 votes | |
| No | 58% | 31 votes |
Yes
by Morgan Carlson
Created on: September 11, 2009 Last Updated: September 12, 2009
Do landfills work by accomplishing their purpose and the reason they exist? They were established as places where human garbage could be gathered and contained, keeping it organized and separate from the greater environment or the alternative of being stored in one's backyard or another random location.
To the extent of keeping the majority of trash in one place, they work extremely well. In the regards to being ultimately beneficial in their own right, they are becoming increasingly useful in that respect as well.
Landfills and waste dumps are very successful as containers for humanity's garbage and unneeded items, but are often regarded with great contempt and ill feelings. Often thought as blemishes or sores on otherwise useful land, they seem only to grow larger and multiply as human populations expand.
Even with the advent of recycling, the vast quantities of otherwise recyclable goods still find their way to the dumps, as disposing these items as trash is far easier than sorting it and finding willing recycling centers or deposit bins. It seems that even with a few people making the effort of using the recycling practices, most recyclables will just continue to be buried and lost to the landfills.
However, those knowledgeable to the evolving technologies don't frown upon this process, but smile, labeling all landfills as the gold mines of the future.
While not exactly gold that will come of the landfills, there is little doubt that trash of the past will be treasure of the future. Already, there are special trucks that go into select landfills and scoop up a load, run the trash through conveyor belts and scan the contents for recyclables, funnel the good into containers, and deposit the unusable waste and organic matter into new piles.
Sometimes these organic waste piles are used with bacteria and heat to produce methane - a natural byproduct of a lot of landfills because of decomposition - in order to use the methane as fuel. This fuel is burned to heat water, which in turn creates steam that runs through turbines to produce electricity.
The use of methane to create electricity is not the only benefit that comes from the process. The first is that it stops the methane from entering the atmosphere, as methane is a more serious greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The second is that besides the electricity, waste heat from the burning process and steam is used to heat homes in the nearby vicinity.
In this way, the landfill has become both a power plant and a means of providing warmth to those who need it in the winter. Better yet, unlike fossil fuels, so long as there is a population that produces organic wastes, this system can continue to operate.
Unfortunately for now, even though the recyclables and organic wastes are covered in uses, there are still other materials that cannot be directly recycled and still pile up in sections of the landfill. Rubber tires, for one, can be used to make other things after shredding them, but as there are so many, that isn't as practical a solution.
Other things, such as ceramics, plastic bags, and more, are all worries. But once the technology for recycling and alternative re-using improves, landfills will remain the perfect storage facilities to preserve these important treasures to be.
Learn more about this author, Morgan Carlson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
No
by Mumbly Joe
Created on: February 07, 2009
Everyday we consume enormous quantities of materials in our lives. The problem that we have is that once something is consumed, more often than not, it must be disposed of. Some items might give us a large amount of useful time, while on the other hand; other items have an extremely limited life expectancy. As an example, let us consider newspaper. Most people do not build a library consisting of newspaper.
How do we dispose of the products that we use? Most often, these items are sent into the countryside and they are buried. The resources used in creating these products might be immense, yet our disposal methods are Spartan and completely wasteful. Not only are we wasting valuable natural resources, we also have a larger problem on our hands.
Every time you read a newspaper, do you consider what happens to it after you read it? More often than not, you don't know and you don't care. Millions of newspapers are discarded into landfills every day and the average person never considers the amount of resources that went into making the paper, the ink and the actual production of the newspaper. Not only do we have the original consumption of the trees that were cut down, we also have the energy that was required to make the newspaper. The second half of the problem is that once we do toss the waste into the landfill, we have inks and chemicals leaching into the ground and in our water supply.
When we dispose of something in a landfill, this is one item that will never have the opportunity of being recycled. If there is any possibility given, recycling is always the better choice of disposal than landfills. Every scrap of material that enters a landfill is an item that represents 100 percent waste.
Recycling is always the best answer as far as the disposal of an item. If an item has no practical way of being recycled, the there should be serious discussion as to the reason of why that product should have ever been manufactured. If something has no value as being recycled, this is something that should never have been created.
Every product that we consume was created from a certain amount of natural resources and energy. If we dispose of this item in a landfill, then every bit of resources that was used to create this item is ultimately lost. On the other hand, if we recycle, than at the bare minimum, we will recover at least a portion of the energy and resources needed to create a product.
Some products require a much larger initial investment than others. The manufacturing process always requires some degree of waste. The only real solution to the reduction of landfills is to consider how we can reconsider what we can do to create less wasteful products.
It might appear easy to be a consumer with no regard for what happens next. The reality is that everything that we consume must be accounted for. Newspaper and food packaging are two enormous wasters of natural resources.
The problem is not one that will correct itself. We will either pay now, or we will pay later. If we don't answer immediately for our problems, or children and there children will answer for our carelessness.
The bottom line is that landfills do not work. As humans we need to develop methods where we do not create wasteful products in the first place. We should never create products that we do not intend to be around for a considerable mount of time. We are stewards of the planet and it is our responsibility to take care of the resources that we have been given.
Learn more about this author, Mumbly Joe.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Write and get published
Share with other writers
Polish your freelancing skills
Quality articles from proven freelancers
Exclusive rights, fast turnaround
Brand engagement, business blogging -- our writers do it all
INFORMATION
Copyright © 2002-2012 Helium, Inc. All rights reserved.
Helium.com: A Service of RR Donnelley