Disadvantages Of Landfills

Landfills are a major problem in our world. According to Just Live Greener “Every hour, Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles, 90% of which will finish their short lives in a landfill”. If landfills are not stopped, it will impact our Earth. Humans need to be aware of the effect of landfills has on the planet and learn about how to prevent it. Landfills damage our environment. A landfill is where waste can be disposed. One type of landfill is a sanitary landfill. This landfill actually helps the environment. How? The people seal the garbage away. The second type is municipal solid waste. This is also like a sanitary landfill, except it holds more of our household waste. The last type is an unsanitary landfill. This landfill can affect human life and the health of our environment.

Every year Americans collectively create approximately 208 million tons of municipal solid waste, which breaks down to 4.3 pounds of waste generated per American per day. In addition to this normal waste, the United States produces roughly 279 million tons of hazardous waste per year.1 All of this waste has to go somewhere. Two good methods of waste disposal, infrequently used, are incineration and recycling. However, any waste that is not recycled or incinerated ends up in America’s landfills. Landfills that are not in proper working order can pose a serious threat to humans and the environment, but ones that safely store all of their waste may possibly be helpful for the

In addition, there exist some environmental risks related to producing landfill. Even though the Australian Federal Government is not offering incentives to repurpose waste, some communities and State and Local governments are offering incentives for this practice. The main purpose of this is to avoid the disposing of waste in landfills, due to the fact that it requires so much time, energy and space, injuring our planet's health (McCabe,

Have you ever wondered where all the trash goes that you throw out? Most of it ends up in landfills, gets burned or ends up on the street. Landfills are the most cost-efficient ways to get rid of trash for places like the United States but at what price. When waste disintegrates in landfills and water passes through the waste, the resulting liquid is called leachate. When leachate run off encounter local rivers and lakes it can contaminate the water and destroy whole eco systems that live in these areas. Landfill gas consists of naturally occurring methane and carbon dioxide, which form inside the landfill as the waste decomposes. As the gases form, pressure builds up inside a landfill, forcing the gases to move. Some of the gases escape through

The United States produces roughly 250 million tons of solid waste, or garbage, on an annual basis. This number equates to 4.4 pounds of solid waste created by every American on a daily basis (Miller, Meindl, & Caradine, 2016). The recycling rate in the U.S. is around 35%, meaning over 165 million tons of waste is placed in the nation’s landfills or incinerated each year (Mozo-Reyes, Jambeck, Reeves, & Johnsen, 2015). Landfilling recyclables contributes to a greater strain on global resources because materials that may have been reused must now be replaced (Miller, et.al. 2016). Landfilling waste also contributes to air pollution through the release of methane (Delkash, Zhou, and Singh, 2016) and poses threats to groundwater near landfills (Talalaj & Biedka, 2016). As the population of the nation (and the world) increases, strategies must be found to reuse resources rather than simply disposing of them.

Americans have yet to face the unnerving reality of the fact that “in 2008 only 7.1% of the 30.05 million tons of plastic waste in America was recycled” (Linn). This low percentage is shocking, outrageous, and should terrify the American public, but this number can change. Recycling is not just a feel good experience; it is a way to help save energy, space, and money. However, with the enormous amount of trash being thrown out each year, landfills are increasing in size creating numerous issues. The staggering amount of waste increases greenhouse gases, contributing to global warming and building up dangerous toxins that sink underground into our soil and water, overflows into wildlife habitats and oceans, and costs a large amount of money to remove. By fining residents who incorrectly dispose of recyclable goods, implementing recycling as a requirement in educational institutions and other business and residential settings, categorizing the

Many people seem to think that when the nation is looking for a new place to put a landfill, that must mean the old landfills are closing or filling up. This is not necessarily the case. The nation does keep generating large amounts of waste that do need to be handled. However the political statement of “Not in My Backyard”, or Nimby, is really the issue surrounding landfills. Wealthy individuals with political influence do not want to live in a neighborhood with smelly and unsightly piles of trash, so that becomes one less location available for landfills. (Patterson III, 2010) So instead of having a landfill within their own area, some states pay other states, like Kentucky, to take their trash. So now the trash has a further way to travel

The United Sates and Canada are some of the top natural resources spots. When they are mined the materials they use heavy machinery which could pollute the land, air, and water around it and leaves rock and other natural material just sitting on the top of the landfills. These landfills should be used as something elsa when they have been mined up with so it is not just left empty.

Historically, the state of garbage in California has not been that pleasing. Most of the landfills in the State are currently overused as some continues to get worse with time. This probably is the case because by the year 2013, only 36.6% of the entire waste products in United States were actually recycled. Moreover, according to the findings presented from CalRecycle study, the existing organic wastes constitute 32.4% of all the waste product. Sadly, these organic wastes pose a significant threat to the surrounding environment (Donovan). The common practice of burying solid wastes in a landfill is confirm dangerous to the environment because of the chemicals that later build up beneath the earth surface hence producing Leachate, a poisonous

Landfills are mostly composed of non-biodegradable waste which takes a long time to decompose. Recycling old and waste products into new products will reduce the amount of waste that enters landfills across the nation. Doing so helps in reducing water and land pollution as landfills are a major source in contributing to destruction of natural environment. Recycling programs keeps enormous amounts of waste from being deposited into landfills every year allowing for unused land to be preserved for other uses rather than another waste site. Also, if we don’t recycle, more and more garbage will enter the landfills until they are all used up. When that happens, where will the new waste be placed and would you like to have a landfill as a backyard? According to the Bear Spring Blossom (BSB), “Landfills are a ticking time bombs-producing unknown gases and chemicals” (“Recycling”). Also, it goes on to state, “Recycling helps to reduce landfill space and disposal costs” (“Recycling”). Even though reducing the size of landfills is a notable benefit, there are other things that benefit from

Landfills are getting bigger and are becoming more of a problem in the U.S because they are hazardous to our health and our environment, but there is a way to stop the villain known as a landfill.

Landfills have many drawbacks to them. Landfills are not the best way to get rid of the waste that the world puts out. Three major harms of landfills are: they can harm the environment and living organisms around that specific, landfills take up space that people could use to make businesses, homes or parks for the kids in the neighborhood, and people throw things away that can easily be recycled.

The breakdown of food waste in landfill releases nutrients, which can migrate out of landfilled waste and into the surrounding environment. Groundwater and waterways will be polluted because of too many nutrients release in landfills. When it is raining, the landfills may leak and the leaking landfills can pollute the underground water by bringing the polluted rain water into the underground.

Alternatives: As previously mentioned, Gupta et al. believe current methods of conducting EIAs are ineffective. Therefore, they propose an unconventional method for conducting EIAs for landfill siting: a multivariable calculation of implicated factors using a fuzzy relation, or fuzzy clustering. This involves the attribution of a weight to each qualitative factor, in order to accurately assess the environmental impacts of landfills. This method distinguishes itself from the others because it accounts for the uncertainty caused by the expert’s subjectivity, and for the lifetime of the landfill. The result of this method is a “fuzzy relation between frequency of occurrence and the impact on environment [sic] considering the adverse consequence

The average resident produces seven and a half pounds of garbage every day that is buried down in landfills and litters lands costing a great amount of money. Nowadays, people face no more critical trouble than the need to save the weakening environment, mainly in urban areas, where solid wastes are uselessly dumped. It has been observed that cities have no controlled structure for garbage disposal. Each year, millions of dollars are spent picking up litter and more is thrown away in valuable materials that could be recycled. As humanity develops new technology and equipment, the level of waste increases every day. Due to the fact that there is a huge problem with garbage disposal, government representatives must contribute to resolving