Do You Remember The Disney Movie Wall E?

Take a moment to imagine the realization that a young boy came to when two of his favorite movies had a large plotline that was somewhat based on the problems of trash. Wall-E, the famous Pixar movie, was based on a small robot that was left behind on Earth’s surface alone. His job was to clean the garbage that the human population left behind when they went into space to escape their problems. Toy Story 3, another Pixar movie, contained a scene with garbage that was vital to the plot, in which the characters are rescued from a trash furnace that was consuming literally tons of trash a minute. These two movies tried to make the American population aware of the ever growing trash situation, however, Americans quickly forgot about the Earth shattering situation that they are causing. The solution to the world’s trash problem is easy; people need to be educated on the problems of trash and given an easy way to fix it. People should be required to visit a landfill, educated on the severity of the trash problem, and should be rewarded for changing their habits to improve the problem.

In order for environmental change to happen society needs to see the significance of trash. To make sense of that recall a time were you forgot to take the trash out and days later were reminded by the rotten stench? Now multiply the stench of that 1 bag 2 million times. To help you further understand let’s put this in mathematical terms. Let’s say on average 1 garbage bag weighs 20Lbs. that equates to 1bag=20lbs x 2,000,000 = 40 million putrid bags. This equation has opened my eyes. Rogers’s argument that Landfills should be in public places is a good one. Society is sheltered from Landfills: so they are out of sight therefore out of mind. If we can’t see the pollution we can’t change our carbon foot print.

There are 7.125 billion people in the world. 3.25 million of those people live in the United States and 564,708 of those people are homeless. They live on the streets and disturb the peace by asking for food or money as people rush through the city. A simple solution to the homeless problem in America is to make them live in landfills. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. has 3,091 active landfills and over 10,000 old municipal landfills and this would be more than enough space for the homeless, but will there be enough trash for them? The average human throws away 4.5 pounds of trash every day. Each human will produce enough garbage for every homeless person.

Currently, landfills are responsible for 15 million tonnes of C02 in our atmosphere each year. When garbage decomposes, it creates methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This contributes to greenhouse gasses and damages the ozone layer. Landfills take up space, as well as being dangerous and toxic. Rubbish that ends up in our oceans can cause harm to our marine life and poison our water.

Lisa Foderaro in her article discusses how the landfills like the valley of ashes are creating

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.

In the span of 50 years, the population of humans on this planet have reached all-time highs and continue to rise and with this rise comes the effects of overpopulation. The planet cannot sustain so many people during such a short span of time. Not only is there a loss of space for new generations of humans to live on, but there has been an excessive use of natural resources before there is a chance to replenish them such as food, natural gases, and water. The problem of overpopulation seems to truly encompasses all other aspects of the factors leading to the sixth mass extinction such as habitat loss and global warming. The population must be feed and because of this, million upon millions of acres of land once inhabited by a whole ecosystem have been converted to farmland to provide food for the growing population. In addition, the increase in leads to an increase in waste and therein arises a problem: where to put the waste. In the United States alone, “4.39 pounds of trash per day and up to 56 tons of trash per year are created by the average person” Landfills seemed to be the perfect solution for this problem, however, over the years, “landfill managers have been emphasizing just how quickly they are running out of space. The more people there are on the planet, the more waste is being produced. Some of this waste is quite toxic, and even landfills which are

In 2012, Americans generated about 251 million tons of trash and recycled and composted almost 87 million tons of this material (“Municipal Solid Waste”). There are many ways to end our environmental crisis, such as reducing our amount of trash, recycling items, and reusing other items.

The average American creates about one hundred-thirty pounds of trash a month, and an article in the journal Nature estimates that global solid-waste generation will triple, to eleven million tons a day, by the year 2100 (Semuels). Plastic does not break down; it’s not biodegradable nor does it

Anywhere you look around the United States landfills can be found. If you are lucky enough to pass by one, the site is probably seen reaching capacity. Sometimes you might not even see them before your nose catches the putrid scent. These landfill sites sure are not popular but they are very much a necessity to our lives. Imagine what we would do with all the trash if we did not have somewhere to go with it? Unfortunately, landfill sites do have negative side effects on the environment. Three of the top concerns related to landfills are toxins released in the air coming from items such as electronic waste, liquid trash contaminating the land and waterways, and greenhouse gas emissions like methane. With the world on watch with heightened awareness

It was also needed for separation of waste from society realm to cut down on the public health risks or issues. The differences between sanitary landfills and dumps are fairly simple. Sanitary landfills rehabilitate land where garbage and trash have been buried by covering up waste and planting some type of foliage. Also, landfills are covered by dirt and have a bottom liner to protect ground water. Sanitary Landfills are also regulated by the U. S. government while dumps are not. The composition of a landfill can be described in for elements such as: on the bottom there are some type of liner which are made-up of plastic, clay or composite. Next, is a leachate collection system, this is used to collect the liquid that comes from decomposing materials in the system. The third part is a type of covering such as another liner to prevent rain from intruding and last is the natural hydro geologic setting. This type of prevention is useful for two reasons which are to prevent waste from escaping and is used to predict where the waste will go if it

Today, policy makers and waste management companies have been trying to find new ways to reduce the amount of waste entering the landfills because we are rapidly running out of space for such use. In 2000, U.S. residents and businesses produced more than 221 million tons of waste, which is approximately 4.5 pounds of waste per person per day. However, the amount of waste sent to landfills in 2000 was down 13% from the 1990 total, and the amount of waste recovered in recycling has nearly doubled during the same period (ASCE,

The increase of garbage creates issues for humans. For humans throwing away something every day is a daily routine. Due to the amount of trash produced every day it is seen as an issue because one person could make at least seven pounds of garbage increasing the landfills mass. The reasoning for recycling is to manage the waste humans produce. Waste buildup makes landfills larger in size making water pollution and air pollution more likely to become higher. The environment has been neglected with the amount of clutter, this causes little space in landfills. Landfills increase

American citizens throw away millions of tons of garbage each year, and this trash has to go somewhere. While there are projects underway to clean and reuse this refuse most of it gets dumped into huge landfills. These landfills are disgusting festering blisters on our country's landscape. But people continue to consume and throw away more and more in the name of convenience. As they see it, when things get old, throw it away and get a new one. They blame the government for the trash problem, but the truth blame should be placed on themselves.