Local Waste Pollution

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.

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

Recycling is known very well to most of the United States. It has been a buzzword since my childhood in the 80's. However, many towns and metropolitans, including my home town of Savannah, have trouble getting their residents to actively participate in the recycling programs.  There are many reasons people can site for not participating, some are personal issues, and some are those of the city itself. The first that comes to mind far too often is even though most solid waste can be sorted and recycled, the amount that is picked up is not even half as frequent. From a city stand point, expansion of the program itself may cause a hemorrhaging of money that can't be undone. Landfills have been an environmentally sound option for years, but they all have the same problem of finite space. On the surface it seems simple, but nothing is ever that easy. Both recycling programs and landfills cost large amounts of capital to maintain. With the goal of an environmentally stable city, landfills and their finite space will always be a problem. With vision and drive maybe the tables can be turned.

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

Landfills are waste that are packed closely in mounds which are sealed beneath rubber and clay barrier, which is then over a liner that keeps liquids from bursting out. Waste is constantly added to than landfill until it reaches it maximum capacity. Once that happens it is then coved with clay and another plastic cover. Finally, that cover is piled on with numerous feet of

The New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation established the Brookhaven landfill in March 1974. Since then, residents have revealed many health concerns and other relative issues against the placement of the landfill. The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) has been addressed in regards to a necessary public health consultation to draw attention to these concerns. After further cooperative agreements amongst the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) and ATSDR, a public health consultation was reached. Many solutions have been uncovered; however, the outcome has yet to be determined as it is evident that a reasonable response must be initiated through the cooperation of the government and community.

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.

To begin with landfills are bad for our health because of leachate and E-waste. Bisnessdictnary.com defined leachate as “Water escaping from a landfill site which, if not collected, will contaminate the natural water sources.” Which means that trash is ruining our good water places, and we need water everyday. Infixit.org defined E-waste as“When electronics end up in landfills, toxics like lead, mercury, and cadmium leach into the soil and water.” Thoes toxics are very bad for your health and can damage your lungs, kidneys, and other

Landfills are bad for our environment because buildings a regional landfill could also negatively impact the property values of surrounding properties. One more fuat is the risk for groundwater contamination is too great. For my last example is there's already a problem with loose trash on commonly traveled routes to the existing transfer station.

Well they affect the community because when it gets hot and windy the smell from them travel around a small area which affects the value of the properties around. In 1948 a mound of garbage was started on Staten Island it was almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty by 2001 (Lerner). Thats a great deal of garbage since it only took 53 years for all of it to get there and it couldn’t have been light either since the statue of liberty is 450,000 pounds that's roughly 225 tons. Landfills do have a plus side for them though they do employ people. “Tens of thousands of people are employed at scrap yards” (lerner). Even though landfills are very abominable and putrid they still employed an abundance of people who desired jobs and couldn’t find work. To aid in the demand of landfills was the greatest jump in waste that increased a whopping four times more waste from 1960 to 2006 (lerner). This also probably helped with the giant mountain that was formed at Ellis Island from 1946 to 2001. Trading garbage! what has the world come to? Michigan and Canada do some trading to help each other out when Canada wants to get rid of some waste they just call Michigan and say “wanna trade some waste?” and Michigan says “ heck yeah dude” so they trade Canada gives Michigan 10,000 pounds of garbage to Michigan and then Michigan is allowed to export hazardous waste to Ontario’s landfills (Lerner). They have been trading since 2003! thats crazy, but if

Landfill is the disposal of waste materials by burying them; it can sometimes be used s a method of filling in deep pits in the ground. Landfills can be a problem as they can cause the spread of some diseases as they can offer a home for rats and flies, which could carry many different diseases. Landfills can also be a problem as they can emit many various gasses, which can be hazards to people’s health and the environment.

A result of the current environmental and sustainability movement, landfills have a tendency to spark heated political debates. While there are both pro’s and con’s to today’s landfills, it is critical to realize that landfills have a misconception. Most people think of modern landfills as open dumps, where trash is left exposed and untouched for years. Few people actually know that landfills are highly engineered sites that bury and monitor trash daily. The proposal for landfills must map out the complete plan for the landfill from open to close, with an additional thirty years of monitoring. All costs must be planned in advance, including potential, unexpected maintenance. Much of the environmental hesitation is a result of landfills created and closed in the 1980‘s and 1990’s. Poor construction of landfills lead to leaching and groundwater pollution. Today’s modern technology allows us to properly line and construct landfills, as well as drain and treat liquids while monitoring methane formation and groundwater. These landfills are large scale operations that that work to decompose municipal solid waste (MSW), or human trash. Once they close and the proper amount of time to stabilize has passed, the area can be reused for parks, golf courses and other facilities.

Since the time man has grown accustomed to manufacturing goods, toxic waste has been an issue to our quality of life, and the surrounding natural environment. While the degree has not always been understood as to what effects toxic waste can have, there is no excuse in the present. Methods of disposing toxic waste in the past have shown the negative impacts such waste can have on the health of humans, wildlife, and nature in general. Without proper mitigation, and methods of dealing with the issue at hand, the situation will only continue getting worse in the future.

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.

I'm going to start off my essay by talking about "earth pollution". There are seven different types of earth pollution. Starting of with water pollution and air pollution, I think these would be the most common and prevalent forms of earth pollution. Water and air are both extremely important to the enviroment. The rest is, soil pollution, thermal pollution, radioactive pollution, noise pollution and light pollution. There is also air pollution that works in a green house infect. Which can warm up the earth. The green house affect can be caused by sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Soil pollution is caused by, " Human made chemicals or other alternation in the natural soil environment". It is meanly caused by agricultural chemicals, industrial stuff and people who do not take good care of their trash. An example of this is (littering). Thermal pollution is a process that changes water quality for the worse by the water tempter. The main way that thermal pollution is active, is by big "Power Plants" using water as a coolant. Radioactive pollution is when are there radioactive particles in the air, and this is caused by human actions. It is accidental or on tentonal . Noise pollution is basically where there is a lot of noise that people just do not want. It can even damage stuff like your hearing not being able to sleep as well and it can cause high stress levels, and it has more effects than that. When I first saw noise pollution as one of the seven different types of earth pollution I thought it was kind of weird, but now that I looked in to it, it makes more sence. For the last one of the seven types of earth pollution (which is Light pollution) I decided to take a closer look at it then the others. So, I watched a documentary about light pollution. Light pollution is when a lot of lights, mainly coming from big cities, this is bad because it makes it harder to see the stars. What makes so you can't see the stars is light that shines up on dust particles. In the past people lite things up with torches or lamps but now all over the world people are lighting things up with electrice lights. Astronomers have noticed that when they want to get a good look at the night sky they have to go farther away from big