Is the trash really just buried and left to decompose?
In: Planetary Science
It is often sorted first to extract ferrous metals and aluminium, before it is buried the contents are crushed to take up a small a volume as possible and the hole is lined to prevent leaks into the environment and especially the water table. Some then have a gas pipe to vent off any methane produced.
Why can’t we incinerate some of it?
I think the intention is for it to decompose. Problem is for that to work well, the material needs oxygen. I’ve seen landfills dug up and a newspaper pulled out that had a clearly readable headline and date in the 1980s.
A lot of golf courses are built on top of old landfills as the ground will never be stable enough to build on.
We were playing on one near my house after a heavy rain. You could see the bubbles of gas coming up through the standing water on the course.
Might be useful to see an example.. This is a C&D Landfill (this is construction material and not household). These two videos are of the same landfill, but they cover some different aspects of it.
Let’s Dig18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZaJ7hHr_zs
Dirt Perfect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJpzK0OyZw4
Note this place does some recycling, but if it isn’t metal, tires, or concrete it gets buried.
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