Spent about 5 hours during Earth Day cleaning up a trail that was once a landfill. Separating the metal and glass out to recycle, It kind of dawned on me that we were just moving some trash from one place to another, what I’m I missing?
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It is complicated, but starting with the fact that modern landfills are constructed differently so things in the landfill don’t leak into the local water supply and pollute the whole area so they are safer than old landfills. In your case not everything was going into a new landfill as you say the glass and metal were being recycled so less would end up in the landfill.
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New landfills are designed to be safe for the environment whereas old ones often weren’t, allowing chemicals and such to escape into the soil and water. While landfills are never a good thing, it is better to try and put all of our trash in one place than to let it spread to the entire world.
The need to update things like landfills could be caused by mistakes made in the old days, or just a lack of adequate technology to make them environmentally friendly. Usually it is a combination of both. Today, however, we have the option to fix those mistakes with help of volunteers like you.
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