I see these articles about landfills overflowing and waste being improperly dumped in our oceans. Why can’t we just burn all of the garbage and never have to deal with it again?
In: 2
Because you don’t want to release the noxious fumes and gaseous byproducts into the atmosphere. Granted, landfills do already tend to produce a lot of methane and carbon dioxide as things break down. But if you were to burn the contents of a landfill, you’d risk putting even more noxious and dangerous chemicals and gasses into the atmosphere as different things burn and give off different byproducts.
Edit: I’m speaking more about why we haven’t. But we actually *can* with the infrastructure for it. I lived in Germany for a few years and the city I lived in actually burned waste trash for energy in a waste-to-energy facility. And in these facilities, they do filter and screen as much heavy pollutants from the escaping gases to reduce the impact on the atmosphere.
I actually really loved that because I knew if I was ever unsure about how to recycle something, I’d just put it into the waste trash and knew it would be incinerated for energy production. In Europe, this is more common, but not on the scale necessary to produce a significant amount of power. And in the US, this is much less common.
Latest Answers