Landfills And Their Effects On Humans And The Enviroment
Every year Americans collectively create approximately 208 million tons of municipal solid waste, which breaks down to 4.3 pounds of waste generated per American per day. In addition to this normal waste, the United States produces roughly 279 million tons of hazardous waste per year.1 All of this waste has to go somewhere. Two good methods of waste disposal, infrequently used, are incineration and recycling. However, any waste that is not recycled or incinerated ends up in America’s landfills. Landfills that are not in proper working order can pose a serious threat to humans and the environment, but ones that safely store all of their waste may possibly be helpful for the environment.
The landfills of today are nothing like the open dumps of the past, where anyone could dump any kind of materials they liked. Fortunately, open dumps have been banned in the United States due to the threat they pose to the environment. Because these dumps were open, hazardous waste was often stored there. Furthermore, precipitation would travel through the waste in the open dump and eventually end up in the groundwater, carrying any toxic materials that were in the dump. Today’s landfills are required to meet strict government standards regarding composition and structure of landfills.2 According to the Environmental Literacy Council, "modern landfills are constructed with a number of safeguards, and new federal standards active in 1993 require landfills to have liners, leachate collection facilities, and gas monitoring systems."3
The structure of a landfill involves four distinct layers. They are the natural environment of the landfill, the bottom liner, a leachate collection syste...
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- Environmental Literacy Council, "Landfills,"
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/landfills.html (12 March 1999).
- Environmental Protection Agency, "Basic Facts About Waste,"
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/basifact.htm (12 March 1999).
- Environmental Research Foundation, "The Basics of Landfills,"
http://www.enviroweb.org/enviroissues/landfills/index.html (12 March 1999).
- Environmental Research Foundation, "Landfills Are Dangerous,"
http://www.dumpthedump.com/dangerous.html (12 March 1998).
- Heimlich, Joe E. "Landfill," Ohio State University FactSheet,
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~ohioline/cd-fact/0111.html (12 March 1999).
- Pearce, Fred. "A dirty buisness," New Scientist, 23 January 1999, 22.
- Westlake, Kenneth. Landfill Waste Pollution and Control (Chichester: Albion,
1995), 98.
The Lowry Landfill Superfund Site is located in Arapahoe County, Colorado, approximately 2 miles east of Aurora. It consists of approximately 507 acres of waste disposal area and is operated by Waste Management of Colorado, Inc. The land surrounding the site consists of native prairie grass and a wetland located along a local creek. Sections around the site are zoned for agricultural use including cattle grazing and non-irrigated wheat farms. 1 The area is home to numerous endangered species including the bald eagle and peregrine falcon. Due to the large amounts of wastes disposed on the site between 1965 and 1980, it became extremely contaminated with a variety of inorganic and organic contaminants. From 1984 to 1993, the EPA oversaw remedial investigation and feasibility studies that were performed by all responsible parties. Since its listing as a superfund site in 1984, multiple remedial actions have been performed in order to rehabilitate the site. These include clay barrier walls around the site, a groundwater collection system, a soil cover for the main landfill, as well as a landfill gas collection system. Groundwater that is collected on the site is treated at an onsite water treatment facility. In 2007, construction began on an onsite gas to energy plant that utilizes the methane produced by the landfill site. The electricity produced by the plant is enough to power 3000 households. 1 Today, use of land and groundwater on and near the site is still restricted by the state of Colorado.1
The Stewarts moved into a neighborhood near the previously established Los Lobos Landfill (“Landfill”). However, the Stewarts noticed an increasingly offensive odor from Landfill supported by the filing of over a thousand odor complaints in 1992. These complaints resulted in City ordering a halt to Landfill’s composting activities in March 1993. This order resulted in Landfill’s composting permits to be withheld until the California Waste Board resolved the issue. Citizens United for Responsible Environmentalism (CURE), begun by the Stewarts, conducted a study that correlated health issues, composting, and Aspergillus fumigatus (fungus) concentration increases. City convened an Advisory Panel (Panel) that determined that Landfill’s composting
Writers have always drawn inspiration from real events for their stories. Joyce Carol Oates is now being criticized as unethical for just that. The critics claim that it was not ethical for Oates to use the events that befell John Fiocco Jr. in her story "Landfill", and also for including many similarities between Fiocco and her main character Hector Campos Jr.. Though there are some similarities between the two, the differences were great enough that only some who knew of the Fiocco case. Because of this, Joyce Carol Oates' decision to use Fioccos' death as a fictional basis was ethical.
In conclusion to this investigation one thing is clear and that is that recycling reeks benefits to the environment, Recycling material when compared to making material from raw material is a more efficient energy saving and more environmentally friendly way to reuse material that is usually consider as trash such as empty glass, and plastic bottles, or old newspapers. Recycling helps reduce the possible carbon emissions greatly and does reduce the human carbon footprint. But Recycling doesn’t resolve the pollution that is around the world today. Leading to new questions, questions like what about the landfills are they sustainable, and if so for how long. How long until the air becomes unbreathable? How long until Earth becomes its own furnace?
Harmful emissions from the landfills escape into the air we breathe. The soil and water are also contaminated from our
Landfills in America have taken many square miles of what used to be fertile land, forests and communities and that trend does not seem to have an end. The waste, we as Americans, dispose of each year is in the tons and that number rises annually. One of the reasons why this occurs is actually quite simple; population. Population in modern day America has soared to well above three hundred million, in 1915 that number was hundred million. Urbanization and industry has given way to deforestation and landfill creation. The need for more landfills has caused many health concerns, issues, and problems to not only those living near and
Everybody throws away trash with little or no thought about where it’s going. What you might not know is that a lot of trash goes into our ocean. You may think it is not a big deal and that it’s just a little bit of trash in a really big ocean, but it’s not just a little bit of trash. In fact, it’s a whole lot. There is a place between California and Hawaii called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, but is better known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This area is the largest landfill in the world and is completely in the ocean. What are the effects of the landfill on the environment and how can it be prevented and rehabilitated to its original state?
b. Another myth about landfills is that they are poisoning the soil and our water supply. Even the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, says modern landfills pose little to no risk to humans. Modern landfills are built on a thick foundation of clay and plastic liners. Also, the methane gas produced in biodegradation is often...
Way that we can keep from landfill runoff from leaking into the ocean is to reduce oil, grease, and metals from going into the ground and leaking into the storm drains. Another way we can reduce runoff from getting from the land to the ocean is to keep and clean septic tank and keep it from leaking especially if u live right by and water source that lead straight to the ocean. Almost 25% of trash we go through goes down the drain into the ocean. We can also keep landfills from leaking into the ocean is to keeps landfills into contained areas and keep landfills from overgrowth. Also a way to keep the overgrowth of landfills is shipping trash from Hawaii. About 200,000 pounds of trash is shipped out of Hawaii every
Policy is needed to regulate which course of action should be taken and how it should be implemented. Because of this, many plans and policies revolving around the management of solid waste have been put in place. Sometimes however, a particular policy can have its shortfalls, potentially resulting in its negative aspects outweighing the positive ones. According to the Conference Board of Canada Report, “Canadians dispose of more municipal solid waste per capita than any other country” (2013). Solid waste management in particular, involves many aspects, ranging from packaging waste, food waste, etc. (White & Franke 1999), hence, the following analysis revolves around household and commercial waste – referred to as Municipal Solid Waste (White & Franke. 1999) – in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Municipal waste is a major health and environmental concern as it contributes to numerous problems like habitat destruction, surface groundwater pollution, and other forms of air, soil, and water contamination. Waste disposal methods like incineration create toxic substances, and landfills emit methane, which contributes to global warming. According to the Zero Waste Objective Report, “The impact of climate change and the increasing awareness of the role of “waste” and “wasting” in the production of greenhouse gas emissions is a constant environmental pressure… (2009). This leads to an increasing limitation of government to prevent and control the volume and toxicity of products in the waste stream and a growing need to shift responsibility to the product manufacturer.
Traditional methods of waste disposal have proven to be ineffective and have caused harmful effects on the environment. The most popular and inexpensive way to get rid of garbage is burial, but burying your problems does not necessarily mean getting rid of them. Landfill sites pose as severe ecological threats as these mass garbage dump yards overflow with trash and frequently contaminate our air, soil and water with hazardous wastes. About 400 million tons of hazardous wastes are generated each year1. A large-scale release of these materials can cause thousands of deaths and may poison the environment for many years. For example many industrial companies around the world cannot afford to enforce the strict pollution regulations set by many developed countries. This usually forces these types of companies to move to developing countries where pollution regulations are very lenient. These developing countries knowingly accept environmentally hazardous companies usually because they are in desperate need of employment. The harmful effects of these companies were clearly illustrated in the 1960s and 1970s when residents living near Minamata Bay, Japan, developed nervous disorders, tremors, and paralysis in a mysterious epidemic. The root was later found to be a local industry that had released mercury, a highly toxic element, into Minamata Bay. The disaster had claimed the lives of 400 people1. Since 1970 you can bet that a lot more than 400 people have died as a result of waste disposal. If the type of waste disposal were cheaper and effective we wouldn’t have to deal with waste problems, which still plague mankind today.
The United States produces “about 8.25 billion tons of solid wastes each year” (Russell 1). People do not realize the impact they have on our planet and environment. When people throw anything in the trashcan, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet. The number landfills in the United States are decreasing, but the amount and volume of waste being thrown into the new landfills is increasing (Russell 4). Because of this escalating amount of garbage, Methane which contributes to global warming is an outcome of these landfills (Russell 7). As a result, our planet is suffering because of this epidemic. The garbage being put in the landfills could be recycled, but not enough businesses, ...
...or lakes (Weber 2). When people just dump waste products instead of recycling, it is a misuse of the soil and can contribute to serious health conditions in animals, plants and humans.
Recycling is important in the effort to preserve our environment for future generations. We are running out of locations to put landfills. Recycling is a simple and effective way to reduce the amount of waste stored in landfills, yet many people do not know how easy it can be. For example, whenever I go to Shoprite® and I b...
Row, J., (2010). Pros and cons of incineration for landfill relief. Bright Hub. Retrieved: November 11, 2010, from: http://www.brighthub.com/engineering/civil/articles/89810.aspx