Reuse and Renew, Is Life as We Know It About to Change? Twice a day, five days a week, I drive by the Waste Management Landfill located just off of State Route 668 on the edge of Licking and Perry Counties. Every day there is a gray smoke coming from the enormous building that is noticeable off in the distance. There is a foul odor in the air that can be smelled for miles. It is worrisome to consider the pollution that is going into the air and the earth. How can this be stopped? There has to be a better way to dispose of waste. Is recycling the answer? Should recycling be mandatory? Certainly, there are pros and cons; let us research the issue and decide for ourselves. Today, virtually everything that we do creates waste.
Everything
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A landfill is essentially a huge hole in the ground. The garbage is dumped into it and then compacted and spread to fit as much as possible. “Landfills are ugly, polluting and an environmentally unfriendly way to dispose waste.” (Hunter, 2012) As additional waste is produced, other landfill sites are necessary. If the landfill is not lined or capped, the soil and ground water becomes polluted. These pollutants affect wildlife, food, and drinking water. The progressively rotting waste releases a chemical odor and gases into the air, known as carbon dioxide and methane, which smells like foul eggs and can attract rats and flies which transmit disease.
One way of saving space in landfills is to burn trash in incinerators to create only 1/5th of the original weight of the waste, leaving only the ash. Some of the ash is recycled as road building material and some is buried. (Meredith, 2010) The best incinerators clean up the gases to stop them from going into the
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The waste gases can contain dioxins and be released into the air. These dioxins, also known as ‘persistant organic pollution’ or POP’s, may cause cancer and once found in the environment or people’s bodies, they stay forever. The gases can also contain metals such as lead which cause various illnesses, including asthma and other lung diseases. “No amount of clean up can prevent the release of climate-changing carbon dioxide caused by the burning process.” (Meredith, 2010) “Trash that is not burned or placed in landfills can hurt animals; birds, raccoons and other hungry animals eat litter and can become ill; storms wash trash and pollutants into oceans, rivers and lakes; fish and other sea animals can choke on plastic bags and other trash.” (Metz, 2010) To keep our waste out of landfills we need to look more closely at reducing, reusing and
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
To implement a recycling program requires a collection process that includes the containers to gather the materials, the trucks to transport them to the processing site, and the manpower to manage the program. Unfortunately, recycling is more of a business than an attempt to save the environment. The value of the material being recycled overshadows the negative impact of dumping items into the landfill. At a point in time, the demand for recycled paper declined, so recyclers stored the material in hopes that values would increase. “The hope is that eventually the markets turn around and that the materials is sold, but I have heard of instances where it gets landfilled, because a community doesn’t have the demand or the space or the company to deal with it, “ says Gene Jones, the executive director of Southern Waste Information Exchange (Westervelt,
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
Almost two billion tonnes of food is waste around the world every year. Meanwhile, twenty million people suffer starvation in countries such as Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and Nigeria. Moreover, while farmers work hard to sustain the most essential element in civilization, almost one-third of the world’s population doesn’t even receive anything. Which is maddening that first world nations’ governments does not make actions on how to donate or maybe sell them for cheaper to countries that are in need instead of just dumping the food waste on landfills. Landfills have a huge impact on Earth for removing oxygen, which causes to break down aerobic process and as a result it releases methane. Furthermore, landfills will affect animals near it and
I am not a big earth first person but I do believe in recycling because I work at a local recycling center and I think recycling is a good thing. In fact I think everyone should recycle to make the earth a better place as a whole. A few good reasons why recycling is a good this is, the more people recycle, the less room is filled in landfills. Also, when people recycle they are reusing materials, therefore saving resources. Another good reason is that when you recycle often times you get paid back the C.R.V. that you already paid for in the grocery store.
Recycling. What does this word mean to you? Do you recycle? Do you support or oppose the act of it? What is written in the following paragraphs may or may not help you make this one special planet in our solar system we call Earth; the only planet scientists know supports life. Recycling benefits many aspects of life. Recycling benefits the aesthetics of our daily environment, it makes our family and friends safer from sickness, it boosts our economy, and it allows us to make more use of the limited natural nonrenewable resources we have on our earth. Recycling will benefit life by reducing our environmental impact, preventing injury, boosting the economy, and extending the use we can make can make out of our resources.
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...
In old batteries, there is a toxic lead that is causing health problems for the Taiwan people who are disposing these batteries (Gay, 12). Space is becoming a landfill from the excess of space flights and the radioactive supplies from nuclear reactors, which could come to our atmosphere and explode (Gay, 13). When businesses run out of space to dump their toxic trash they go to poor nations because they do not have strict safety regulations (Gay, 31). The landfills on Earth are not the only place trash is getting put. The ocean is being trashed with plastic bags, soda can holders, and large fishnets, which are harming dolphins, turtles, sea lions, and others (Gay, 69). Military bases in the U.S have more hazardous waste and are responsible for contamination in soil and waters (Gay, 83). There are other hazards happening because we are throwing away so much stuff that companies have to remake all of those products. Incinerators are places where waste is burned to ashes and if we recycle these can go away. Incinerators cause sulfur dioxide, carbon m...
Have you ever wonder what can you do about the bottles and cans you find around you? People that doesn?t care about the world being clean is littering the place. It makes things very difficult to put up for. Recycling cans and bottles can help save the earth form waste and trash buildup and can make new things. I think that recycling should be mandatory and there should be recycling cans in various locations at school and everywhere else.
There are many different types of pollution such as air, water, and land. The pollution of our environment is due to garbage. Garbage is improperly disposed into rivers or other water bodies leading to water pollution. Some countries do not have the technology to treat large amounts of water before letting it back into the rivers and ocean. As a kid from a developing country, I noticed a lot of things when I was on the road with my friend visiting neighboring states in India. I found that piles of garbage were placed near the villages. These piles of garbage were producing a liquid that would flow down and infect the only water source of the villagers. When I came back and researched the topic, I found that garbage could also have other negative effects. Dumping the waste materials on the ground could lead to ground poisoning. Ground poisoning occurs when the ground is regularly in contact with poisonous materials, leading to the ground water being polluted and the land losing its fertility, causing great damage to the ecosystem. Loss of fertility in land can lead to drought. The methane gas produce by the decomposing piles of garbage causes air pollution. Apart from pollution, there is depletion of natural resources because raw materials are constantly being used to produce new products rather than being reused. Furthermore, global warming will become
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.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2008), an American produces 250 million tons of garbage per year (para.2). There are different circumstances that are based on the society, environmental conditions, occupation and size of each of the different families. As Richmond (2010) stated, if no administration organizations has the responsibility or resources to concentrate their efforts on the waste disposal, then the responsibility to do that is on the nongovernmental organizations and ordinary people (para.... ... middle of paper ... ...