When the Northeast taps out, will we shunt unrecoverable plastic junk and other garbage to Middle America? Over the Rockies? Miles on the highway are one thing, but believe it or not, it's much more expensive to send waste to landfill or incinerate it than it is to recycle materials. And tipping fees, which are a gate fee for landfills measured in price per ton of deposited materials , continue to rise as waste production increases. Through waste prevention and dedicated recycling, companies can make inroads to slowing the rising environmental, developmental, and commercial costs of landfills.
Sustainable businesses following a 5 Rs framework can help eliminate the need for raw materials, minimizing the release of greenhouse gases and saving energy. As a dedicated waste and recycling provider, RoadRunner Recycling can help your business begin recycling the four most landfilled items: paper , organic material, plastics , and packaging.
Landfills: We're Running Out of Space. What is a Landfill? Are Landfills Polluting the Earth? Are Landfills Running Out of Space? How Can RoadRunner Help? The upward global trend is echoed in the United States, which has seen the amount garbage from cities and counties grow from Environmental Protection Agency. While landfill mining can create values beyond pure profits, for now the waste management industry is paying more attention to solving sustainability problems through promoting recycling and other efforts that divert trash from landfills.
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Show your support for nonprofit journalism! Yes, I'll support Ensia! Add Your Comments Post a Comment. You care about environmental issues. In some local cities , the city is the waste hauler, but in the unincorporated areas, trash is collected by companies that the County permits to pick it up. A transfer station is a location that accepts trash, and frequently recyclables and other materials, before transferring them off to their final destination.
This is done in part so that the heavy trucks that do the collection do not have to drive all the way to a waste's final destination. Nothing stays at the transfer station permanently; everything is transferred out using big rig trucks.
The County operates four transfer stations, which you can read more about on the County's Public Works website. Trash from all these locations gets transferred to a landfill. The principal behind modern sanitary landfills is to bury trash in the most contained way possible. Trash is delivered by trucks to what is called the "open cell". This is the only part of the landfill that has trash visible at the surface. After being delivered, the trash is driven over by heavy machines called compactors.
A lot of materials contain air, and the compactors squeeze out as much air as possible. According to the NSWMA, modern landfills require soil to be added to cover fresh additions of waste every day. The solid waste layer becomes laced with these strips of dirt. But garbage in a landfill does decompose, albeit slowly and in a sealed, oxygen-free environment. Because of the lack of oxygen, bacteria in the waste produce methane gas, which is highly flammable and dangerous if allowed to collect underground.
It is also a potent greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming.
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