Knowledge in Landfills

Running Head: KNOWLEDGE LANDFILLS 1
Knowledge in Landfills
Bronson Bass
Portland State University

KNOWLEDGE LANDFILLS 2

Abstract
Americans generate trash at a rate of 4.6 pounds per day, per person, which translates to
2.51 million tons per. This is almost twice as much trash per person as most other major
countries. One third of trash gets recycled or composted. The rest goes into landfills, which are
essentially giant factories that convert garbage into toxic materials and greenhouse gases. Where
does this trash go, and how is it disposed, some gets recycled or recovered and some is burned,
but the majority is buried in landfills. Examining how a landfill is made, what happens to the
trash in landfills, what problems are associated with a landfill and how these problems are solved
will be covered in this paper.


Introduction:
Americans generate trash at a rate of 4.6 pounds per day, per person, which translates to
251 million tons per (Zaha, 2011). This is almost twice as much trash per person as most other
major countries. Where does this trash go, and how is it disposed, some gets recycled or
recovered and some is burned, but the majority is buried in landfills (Zaha, 2011). Examining
how a landfill is made, what happens to the trash in landfills, what problems are associated with
a landfill and how these problems are solved will be covered in this paper.
Burying Trash:
A dump is an open hole in the ground where trash is buried and that has various animals
such as rats, mice, and or birds swarming around. This is how most people view landfills. A
landfill is carefully designed structure built into or on top of the ground in which trash is isolated
from the surrounding environment such as groundwater, air, or rain. This is accomplished with a
bottom liner and daily covering of soil. So a much cleaner process (Rahman, 2010). A sanitary
landfill uses a clay liner to isolate the trash from the environment. A municipal solid waste
landfill uses a synthetic liner to isolate the trash from the environment with plastic. The purpose
of a landfill is to bury the trash in such a way that it will be isolated from groundwater, will be
kept dry and will not be in contact with air. Under these conditions, trash will not decompose
much. A landfill is not like a compost pile, where the purpose is to bury trash in such a way that
it will decompose quickly (Rahman, 2010).
How to Create a Landfill:
For a landfill to be built in most parts of the world, there are regulations that govern
where a landfill can be placed and how it can operate. The whole process begins with someone
proposing the landfill. Before a city or other authority can build a landfill, an environmental

impact study must be done on the proposed site to determine: the area of land necessary for the
landfill the composition of the soil and bedrock the flow of surface water over the site the impact
of the proposed landfill on the local environment and wildlife the historical or archaeological
value of the site. First, it must be determined if there is sufficient land for the landfill. The site
takes up 230 acres of land, but only 70 acres is dedicated to the actual landfill. The remaining
land is for the support (Nartey, 2012)
Scond, the composition of the underlying soil and bedrock must be determined. The
rocks should be as watertight as possible to prevent any leakage from reaching groundwater. The
bedrock must not be broken or you cannot predict where wastes might flow. You would not want
the site near mines or quarries because these structures frequently contact the groundwater
supply. At the same time, you must be able to sink wells at various points around the site to
monitor the groundwater or to capture any escaping wastes.
Third, the flow of water over the area must be studied. You do not want excess water
from the landfill draining on to neighboring property or vice versa. Similarly, you do not want
the landfill to be close to rivers, streams or wetlands so that any potential leakage from the
landfill will not enter the groundwater or watershed. Fourth, you need to determine the potential
effects of the landfill and possible contamination on local wildlife. For example, you would not
want to locate it near nesting areas of local or migrating birds. You would want to avoid local
fisheries, too.
Finally, if the site contains any historical or archaeological artifacts, you would not want
to build a landfill there. Once the environmental impact study has been completed, permits must
be obtained from the local, state and federal governments. In addition, money will have to be
raised from taxes or municipal bonds to build and operate the landfill. Landfill cost about $19

million to build and paid for through municipal bonds. Because funding usually comes from
some public source, public approval must be obtained through local governments or a
referendum. (Nartey, 2012)
Building the Landfill:
Once the environmental impact study is complete, the permits are granted and the money
has been raised, construction begins. First, access roads to the landfill site must be built if they
do not already exist. These roads will be used by construction equipment, sanitation services and
the general public. After roads have been built, then the landfill can be excavated. In the North
Wake County Landfill, the landfill began 10 feet below the road surface. (Mims, 2010)
Parts of a Landfill:
The basic parts of a landfill are: bottom liner system - separates trash and subsequent
leachate from groundwater, Cells - where the trash is stored within the landfill, storm water
drainage system - collects rain water that falls on the landfill, leachate collection system -
collects water that has percolated through the landfill itself and contains contaminating
substances. Methane collection system - collects methane gas that is formed during the
breakdown of trash (Mims, 2010)
Covering or cap - seals off the top of the landfill. Each of these parts is designed to
address specific problems that are encountered in a landfill. So, each part of the landfill will be
touched on.
Landfill Systems:
A landfill's major purpose and one of its biggest challenges is to contain the trash so that
the trash doesn't cause problems in the environment. The bottom liner prevents the trash from
coming in contact with the outside soil, particularly the groundwater. The liner is usually some

type of durable, puncture-resistant synthetic plastic. It is usually thick. The plastic liner may be
also be combined with compacted clay soils as an additional liner. The plastic liner may also be
surrounded on either side by a fabric mat that will help to keep the plastic liner from tearing or
puncturing from the nearby rock and gravel layers. (Lee DS, 1998)
The most precious commodity and overriding problem in a landfill is air space. The
amount of space is directly related to the capacity and usable life of the landfill. If you can
increase the air space, then you can extend the usable life of the landfill. To do this, trash is
compacted into areas, called cells that contain only one day's trash. Drainage ditches run along
the base of a landfill. The black pipe carries landfill gas to a pumping station.
No system to exclude water from the landfill is perfect and water does get into the
landfill. The water percolates through the cells and soil in the landfill much as water percolates
through ground coffee in a drip coffee maker. As the water percolates through the trash, it picks
up contaminants (organic and inorganic chemicals, metals, biological waste products of
decomposition) just as water picks up coffee in the coffee maker. This water with the dissolved
contaminants is called leachate and is typically acidic. (Lee DS, 1998)
To collect leachate, perforated pipes run throughout the landfill (Figure 3). These pipes
then drain into a leachate pipe, which carries leachate to a leachate collection pond. Leachate can
be pumped to the collection pond or flow to it by gravity. A leachate collection pond is designed
to catch the contaminants that can get into water that goes through the trash in a landfill. The
leachate in the pond is tested for acceptable levels of various chemicals and allowed to settle.
After testing, the leachate must be treated like any other sewage/wastewater; the treatment may
occur on-site or off-site. (Lee DS, 1998) This article was a little dated, but it explaned the
process very well, so I decided to use it in this final paper.

Byproducts:
Bacteria in the landfill break down the trash in the absence of oxygen because the landfill
is airtight. A byproduct of this anaerobic breakdown is landfill gas, which contains
approximately fifty percent methane and fifty percent carbon dioxide with small amounts of
nitrogen and oxygen. This presents a hazard because the methane can explode and/or burn. So,
the landfill gas must be removed. To do this, a series of pipes are embedded within the landfill to
collect the gas. In some landfills, this gas is vented or burned. (Dommergue, 2002)
More recently, it has been recognized that this landfill gas represents a usable energy
source. The methane can be extracted from the gas and used as fuel. The extraction system is a
split system, meaning that methane gas can go to the boilers and/or the methane flares that burn
the gas. The reason for the split system is that the landfill will increase its gas production over
time from 300 cubic feet per minute to 1,250 cubic feet per minute and exceed the capacity of
the boilers at the chemical company. Therefore, the excess gas will have to be burned. It is not
cost-effective to compress the excess gas to liquid and sell it. (Dommergue, 2009)
Each cell is covered daily with six inches of compacted soil. This covering seals the
compacted trash from the air and prevents pests (birds, rats, mice, flying insects, etc.) from
getting into the trash. This soil takes up quite a bit of space. Because space is a precious
commodity, many landfills are experimenting with tarps or spray coverings of paper or
cement/paper emulsions. These emulsions can effectively cover the trash, but take up only a
quarter of an inch instead of six inches. (Dommergue, 2009)
When a section of the landfill is finished, it is covered permanently with a polyethylene
cap. The cap is then covered with a 2-foot layer of compacted soil. The soil is then planted with
vegetation to prevent erosion of the soil by rainfall and wind. The vegetation consists of grass

and kudzu. No trees, shrubs or plants with deep penetrating roots are used so that the plant roots
do not contact the underlying trash and allow leachate out of the landfill. Occasionally, leachate
may seep through weak point in the covering and come out on to the surface. It appears black
and bubbly. Later, it will stain the ground red. Leachate seepages are promptly repaired by
excavating the area around the seepage and filling it with well-compacted soil to divert the flow
of leachate back into the landfill. (Baumgartner, 2010)
At many points surrounding the landfill are groundwater monitoring stations. These are
pipes that are sunk into the groundwater so water can be sampled and tested for the presence of
leachate chemicals. The temperature of the groundwater is measured. Because the temperature
rises when solid waste decomposes, an increase in groundwater temperature could indicate that
leachate is seeping into the groundwater. Also, if the pH of the groundwater becomes acidic, that
could indicate seeping leachate. (Baumgartner, 2010)
Trash put in a landfill will stay there for a very long time. Inside a landfill, there is little
oxygen and little moisture. Under these conditions, trash does not break down very rapidly. In
fact, when old landfills have been excavated or sampled, 40-year-old newspapers have been
found with easily readable print. Landfills are not designed to break down trash, merely to bury
it. When a landfill closes, the site, especially the groundwater, must be monitored and maintained
for up to 30 years. ( Baumgartner, 2010)
Alternatives:
2.50 million tons of trash every year, of which only 83 million tons--about a third--gets
recycled or composted (Pyta, 2009). The rest goes into landfills, which are essentially giant
factories that convert garbage into toxic materials and greenhouse gases. Water leaching through
the detritus picks up industrial chemicals and heavy metals, all too often depositing those poisons

in nearby groundwater supplies. Meanwhile anaerobic bacteria convert organic matter into
methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide.
When confronted with this reality, a number of organizations, both private and municipal,
have attempted to live by a zero-waste philosophy, pushing to reduce the amount of trash they
send to a landfill to nearly zero by reusing what they can and recycling the remainder. Ideally
landfills would eventually become a thing of the past (Valente, 2007).
Unilever's Lipton Tea plant in Suffolk, Va., for example, now sends 92 percent less waste
to landfills than it did in 2007. The plant now recycles 70 percent of its waste and composts 22
percent more. Many other companies, including Apple, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox and
Walmart plan to sharply curtail their waste streams or eliminate them entirely (Webber, 2011).
These companies are acting in their own self-interest: achieving zero waste by using fewer
resources in the first place is a way to cut costs. The Lipton plant eliminated plastic straps from
shipping pallets, replaced disposable wipes with reusable rags and gave every employee a lunch
tin with metal utensils. Every year the plan saves more than eight million gallons of water, five
gigawatt-hours of electricity and, not least, tens of thousands of dollars (Yadav, 2010).
Dozens of cities have also signed on to the zero-waste goal, using incentives instead of
technology to get there. San Francisco instituted a "pay as you throw" program that charges
residents based on volume of household trash they throw out. It is also one of the first cities in
the U. S. to implement a curbside composting program in addition to recycling. The measures
have already allowed San Francisco to divert 72 percent of its waste, rolling back the clock on
the amount of trash it sends to landfills to rates not seen since 1980 (Yadav, 2010).
Sustainability:

Future generations is the key component in sustainability, in that we are always working
towards the machines that we create to last longer, be stronger, and be better overall. The quote
in the beginning really sums it up, for me. And that is development that last. (Bonevac, 2010)
This contentious issue is probably best examined by repeating the old saying your right to swing
your fist wherever you choose ends where my nose begins. A social contract diminishes the
opportunities for an individual to do serious harm to other individuals in society while exercising
freedom of choice. Members of society voluntarily relinquish certain individual rights clearly
perceived as harmful so that their lives are not disrupted by inappropriate actions of others.
Stated more crudely, individuals make a social contract to avoid damaging behavior with the
understanding that society will coerce all of its members by imposing consequences for
inappropriate behavior. The situation becomes more complicated when private property is
involved because people feel that they own the property and should be able to do whatever they
wish with it. However, the same principle applies - a social contract requires that individual
behavior must be restrained if such behavior endangers either the freedom or the property of
others. Some residential areas even extend this principle to the aesthetic, where hanging laundry
outdoors is considered inappropriate and antenna towers for ham radio operators are not
permitted. A general, social contract is essential if one moves from one part of a country to
another and wants to assume that certain protections are in place. (Cairns, 2009)
Sustainability merely modifies the social contract, i.e. general consent to protect future
generations from the actions of present generations that will jeopardize their opportunities for
living a comparable life. Sustainability, therefore, is not anti-private property but merely seeks,
with common consent of society in general, to ensure that future generations have a habitable
planet and at least the same opportunities as present generations.

First off, defining and understanding what sustainability is and does can be difficult. With so
many definitions and ways to view this broad topic we need to pick one that we will be learning
about. One that I thought was simple and easy to comprehend was development that lasts.
(Bonevac, 2010) It is simple, concise and makes since, and because we are starting fresh with
this topic we should have a definition that is clear. With what we have learned throughout the
first and second terms will fit very well into this definition of sustainability. Also sustainability
will fit perfectly into the university studies goals. (Bonevac, 2010)
In one article by Bonevac that I came across he questions if sustainability is sustainable.
The life expectancy of the solar system, and even of the universe, is not infinite. So, what we
really have to worry about is a finite sum, Bonevac states in the beginning of his article. He
brings up a vital point with this statement. When we are talking about sustainability, how long
are we trying to be sustainable? But I also believe we are just trying to talk about ways to keep
the emissions and ways to make our buildings better for the long hull. There are many ways in
which we can reduce pollution, and make things to better the world, but its the fact that it takes
more time, money, and resources. Also living in a time when you buy a computer and it breaks
one year later, its a time when there is lots of waste. Maybe just making smarter choices in what
we create. (Bonevac, 2010)
Another source brings up a good topic in what sustainability is against. Private property
was one of these topics. Sustainability modifies the social contract. (Cairns, 2009) If you want
to implement an idea or strategy and expect it to work, you enforce it on people and their land.
What is further explained in the article is the idea of anti-growth.
The challenge for future research in sustainability economics is to overcome the
arbitrariness with which, so far, one or the other aspect of the issue, to overcome the unfortunate

divide between ecological economics and environmental and resource economics in the study of
sustainability, and to systematically embed individual contributions to the issue into the larger
set-up of sustainability economics. (Baumgartner, 2010)
Future generations is the key component in sustainability, in that we are always working
towards the machines that we create to last longer, be stronger, and be better overall. The quote
in the beginning really sums it up, for me. And that is development that last. (Bonevac, 2010)
Conclusion:
Landfills are something that we have been doing for far too long. With landfills being
something that is non reversible, being that these materials cannot decompose and have to be
watched for 30 years after they have been disposed of just make this process a huge mess. Being
sustainable will affect our future generations in the same convinces that we have in our current
society. A way that we can be sustainable with our waste is by disposing of it correctly and in the
proper way by composting compostable materials and recycling bottles and cans. As a society
we can take steps in our consuming by purchasing these specific materials that have the
capabilities to be composted. With landfills being involved in our water systems as well it just
adds to more and more inconveniences that are supposedly one major convenience. The purpose
of this paper was to show how landfills are created and to point out why they are not good in an
ecosystem or environment. We produce more trash than we know what to do with. By taking
these small steps ourselves by composting and recycling will make our society a better place to
live in.


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