For my
first post, I will be discussing one of the most common forms of waste
management in the world, the collection of trash in landfills. Ever since the
1800s, people in cities had the habit of disposing of trash by throwing it out
their windows. Once medical knowledge advanced, the correlation between the
presence of trash in the streets and the spread of deadly diseases. By the late
1800s, many cities gathered trash in horse drawn carriages and disposed of it
in dumps or even in the sea. The first modern landfill was developed in 1935
and it consisted of a hole that trash was dumped in and periodically covered in
dirt. Then, by 1959, the American Society of Civil Engineers set the standards
for a sanitary landfill.
Nowadays,
there are strict regulations on the composition and location of landfills.
Sanitary landfills must be lined with multiple layers of organic and inorganic
substances. The top layer is just a layer of soil to serve as a base for the
garbage, then a geotextile layer that filters out large pieces of trash, then
some filtering gravel with a plastic layer that collects all water and
hazardous materials. Finally, a layer of clay lines the bottom to collect any
contaminated water that has seeped through the other layers. These layers of
protection are very important to the prevention of hazardous materials leaching
into ground water and polluting drinking water sources. Additionally, landfills
cannot be placed in areas that could allow damage to occur, such as a wetland,
a floodplain, or on a fault zone. Landfills are often not placed near
neighborhoods or suburbs because many people do not want the smell or the
possibility of groundwater contamination.
Like
any system, there are pros and cons to sanitary landfills. Landfills are one of
the cheapest options for waste management because they do not require to
transport of materials to places very far away. Additionally, they are one of
the safest methods when taking worker safety into consideration. There is
little to no risk of harm on workers in landfills like there is in other waste
management situations like incinerators. Conversely, there are many problems
with landfills. They take up lots of space and change the land cover of an
area. There is also the potential of ground and surface water contamination if
the linings in the landfill fail. One of the largest downfalls is that they
produce a lot of methane gas into the atmosphere. When wastes breakdown, they
produce methane which is flammable and can cause problems if ingested. Also,
methane is a very potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming and
ozone destruction.
Stay Sustainable,
Shelby
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment