Welcome!
Please pass back the handout “Landfills
and incinerators”.
 Please read the board!

TRASH TALK
(DID I EVER TELL YOU I REALLY LIKE YO MAMMA
JOKES?)
Fresh Kills Landfill NY
Can be seen from
space!
 NY landfill 19482001
 At peak operation,
29,000 tons daily, 10
million tons/yr.
 That’s a major pile of
junk!

Landfills in Tejas
About 2,000 in US
 678 in Texas
 21 operating in
Harris county
 Average Texas
landfill:
172 acres
28 ft below surface
43 ft above surface

That’s a lot of habitat!
Oake Landfill Houston
Largest landfill in Texas
“Sanitary Landfill”?
Modern Landfill design:
Developed on military bases during WWII as
concentrated groups created lots of waste.
Move to mechanized system.
Looking at the diagram, what possible environmental
damage could be caused?
1. Leachate = liquid collected at
bottom of landfill
Acetone
 Benzene
 Lead & other heavy
metals
 Chlorides

Liners – plastic, clay
 Collection and
treatment

2. Methane collection
Municipal solid waste
is covered and
compacted daily = no
O2
 Anaerobic
respiration produces
methane
 When decomposers
decompose, they’re
doing cellular
respiration!

Material is compacted daily
Organic materials in a landfill do not
decompose at normal rates
Prof. Rathje – The
Garbage Project at
University of Arizona
 Archaeological study
of landfills from 1973
to 2005
 21 landfills, 2 million
+ items, 15,000
household

Calendar dated 1976 dug up in 1988
– how long was it in there?
Landfill in San
Francisco
 Did this decompose?

Methane collection
Methane recovered
through pipes
Oake landfill methane
sent to Budweiser
plant to burn for
electricity.
About ½ of methane
leaks into
atmosphere
Smart companies use methane as a
resource

Methane has 25x
more greenhouse
warming potential
than CO2
3. Clay cap seals landfill

Reclaimed landfills
can be used as:

Parks

Golf courses

Ski areas

Wind farm/solar arrays

Wildlife habitat
BUT NOT: homes,
lakes, farmland
 Monitoring required
for 30 yrs after
closure

What about incineration?



Haverhill Resource
Recovery Facility
1,650 tons-per-day of
solid waste
40 megawatts of
renewable energy sold
wholesale on New
England's power grid.
Location: 100
Recovery Way,
Haverhill,
Massachusetts
Pros? Cons?
Eastern Garbage Patch
 Floats
between Hawaii
and California
 Twice as big as Texas
 Can be 30 m deep
The Trouble with Plastics in the Oceans




don’t biodegrade like other debris
break down over time into smaller and smaller pieces while still
maintaining their chemical make-up
As the pieces get smaller fish, mammals, birds and even plankton
will consume the pieces which are not digestible
While the plastics may not be visible to the eye, studies have
shown that in some areas the concentration of plastics
outnumbers the concentration of plankton by a ratio of 7:1

This Laysan Albatross
chick has been
accidentally fed plastic by
its parents and died as a
result.
So what are our options?
The “hierarchy” of waste management
Reduce (design products to be durable)
 Reuse (find a different use before
disposal)
 Recycle (break down and reprocess)
 Incinerate
 Landfill
