5 ms·
> Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems ... yet?
by noja 4y ago
> Yeah, landfills are not major environmental problems
... yet?
- xxr 4y agoIs there enough raw material on earth for landfills to become major environmental problems? (genuinely curious)
- BurningFrog 4y agoMaybe this makes me sounds like a jerk, but: All material that can end up in landfills is already on Earth.
- notahacker 4y agoDepends what you mean by "major environmental problem". Landfills aren't going to singlehandedly cause anthropogenic climate change, but they contribute significantly to it, and a poorly sealed landfill leaching its contents into the local water table can cause some pretty drastic problems with the local environment
- sacrosancty 4y agoHow are they worse than any alternative? If I dump my food waste in the garden, is that emitting less GHG than letting it decompose in a landfill? Is it that it comes out as methane from landfills but less harmful CO2 from a little pile? That should be solved by flaring the methane.
- google234123 4y agoIf you are worried about space i recommend that you look at the surface area of earth and the volume of space that’s accessible to us underneath the surface.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoWhat would cause them to be an environmental issue? As far as I know they can be built in a safe manner and there is plenty of space for them.
- mschuster91 4y agoIn the Western world maybe, but outside of it... hell even in the Western world we have regular reports of mismanagement and corruption, just look at Italy. We need to reduce the amount of trash we produce, not hope for a miracle technology.
- DANK_YACHT 4y agoLandfills are not a miracle technology. They exist already and are technologically sound. It’d be way more of a miracle if we somehow managed to greatly reduce waste.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoHow sustainable are landfills? There's limited land for farming, residences, manufacturing, and everything else we use it for. And trucking trash to deserts to landfill there isn't carbon neutral either. Trash also doesn't breakdown as quickly in covered landfills (for better or worse depending on what one dumps).
- a9h74j 4y agoGiven the yield of useful content vs. rock in mining, I suspect the more limiting factor is space for all the mining, not space for disposal of the 0.1% metal etc yield for making industrial goods.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoPeople love to "what if" landfills. Best to not bother arguing with them. We have tons of problems with emissions, plastics pollution, industrial dumping. However landfills ain't one of them, but people won't give up. I've learned to not bother discussing anything with them if they don't know a few basics of how modern landfills are run (at least in western nations).
- TylerE 4y ago