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So many people misunderstand landfills. All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles acro

by cm2012 2y ago

So many people misunderstand landfills. All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side. That is, landfills take a trivial amount of space. Putting stuff in a landfill is way better for global warming since its not burned, the carbon is buried. Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural environment. The plastic pollution in the ocean is from developing countries and things unrelated to our soda bottles. Modern landfills (as this article describes) are really efficient and have basically no leakage to the environment. As mentioned, you can make beautiful parks on a closed landfill with no smell. Technology is amazing.

DrNosferatu 2y ago
Note that western countries export waste to developing countries.
- astrodust 2y ago
  We (Toronto) used to export our trash to Michigan when the incinerator was de-commissioned and the landfill was full.
alphanumeric0 2y ago
Landfills are the third largest source of atmospheric methane (https://www.epa.gov/land-research/quantifying-methane-emissions-landfilled-food-waste https://www.epa.gov/land-research/quantifying-methane-emissi...) from human activities, a greenhouse gas worse than CO2. Methane has a GWP of 27-30 over 100 years (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...), meaning it is 27-30 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2.
strken 2y ago
Landfill leachate is quite terrifying. You end up with a bunch of reactions between whatever random assortment of garbage found itself on the same truck, and the resulting liquid is acidic enough to dissolve pipes as well as heavily contaminated with heavy metals. I am fine with landfills, but they're one of those engineering marvels -- like bridges, microwave ovens, sky scrapers, aircraft, high voltage transformers, cranes, or motor vehicles -- that are about taking something inherently dangerous and letting us interact with it safely.
blitzar 2y ago
The plastic pollution in the ocean is from our soda bottles we shipped to developing countries.
- aziaziazi 2y ago
  IIRC, ~30%[0] of ocean plastic came from fishing nests. They are huge, break often and it’s easier and cheaper to throw aboard an old one than bring it onshore for recycling. (edit) 0: 46% https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-plastic-fishing-gear/ https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-... Totally unrelated but since it’s from seashepherd I can’t help adding Paul Watson trial from extradition in Japan is tomorrow.
  - legulere 2y ago
    I think the number comes from one study about the great pacific garbage patch and cannot be generalised to all ocean trash.
    - aziaziazi 2y ago
      You are very right: > Approximately 46% of the 79 thousand tons of ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets, some as large as football fields, according to the study published in March 2018 in Scientific Reports While generalisations may be misleading, when people talk about ocean pollutions they often think about the patches.
  - daedrdev 2y ago
    Additionally, the top 10 rivers, 9 of which in Asia, produce an extremely high precent of land based ocean pollution
    - immibis 2y ago
      E.g. the bottles we sent them for "recycling"
the_gipsy 2y ago
I'd guess that it's cheaper to ship a lot of garbage to developing countries.
- hmottestad 2y ago
  In Oslo we import trash from the other European countries and then transport a bunch of our own trash to Sweden. Seemingly all because of some carbon emissions taxes in Norway. https://www.nrk.no/norge/fyller-ovnene-med-importsoppel-samtidig-som-vart-eget-avfall-sendes-til-sverige-1.16663844 https://www.nrk.no/norge/fyller-ovnene-med-importsoppel-samt...
- toast0 2y ago
  Oregon is a lot closer, and they accept a lot of trash from my state by rail. No need to put it on a boat.
- gruez 2y ago
  Is it? Land is dirt cheap in the US. Surely it's cheaper to bury it locally than ship it half way across the world? Even for the plastic that's being shipped half way across the world, they're ostensibly done for recycling purposes (ie. they're buying the plastic waste), and the unrecycleable plastics end up being mismanaged.
  - lobsterthief 2y ago
    You are correct. In the US at least, land is dirt cheap. Transporting stuff is not cheap. For this reason, it’s common for some US states to ship garbage to other US states for disposal, simply because geographically it makes economic sense.
  - ngruhn 2y ago
    I’ve heard, shipping a lot of garbage to China was quite common until the Chinese banned it. That was economically viable because China exports so much and many container ships would otherwise return empty to China.
    - 2y ago
nullindividual 2y ago
Tires are a source of microplastics, as well. https://assessments.epa.gov/risk/document/&deid=361070 https://assessments.epa.gov/risk/document/&deid=361070 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724012920?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...
mikojan 2y ago
> Putting stuff in a landfill is way better for global warming since its not burned, the carbon is buried. Landfills release gas. Of course it is better than burning plastic but there is no environmentalist on earth demanding for plastic to be burned. > Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural environment. This is horrifyingly incorrect! Developed countries process only some of their trash themselves. The rest is shipped into poorer countries. It will end up in the natural environment. The UK ships off two thirds to other countries.
- gruez 2y ago
  >This is horrifyingly incorrect! Developed countries process only some of their trash themselves. The rest is shipped into poorer countries. It will end up in the natural environment. No, you're incorrect. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade >Many people think that rich countries ship most of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true? >The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically. >[...] When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%.[...] >[...] I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.
  - mikojan 2y ago
    > No, you're incorrect. Exactly what statement is incorrect? Adding to that: Statistics show that developed countries are shipping significant amounts of trash into poorer countries. But there is most likely an even higher number of unrecorded cases. Supply chains can be difficult to monitor even within the OECD, and an estimated third of shipments is illegal.[0] [0]: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/video-how-eu-tackling-illegal-waste-shipments-2024-06-05_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/video-how-eu-tackling-...
    - gruez 2y ago
breck 2y ago
> All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side. > That is, landfills take a trivial amount of space. Damn, I had to think about this for a second, but you are right. How the hell did I not realize this before? Can you please popularize this more? Maybe compress into a pithy phrase.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jrmg 2y ago
  The supposed triviality of this size is not sitting well with me. What’s described is a 100 yard deep hole. So about 27 stories. It’s 35 miles per side, so 35 x 35 = 1225 square miles in area. That’s bigger than any city in the mainland US[1]. It’s a 27 story deep hole that’s twice as big as Houston. Three times as big as the city of LA, and over half the size of the urban metropolitan LA area[2]. Four times the size of New York (or three times, if you include the water as well as the land). This is not a trivial amount of land - and it gets worse if you were not to have it be (ridiculously!) one hundred yards deep. I’m not arguing we’re about to run out of landfill space imminently, but calling this ‘trivial’ is not what I’d call it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles
  - cm2012 2y ago
    It's trivial compared to the amount of space in the US and the timelines we're talking about. Realistically no one is going to build this super hole, it will be 1,000 smaller landfills built over 1,000 years.
  - breck 2y ago
    Fair enough. Here it is visualized using Google Earth: https://x.com/breckyunits/status/1831080588406849585 https://x.com/breckyunits/status/1831080588406849585
  - 2y ago
renhanxue 2y ago
> Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural environment. Here in Sweden less than 0.5% of household waste goes to landfill. Almost everything is burned in co-generation plants for district heating, with pretty sophisticated exhaust gas treatment. Unfortunately most of the plastic waste that goes into the recycling bins also end up there in the end, with only about 10% currently being actually recycled (mostly it's PET that gets recycled, AFAIK). edit: My 10% figure is some years old; plastic numbers are actually much better now! These days it's about 35%. For glass, paper and metal the same figures are all around 80% though so plastic still has a long way to go.
- wodenokoto 2y ago
  I thought you guys sold it to Denmark. We love burning that stuff. Even put a recreational ski slope on top of one of our incineration plants!
- sitkack 2y ago
  So it goes into the sky instead? That seems more sightly, but the CO2 emissions must be astronomical.
  - hmottestad 2y ago
    When it comes to plastics I like to think that it’s basically a product of oil and other oil related products are burnt all the time for energy. The end goal should include a carbon capture step. They’ve looked into that here in Oslo, Norway, but it ended up much costlier than anticipated and at the moment it looks like it’s going to be very very drawn out. Carbon capture at the source is usually not that terrible of an idea. Trying to capture carbon from the air around us is very challenging, but if the air is 80% CO2 to begin with it’s going to be much cheaper to capture half of it then trying to capture the same amount from regular air. I heard that a good way to capture carbon on a bigger scale would be through burning trees and capturing the carbon. Store the carbon in a concentrated form, use the heat to produce electricity and when you chop down trees to burn you also make space for growing new trees. Sounds kinda slow though, and not exactly cheap either.

by cm2012 2y ago

DrNosferatu 2y ago

Note that western countries export waste to developing countries.

astrodust 2y ago
We (Toronto) used to export our trash to Michigan when the incinerator was de-commissioned and the landfill was full.

alphanumeric0 2y ago

Landfills are the third largest source of atmospheric methane (https://www.epa.gov/land-research/quantifying-methane-emissions-landfilled-food-waste https://www.epa.gov/land-research/quantifying-methane-emissi...) from human activities, a greenhouse gas worse than CO2. Methane has a GWP of 27-30 over 100 years (https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warming-potentials https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...), meaning it is 27-30 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2.

strken 2y ago

Landfill leachate is quite terrifying. You end up with a bunch of reactions between whatever random assortment of garbage found itself on the same truck, and the resulting liquid is acidic enough to dissolve pipes as well as heavily contaminated with heavy metals. I am fine with landfills, but they're one of those engineering marvels -- like bridges, microwave ovens, sky scrapers, aircraft, high voltage transformers, cranes, or motor vehicles -- that are about taking something inherently dangerous and letting us interact with it safely.

blitzar 2y ago

The plastic pollution in the ocean is from our soda bottles we shipped to developing countries.

aziaziazi 2y ago
IIRC, ~30%[0] of ocean plastic came from fishing nests. They are huge, break often and it’s easier and cheaper to throw aboard an old one than bring it onshore for recycling. (edit) 0: 46% https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-plastic-fishing-gear/ https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-... Totally unrelated but since it’s from seashepherd I can’t help adding Paul Watson trial from extradition in Japan is tomorrow.
- legulere 2y ago
  I think the number comes from one study about the great pacific garbage patch and cannot be generalised to all ocean trash.
  - aziaziazi 2y ago
    You are very right: > Approximately 46% of the 79 thousand tons of ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets, some as large as football fields, according to the study published in March 2018 in Scientific Reports While generalisations may be misleading, when people talk about ocean pollutions they often think about the patches.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  Additionally, the top 10 rivers, 9 of which in Asia, produce an extremely high precent of land based ocean pollution
  - immibis 2y ago
    E.g. the bottles we sent them for "recycling"

the_gipsy 2y ago

I'd guess that it's cheaper to ship a lot of garbage to developing countries.

hmottestad 2y ago
In Oslo we import trash from the other European countries and then transport a bunch of our own trash to Sweden. Seemingly all because of some carbon emissions taxes in Norway. https://www.nrk.no/norge/fyller-ovnene-med-importsoppel-samtidig-som-vart-eget-avfall-sendes-til-sverige-1.16663844 https://www.nrk.no/norge/fyller-ovnene-med-importsoppel-samt...
toast0 2y ago
Oregon is a lot closer, and they accept a lot of trash from my state by rail. No need to put it on a boat.
gruez 2y ago
Is it? Land is dirt cheap in the US. Surely it's cheaper to bury it locally than ship it half way across the world? Even for the plastic that's being shipped half way across the world, they're ostensibly done for recycling purposes (ie. they're buying the plastic waste), and the unrecycleable plastics end up being mismanaged.
- lobsterthief 2y ago
  You are correct. In the US at least, land is dirt cheap. Transporting stuff is not cheap. For this reason, it’s common for some US states to ship garbage to other US states for disposal, simply because geographically it makes economic sense.
- ngruhn 2y ago
  I’ve heard, shipping a lot of garbage to China was quite common until the Chinese banned it. That was economically viable because China exports so much and many container ships would otherwise return empty to China.
  - 2y ago

nullindividual 2y ago

Tires are a source of microplastics, as well. https://assessments.epa.gov/risk/document/&deid=361070 https://assessments.epa.gov/risk/document/&deid=361070 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724012920?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...

mikojan 2y ago

> Putting stuff in a landfill is way better for global warming since its not burned, the carbon is buried. Landfills release gas. Of course it is better than burning plastic but there is no environmentalist on earth demanding for plastic to be burned. > Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural environment. This is horrifyingly incorrect! Developed countries process only some of their trash themselves. The rest is shipped into poorer countries. It will end up in the natural environment. The UK ships off two thirds to other countries.

gruez 2y ago
>This is horrifyingly incorrect! Developed countries process only some of their trash themselves. The rest is shipped into poorer countries. It will end up in the natural environment. No, you're incorrect. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade >Many people think that rich countries ship most of their plastic waste overseas. But is this really true? >The short answer is no: many countries export some of their waste, but they still handle most of it domestically. >[...] When it comes to the fraction of plastic waste that is exported, the UK is one of the largest exporters. For context, the US exported about 5% of its plastic waste in 2010. France exported 11%, and the Netherlands exported 14%.[...] >[...] I estimate that a few percent of ocean plastics could result from trade from rich countries. A figure as high as 5% would not be unreasonable.
- mikojan 2y ago
  > No, you're incorrect. Exactly what statement is incorrect? Adding to that: Statistics show that developed countries are shipping significant amounts of trash into poorer countries. But there is most likely an even higher number of unrecorded cases. Supply chains can be difficult to monitor even within the OECD, and an estimated third of shipments is illegal.[0] [0]: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/video-how-eu-tackling-illegal-waste-shipments-2024-06-05_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/video-how-eu-tackling-...
  - gruez 2y ago

breck 2y ago

> All the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side. > That is, landfills take a trivial amount of space. Damn, I had to think about this for a second, but you are right. How the hell did I not realize this before? Can you please popularize this more? Maybe compress into a pithy phrase.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jrmg 2y ago
The supposed triviality of this size is not sitting well with me. What’s described is a 100 yard deep hole. So about 27 stories. It’s 35 miles per side, so 35 x 35 = 1225 square miles in area. That’s bigger than any city in the mainland US[1]. It’s a 27 story deep hole that’s twice as big as Houston. Three times as big as the city of LA, and over half the size of the urban metropolitan LA area[2]. Four times the size of New York (or three times, if you include the water as well as the land). This is not a trivial amount of land - and it gets worse if you were not to have it be (ridiculously!) one hundred yards deep. I’m not arguing we’re about to run out of landfill space imminently, but calling this ‘trivial’ is not what I’d call it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles
- cm2012 2y ago
  It's trivial compared to the amount of space in the US and the timelines we're talking about. Realistically no one is going to build this super hole, it will be 1,000 smaller landfills built over 1,000 years.
- breck 2y ago
  Fair enough. Here it is visualized using Google Earth: https://x.com/breckyunits/status/1831080588406849585 https://x.com/breckyunits/status/1831080588406849585
- 2y ago

renhanxue 2y ago

> Almost all plastic waste in developed countries ends up in landfills, not the natural environment. Here in Sweden less than 0.5% of household waste goes to landfill. Almost everything is burned in co-generation plants for district heating, with pretty sophisticated exhaust gas treatment. Unfortunately most of the plastic waste that goes into the recycling bins also end up there in the end, with only about 10% currently being actually recycled (mostly it's PET that gets recycled, AFAIK). edit: My 10% figure is some years old; plastic numbers are actually much better now! These days it's about 35%. For glass, paper and metal the same figures are all around 80% though so plastic still has a long way to go.

wodenokoto 2y ago
I thought you guys sold it to Denmark. We love burning that stuff. Even put a recreational ski slope on top of one of our incineration plants!
sitkack 2y ago
So it goes into the sky instead? That seems more sightly, but the CO2 emissions must be astronomical.
- hmottestad 2y ago
  When it comes to plastics I like to think that it’s basically a product of oil and other oil related products are burnt all the time for energy. The end goal should include a carbon capture step. They’ve looked into that here in Oslo, Norway, but it ended up much costlier than anticipated and at the moment it looks like it’s going to be very very drawn out. Carbon capture at the source is usually not that terrible of an idea. Trying to capture carbon from the air around us is very challenging, but if the air is 80% CO2 to begin with it’s going to be much cheaper to capture half of it then trying to capture the same amount from regular air. I heard that a good way to capture carbon on a bigger scale would be through burning trees and capturing the carbon. Store the carbon in a concentrated form, use the heat to produce electricity and when you chop down trees to burn you also make space for growing new trees. Sounds kinda slow though, and not exactly cheap either.