Landfills

I found an article that really put the extreme size of trash in the United States into perspective for me. It's an article by Marshall Brian titled: 'What if the U.S. put all it's trash in one landfill?' I'll copy the link below if you would like to read the whole thing. I will give you a summary of some facts that I found astonishing.

In the United States there are 3,091 active landfills and over 10,000 municipal or community landfills. Marshall Bryan from How Stuff Works: SCIENCE conducted a study where he was able to find out how big a landfill would be if we were able to bring all the trash in North America to one place and have one simple landfill. Depending on the person, the average American produces 3 to 4 lbs of trash PER DAY. The weight is not what makes the landfills size, but the volume of the garbage does. To get a better idea, water's density is 1 gram per cubic centimeter and a bag full of trash easily floats on top of water. Marshall chose the average density of trash to be 0.33 grams per cubic centimeter. Finally, let's assume there are 300 million people living in the United States.

This means that, in one year we would create something like 18,433,779,281 cubic feet of trash, which is a lot. If you were to make the landfill 400 feet deep (that's a 40 story building) it would cover more than 1,000 acres of land. THAT'S ONE YEAR!

Okay, let's move forward 100 more years assuming the population doubles and we continue to fill the same landfill. The landfill will cover 160,000 acres about 250 square miles of trash that is 400 ft deep.

Here's another way Marshall compared the size of the ginormous landfill; The Great Pyramid in Egypt is 756 feet by 756 feet at the base and 481 feet tall. One of the biggest things ever built by man. Let's take the trash we put in our landfill and put in the shape of the pyramid; ours would be 32 TIMES LARGER!!! That's a trash pyramid with a base of 4.5 miles by 4.5 miles that towers at 3 miles tall!!!!

When you realize the Earth's doomed unless our generation does something... 

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/one-giant-landfill.htm

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It is extremely important to reduce, reuse & recycle any product possible. Plastic however, has harsh chemicals that are causing our soil to be less fertile for future use. If we continue our ways, our crops will need even more GMOs to grow.

True or False

1. There is a landfill in New York that can be seen from outer space.

2. Much of the emissions that have contributed to the damage to the Earth's ozone layer can be traced to landfills.

3. About 50% of the material in landfills is organic items.

4. 100 million tons of recyclable materials are put into landfills each year.

5. Runoff from landfills after rain can be toxic.

Answers:

1. T 

2. T 

3. F, only 25%! 

4. F, 166 million tons! 

5. T