Trash. Our Trash. Where does it go?
Understanding the various qualities of landfills and their contribution to air pollution.
Over the past couple of years, there has been more attention regarding the trash produced by humans and more sustainable methods to manage the wastes emerged as a result. However, unfortunately, there has been a lack of effort in strictly implementing these improvements.
Over two thousand years ago, the Romans invented what we now know as landfills. Trash produced by the city was collected and pilled a distance away from the city’s boundaries. Around that time, Monte Testaccio, one of the largest and most highly engineered landfills was created. This creation is significant as it acts as a model for what is hoping to be achieved in the twenty first century, particularly in terms of topography. If this technique existed then, what caused the change of landfills to what they are now?
According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the increase in global population and the development of urban and industrial fields has made it more difficult to dispose materials. Population in the United States has increased by 82 million over the past 30 years. That is how long it takes for a plastic film container to decompose.
So where does the trash go after it leaves our sight? Well, a number of places, however the most popular form of disposal in the United States is a landfill. Around 70 percent of the municipal waste is dumped in landfills. This primary source of disposal harms the environment, contributes to air pollution and ultimately enhances to climate change.
Naturally, the mixing of different organic and inorganic matter will result in various reactions to take place. Not only will these waste react with their surroundings, but they will also react with environmental fluctuations such as sea level changes. This makes landfills a major problem, as it becomes a source of various implications such as groundwater contamination, greenhouse gases, and leachate (contaminated liquid found at the base of a landfill) production.
In 2009, there were 19 hundred landfills nationwide, one might believe this number to be small considering the amount of waste we produce. However, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), current landfills have a much greater capacity to contain waste. This increase in capacity actually took place in Fresh Kills.
Fresh Kills, in Staten Island, was opened in 1947 as a temporary landfill that would be used for 20 years, but rather it was until 2001. Thirty-eight more years than initially planned. This site is particularly interesting because it started as a salt marsh which was used as a landfill and is currently in the process of being transformed into a park a variety of programs.
Fresh Kill’s transformation required specialized fields to take on this task, due to the consequences of creating a park out of a landfill. These fields had certain constraints to work with, the main one being the mound itself. Karen Fairbanks, founding partner of Marble Fairbanks, said “landscape architects made smaller moves, sculpting the land to control leachate and move the water from the site.” In other words, this project has been a work in progress, as the process reveals new findings and the ability to create better solutions. An example would be the change of the process and technique of capping the mounds.
The psychological effect that landfills have on certain communities is also an aspect that is unnoticed. Realistically, there has been a rapid population growth, reducing the amount of available space. Therefore the waste is going to exist on a closer radius to people. This was the case for Fresh kills, as it created a negative reputation for Staten Island and affected the people that lived there. Even now that Fresh kills is being transformed into a park, it has been challenging eliminating the idea of what it originally has been.
The experience of visiting Fresh Kills is very unusual; it is a visual combination of what it originally was (salt march), what it used to be (a landfill), and what it is now (a park). At some point, I wondering how this is built of trash and at another point, I was able to see the capping process take place — it is astonishing. However, what was personally of most interest were the methane vents.
Methane is a greenhouse gas, yet it is also a very useful source of energy. The methane produced in Fresh Kills are collected using the vents and are used to power certain plants in the park. However, if there is an over production of methane and no particular use for it, it is flared out. Fairbanks also mentioned the role landscape architects played in changing the type of vents which are used to collect methane on the site, however there isn’t a particular procedure to deal with extra methane.
By flaring methane in the atmosphere, a gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, climate change is highly effected. Since methane is a gas that lingers in the atmosphere longer than carbon dioxide, our bodies are going to be taking that potent gas in our bodies. The Obama administration and the EPA are aware of the harms that methane and therefore decided to set a standard which will regulate methane emissions.
