5 Problems with Landfills (and how to stop throwing so much stuff away)
Americans throw away nearly 4.9 pounds of trash every day. That adds up to an annual amount of 292.4 million tons of trash in America alone, as of 2018 (1).
So where did all of this trash end up?
69 million tons were recycled
25 million tons were composted
17.7 million tons of food were managed by other methods (i.e. animal feed, bio-based materials, anaerobic digestion, donation, land application, or sewer/wastewater treatment)
35 million tons were combusted for energy recovery (AKA, the conversion of non-recyclable waste materials into usable heat, electricity, or fuel)
146 million tons were put in a landfill
Photo Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In this article, you’ll learn how landfills work, the effect they have on our environment, and the next steps you can take to reduce the amount of trash you produce.
How Do Landfills Work?
Although landfills have been around since 3,000 BC, the first modern landfill in the United States didn’t come about until 1937 in Fresno, California. And now, in 2022, there are roughly 2,600 landfills across America (2, 3).
Put simply, landfills are what hold our trash. Trash, in this sense, is defined as municipal solid waste (MSW), or “various items consumers throw away after they are used. These items include bottles and corrugated boxes, food, grass clippings, sofas, computers, tires and refrigerators” (1).
Modern landfills aren’t just huge holes in the ground, though. There’s a whole infrastructure going on beneath the surface…
From pipes that collect leachate (the toxic liquid that’s formed when water filters through landfill waste) to a landfill gas collection system that collects methane to a whole liner system designed to keep trash from coming in contact with the environment (4).
Depending on the area and population size, a landfill can last anywhere from 30 to 50 years (5). Once it closes, the waste is covered with clay and a plastic shield, topped with soil to support vegetation, and turned into a recreational area (think: a golf course, nature park, fields, or walking and biking trails). A landfill has to be monitored 30 years after closure to ensure there aren’t any landfill gas leaks or fire hazards (6).
On top of that, building a new landfill costs anywhere from $20 to 80 million…a hefty price to pay for a place to store your garbage (7).
How Does Trash Get to a Landfill?
Here’s the process of your garbage going from your trash can to a landfill (5)…
The trash truck comes to your neighborhood and dumps your trash into the truck. It can hold anywhere from 12 to 14 tons of waste (about 800 to 850 homes).
As many as 200 trash trucks go to a landfill every day. Since Class 3 landfills are few and far between, these trash trucks can come anywhere from 15 to 75 miles away. (Class 3 means that they accept non-hazardous municipal solid waste.)
Once a trash truck gets to a landfill, it drives onto a scale to get weighed.
The truck drives to a specific “cell” in the landfill and dumps its load.
The truck drives back onto the scale to get re-weighed.
The truck leaves and drives to another neighborhood to repeat the process.
The 5 Main Problems with Landfills
Besides the infestation of flies, rats, and seagulls, being an eyesore, and the unpleasant odors, smoke, and noise that landfills produce, there are five main problems of landfills…
The 5 Main Problems with Landfills
Besides the infestation of flies, rats, and seagulls, being an eyesore, and the unpleasant odors, smoke, and noise that landfills produce, there are five main problems of landfills…
1. Lack of Oxygen
One of the main problems with landfills is that what you put into them will never break down. So much so that the late archaeologist William J. Rathje unearthed an order of guacamole from a landfill in the late 60s that barely looked two days old. "Almost as good as new,” Rathje recalls in his 1992 interview with the New York Times, “it sat next to a newspaper apparently thrown out the same day. The date was 1967” (8).
So why does 20-year-old guacamole look no more than two days old? Because landfills don’t have enough oxygen, light, moisture, or microorganisms for waste to break down naturally. For lack of better words, this ”mummifies” trash so that it can’t break down.
2. Toxic Leakage
When liquid (like rainwater) comes into contact with waste, it leaches, or draws out, chemicals from that waste (9, 10). This produces a liquid called leachate, which can contain a variety of hazardous, toxic, cancer-causing chemicals like ammonia and chloride (11).
Modern landfills, however, have an underground system that collects and removes leachate. This process keeps it from leaking, but there’s still the possibility of it leaking into the groundwater below landfills. Especially if the landfill is old and isn’t lined with clay and plastic.
Not only that, there are several things that end up in a landfill that shouldn’t be there. Think: phones, TVs, computers, wires, and other electronic waste. E-waste is the fastest-growing waste in developed countries, and problems start to arise when these items begin leaking toxic substances like mercury, arsenic, cadmium, PVC, solvents, acids, and lead (12). This leakage eventually ends up in our soil and groundwater, contaminating it for years.
STOP! Instead of throwing your electronics away, drop them off at your local Best Buy. They will take all of your old technology off of your hands, no matter the age or condition.
3. Greenhouse Gasses
Landfill gas is a natural byproduct that’s released when organic materials break down in a landfill. Roughly 50% of this gas is methane, 50% is carbon dioxide (CO2), and the rest is a small portion of non-methane organic compounds.
The most detrimental of these, you ask? Methane.
Often referred to as a “super pollutant”, methane is a potent greenhouse gas that’s 28 to 36 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2 (13). Luckily, methane breaks down within a decade whereas CO2 can stick around for hundreds of years (14).
There are a few ways to reduce methane in landfills:
As of 2020, landfills are the third largest source of human-related methane emissions in the US. Photo Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
4. We’re Running Out of Space
The average size of a landfill is 600 acres (15). With over 2,600 landfills in the United States, that’s a whopping 1,560,000 acres of land that’s storing our trash.
As of 2022, it’s expected that we have around 14 years of landfill capacity left. Some regions, like the Northeast and Midwest, have half that time. Other regions, like the West Coast, have more time–an expected 21 years (16).
There’s no exact answer for the number of years we have left before running out of landfill space, but if we keep consuming and throwing away at the pace we’re going, it’s inevitable. It’s only a matter of time.
5. Adverse Health Issues
Several studies are linking the proximity of residential populations to landfills with adverse health effects in babies (think: cleft palate, neural tube defects, and limb malformations) (17, 18). More research is needed to further improve our understanding of why and how this happens.
Next Steps You Can Take
To decrease the whopping 292 million tons of waste thrown away each year, there are six actionable steps you can take (19)...
Live out the seven R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Refuse, Repair, Repurpose, Refill, Recycle.
Compost your food waste rather than throw it away. (If we all did this, 1.3 billion tonnes of food would be kept out of landfills each year (20).)
Swap to plastic-free alternatives.
Purchase things in compostable packaging. When something is certified compostable, it means that it can break down in just 90 days (rather than plastic which takes up to 1,000 years to break down).
If you have things you need to recycle but aren’t sure how, use Terracycle.
Instead of throwing your electronics away, take them to your local Best Buy. They’ll recycle them for you.
Takeaways
The world produces 292 million tons of trash annually (19).
Out of the ~292.4 million tons of trash thrown away in the United States every year, 146 million tons are put in a landfill (1).
Landfills are problematic in four different ways: 1) they have a lack of oxygen, which prevents organic waste from breaking down properly; 2) they leak toxins like leachate that can be harmful to the health of humans, our waters, and the environment; 3) they produce greenhouses gasses like methane and carbon dioxide that warms the earth’s core temperature; 4) there isn’t enough space for them; and 5) health issues are arising in those living near a landfill.
Frequently Asked Questions
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The Environmental Protection Agency provides a table on its website that breaks down how many landfills are in each state. Click here to view.
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Although the United States only accounts for 4% of the world’s population, it’s responsible for 12% of the planet’s trash. This makes it third in line after China and India, both of which make up over 36% of the world’s population and generate 27% of its waste (18).
Caroline Nicks
On a mission to leave places better than she found them, Caroline spends her time with her hubs and parti poodle researching how to live a less wasteful life, picking up trash on her beach walks, and tending to her 32 houseplants.
